The Australian Weather Forum

Rivergirl » Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:55 am wrote:

Rivergirl wrote:Wow over 100mm for us up here. Geoff you're right about the autumn foliage. I've just seen our Japanese Stewartia tree degenerate. It was coming up to optimal autumn colouring, now a lot of the leaves have gone and it's a bedraggled mess.

That is interesting about the Stewartia, Rivergirl. Same thing happened here, just colouring up and then they all went brown and held the leaves,until the recent rain knocked them off. I am seeing some very odd things this Autumn. In the garden here at work, the Liquidambars and Japanese Maples are still green where as when i was down in Toorak on Monday all the Liquidambars i saw were in full colour and dropping tonnnes of leaves, it's odd because at this elevation we should be a couple of weeks ahead of Melbourne, not behind.

Drizzly and mild here today, no sun of course

Karl Lijnders wrote:Scored 169mm for the event and another 2mm since 9am. Just an absolute corker of an event, we had the peak of every rain/shower/storm/drizzle band you could think of.

Congratulations Karl, beat me good and proper! I could see the stream of showers over you for ages.
We're up to 114mm now in Olinda, everything is completely waterlogged!

Rivergirl wrote:Wow over 100mm for us up here.

I think we've got a bit more than you Robyn, the official BOM figures for Ferny Creek are about 85mm I think, still a very big event!
Cheers, Geoff.

geez......reading all those totals just makes me depressed!!!!
When is it our turn out here in the west.....we have had about 30 points!!!

We were developing beautiful Autumn colour here as recently as last weekend, but the recent windy days knocked a large percentage of the leaves off the trees along with the rain (which we didn't get a huge amount of, just 33.6mm over 4 days). Luckily, there is still about 30% to 40% of the foliage that is still green and starting to turn now. In a week or so it will be round 2 for Autumn colour and it will probably be even better than round 1 because some of the most spectacular trees are just starting to turn, eg. Liquidambar, Japanese Maple, Elms, and others.

We have a small Chinese Pistachio tree here that is just starting to turn now and that has spectacular bright red foliage most years. A lot of trees in our garden that are usually quite early are only halfway there atm, especially the Callery pear and Parottia persica but also Berberis and smokebush. We also have a Dogwood, Japanese birch and Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy' that have lost all their leaves or are past their peak and the peak colour was in early to mid April so it varies between species.

Traditionally Anzac Day is supposed to be the peak for Autumn colour here but from my experience it is usually more like early to mid May. Even in the parts of eastern USA at similar latitudes to VIC the peak autumn colour is reported to be early to mid November so it is normal to still have a lot of trees green but ready to change now. The wind is the main concern because most years it starts to get a bit windy from, late April onwards and the majority of years see what we are observing atm, i.e.significant leaf fall.

FWIW, in the inner urban heat jungle there is hardly any autumn colour at all despite a large number of elms, plane trees, a few gingkos here and there etc. It is about 90% green and many leaves just going brown. It should yellow up a bit through May but it is a pretty depressing scene really, all those deciduous trees for nothing.

If you want to see a real spectacle, head up to Heathcote where there is a 'forest' of Liquidambars close to the centre of town. They were quite spectacular last weekend and would be even better now.

Anyway, back to weather related discussion. Looks like a shower or two here tonight but nothing much, and then a cold day tomorrow but it should be sunny and light winds as the day progresses so not too bad. Monday morning should see frosts inland. The front on Tuesday looks half decent with 5-10mm for central and southern VIC.

Some heavy showers here today, particularly this afternoon as the front brushed on through! 5mm so far from them!

1.4mm up on the mountain and at Gisborne so I assume we got something similar here. It was enough to keep things damp anyway. It's really quite green out there atm, hopefully we see the paddocks start to green up a little as we often do in May (if we get good rain).

11C here, it's got as high as 12C today. Not too bad a day actually now that the sun is out. Just a little breezy but getting calm now as the high moves in. There should be quite a few places with frost tomorrow morning.

First real frost for the season here this morning. We had a couple of trial runs earlier in the month but this morning was a proper attempt Dont know what the temp got down to because my thermo has gone bung. I see it was 0.0C at 7am in Trentham.

3C at my place this morning, 2C at Macedon according to the car thermo.

There was a seriously heavy frost at New Gisborne this morning. I'm not sure what the temp was down there, probably around 2C as well IMHO, but the frost on the ground was heavy enough to resemble about 1cm of snow. Says a lot about the moisture content in the atmosphere this morning.