Victoria: Early Spring Heatwave for southeast

It was another interesting day here today. Started off sunny and quite cool, temperatures at about 16-17 for most of the morning and early afternoon, and then we started to see some cloud increase, fairly unsettled looking, and wind squalls as well reaching around 80 km/h at school. After about 2pm the temperatures rised significantly to about 22 degrees. The winds and cloud continued to roll on in, and a locally heavy shower pushed over . No thunderstorms here, but there are some around atm, particularly off the coastline. Still overnight Saturday and during Sunday looks interesting. Expect a bit of wind tomorrow as well.

Cheers.

The temp is spiking nearly at 22C - which is insane. I think with sunshine tomorrow you could add 6-8C to this tomorrow! Scary scary wind out there too. Lots of bangs in the distance at times!

overnight low of 18 or 19 tonight if the winds keep up? And maybe I might have to re adjust my thinking if the skies remain clear all day!

Not confident about Melb obs at the moment. 22.4c, a DP of 18 and RH of 80%.
Wild old night out there. More sustained than events over the past month or so. However peak gusts in the area are slightly lower than previous events.

Sniper wrote:Not confident about Melb obs at the moment. 22.4c, a DP of 18 and RH of 80%.
Wild old night out there. More sustained than events over the past month or so. However peak gusts in the area are slightly lower than previous events.

Suspect someone is tampering with the obs?

Winds have gone from 40 knots here at 11pm to nothing here. Not a breath. Quite strange. I walked outside to frogs!!!!

I haven't seen anything quite like that without a major change....

Anyhow still 19C and calm.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/11/2683860.htm

woke to a lovely 16 deg. and have power. not like some so it seems..

Looks like mid 16 will be the official minimum. If we have a similar day to yesterday, no reason why we cant reach 25-28. Conditions are benign here, like Karl, winds dropped off close to midnight.

Edit: Should have read Melb forecast before posting. Temp now forecast to reach 27.

Enormous amount of dust around this morning...and a few bands of small showers around...OCF and EC have been hinting at a few mm fore today since Wednesday night...looks unstable thru the mids with AccAs around, 27 should make it interesting, if it gets there!

so where are the winds?

that wet stuff out of the sky just managed to wreck the plan of getting washing on the line dry, raced to get it so it didnt turn rust coloured.

[quote]
Updated Melbourne Forecast
Issued at 9:20 am EST on Saturday 12 September 2009
for the period until midnight EST Friday 18 September 2009.

Warning Summary at issue time
Severe weather warning for damaging winds for the Central forecast district.

Gale warning for Port Phillip.

Gale warning for Western Port.

Details of warnings are available on the Bureau's website www.bom.gov.au, by telephone 1300-659-217* or through some TV and radio broadcasts.

Forecast for the rest of Saturday
Partly cloudy. Isolated showers. The chance of thunderstorms this afternoon and evening. Winds north to northwesterly averaging 35 to 50 km/h tending west to northwesterly up to 40 km/h later in the evening

Interesting forecast, currently 18.3C here.

Sky is looking very unstable here atm, wouldnt be suprised to see the odd storm about this evening!

Woke this morning to find Traralgon covered in a heavy cloud of Dust or Smoke...Think its dust.. Very warm.. very still..

Yeah once there is breaks in the cloud, which there should be this afternoon we will see the temperatures rise quite significantly. Also, I expect isolated thunderstorms to develop in the clearer skies from the west this afternoon.

A few light showers atm here, but that should clear out before this afternoon ahead of some possible thunderstorms. I will get the BoM storm charts up as soon as they are issued.

There is a significant amount of dust in the sky, really quite unprecedented winds will do that I guess over a wide area of SE Australia.

Getting reports of damage to some houses in Ferntree Gully and few sheds destroyed in Lysterfield overnight so some very strong straight line winds. But literally in a 5 minute window it went from 40-50 knot winds to nothing! NOTHING for about half hour and then the winds started again, it was bizarre, never seen anything like that without the presence of rainfall or thunderstorm activity.

Today will be interesting, it is hard to gauge the conditions down here at the moment with this haze in the air. I suggest that a shower or two and the chance of a thunderstorm looks good later but moreso overnight. Mid level cloud is thickening to the north of the cold front over parts of C Australia and this should form a reasonable rainband tomorrow morning.

Models are split in going for something rather useful so it is a wait and see game. 5-15mm still looks OK for a good portion of the south and east. Potential for some severe storms in the NE tomorrow.

winds have now picked up, sky is now clearing to the north, going to get interesting by about 2 or 3 o clock I think. Still only 21c though

So here is the thunderstorm chart from the BoM. They are a little interested in things, though not as much as some of us, and I would have put southwest Victoria under the 'yellow' colour meaning 'likely'. Anyway, see below.

---------------------------------------------------------
Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology
Victoria Regional Office

THUNDERSTORM FORECAST
Issued at 11:32 am Saturday, 12 September 2009,
Valid until midnight on Saturday, 12 September 2009.
Isolated thunderstorms are possible today as a region of middle level instability moves over the southwest ahead of a cold front forecast to move over the southwest this afternoon and evening. This region of instability will move through the remainder of the state this afternoon, however the upper level flow becomes less supportive of strong convection, so the chance of middle level thunderstorms decreases during the day.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Will have to keep an eye on the sky now considering it is sunny and we should get convection later this afternoon develop.

can someone explain why melb's humidity is high i.e at 72% while most other places seem to be at 50% or below? Even the airport is down to 22%

norfolk wrote:can someone explain why melb's humidity is high i.e at 72% while most other places seem to be at 50% or below? Even the airport is down to 22%

I would have to suggest excessive moisture in the instruments? condensation or something.

nice and warm outside atm 23.3 with a Northely wind not overly strong which im enjoying atm

91% humidity in melbourne?

There's a very obvious malfunction of some of the instruments at the Melbourne AWS. Also noticed the city wind obs are non existant as well and have been for some time now.

21C here so looks like it will be a record breaking warm day today. Interesting as soon as the wind picks up again in comes the heat (although anything under 30C can hardly be called heat, it is really just warmth), our temp is dictated to by the wind speed today.

Atmosphere is way too dry for storms this afternoon. humidity should increase very late in the day or at night which will be too late for storm development IMO.

I am looking at the 'humidity' as well as 'heat'. I wonder what the feel like temp would be if it was really 93%?

24.5 here. very windy again. off to sort out that gate once again. Wesburn is still without power from 7pm last night and they predict back on this evening, Id say the valley copped some good wind last night..