Victoria: Heatwave November 13th-20th 2009

As i said last week we will break some records of a different kind soon...that scenario suggests to me that some massively cold air will be making its way through our part of the world, whether the low happens like that or in some other form we dont know but its definitely going to get colder and wet..

Despite what BoM say for tomorrow and Sunday, I still think for my area, we will be closer to 35 degrees on both days. Today was around 30 degrees and the northerly won over the seabreeze yet again, so I am expecting hotter temperatures than what the BoM are saying.

Next Thursday is looking horrible for fire weather at this stage. Strong north to northwesterly winds, dry soil conditions and hot surface temperatures (between 35-40) for southern areas and above 40 in the north makes it a likely TFB ban. EC and GFS hint at a trough though to come through ahead of the frontals system Thursday night into Friday, so may see some afternoon showers and thunderstorms across the state, mostly near the trough and the front! I would suspect to see severe activity though, set-up looks well.

Yeah the EC scenario is looking quite interesting from Thursday/Friday. Our weather is just un-believeable some times and as Andrew says I wouldn't put it past our climate for it to happen. Two lows, fronts and a trough all from Thursday/Friday onwards. We would be seeing quite unsettled weather, rain and storms from the scenarios.

I dont think that it will be as sunny as it is forecast on Saturday, the sattelite is showing a lot of high jet stream cloud that is going to cross VIC tomorrow so may not be as warm as suggested.... I have noticed this a lot in the past where BOM forecast a sunny day and it ends up being mainly cloudy or partly cloudy. I think tomorrow looks like it will be one of them days

Well, we have cool and humid air over us atm. 14C and around 10C to 11C DP. Tomorrow should be a fairly pleasant day for most places on and south of the ranges.

Latest GFS has an epic spike in the temps for Thursday, could get as high as 42C in Melbourne if it's right but I have my suspicions it's on drugs. Can't see it getting that hot but then again there was Feb 7th so I'll keep quiet. Mildura on the other hand is set for a 45C easy on Thursday, mark it in IMO.

Now this starts to raise half an eyebrow now that also GFS is progging something decent about the same time as EC has been going bananas last few runs.. So definetly something to watch over the next 6 to 9 days.

http://wxmaps.org/pix/prec7.html

Hope they come through, now to just keep the garden alive till then, tank water getting down to 1/4.
Beautiful Morning out there now.

Pretty warm up here ATM with a dry northerly mixing in and out - currently 19C. Dp has been jumping from 12 to 4 (Dunns Hill is on just 1C). Should see a southerly establish pretty soon - looks to be through Avalon and MesoLAPS has it moving through Melbourne a bit after 9am. This then stays with us until late tomorrow so again those of us in the south miss out on a potential stinker

No luck for those in the north. It's just blazing hot the next two days with more records falling.

Looks like the front next week is slowing, but this is positive in that it allows more moisture to come in from the northwest. Certainly has the potential to be a thumping rain event (though most of Vic will have cured off at that stage so it won't green things up).

Gotta wonder what the hell is going on further north... Adelaide in line for its 7th 35C today and Mildura on track for another two 40C. All mad stuff.

Temp has jumped from 14.3 to 20.3 very quickly this morning, most morning have had nice moisture on the ground here.

27.8 in the city now, quite a moderate WSW at Geelong airport but it is at its max at 26.9??? These southerlies don't seem to be doing anything at the moment, although Laverton has dropped back to 26.8.

Temps will have to stop rising because we have just hit our revised max at 9.34am

Out here in Caroline Springs and the northerly wind is quite moderate in this desert land!!! ~26C

Karl, ur in my neck of the woods.....see how lush and green it is NOT!!!

I hit 32c here and it has remained steady on that for a while.

Oh I should say the seabreeze has kicked in and at this stage, hasnt done much to dent the temps.

Stuck up here with no wind between the northerlies and the southerly change. 28C already and humidity rising - Dp of 14C ATM. SW "change" seems to be sat just inland from Moorabbin at the surface ATM but is taking a lot of time creeping inland.

Inland and north its starting to get really hot - Adelaide on 35C, Mildura on 34C and even Viewbank and the Ap on 33C. Also some very low dewpoints showing up, pointing to some pretty nasty fire conditions.

It was 27c here earlier this morning, but now it's a lovely 23c.

Can't complain about that. Quite a bit of cloud around too.

Bit of cloud too here this morning which showed some weak convection, though it seems to be mostly clearing atm. Temperature has been around 29 degrees most of the morning and the southerly breeze has done nothing at all as I expected and said so yesterday. Expecting to the temps to rise here in the next couple of hours.

Otherwise, still looks like a stinker Thursday and for parts on Friday, but models are hinting at something big!

Hotter one today than expected. 31C max already. It was 27C at around 10:30am so it has only risen a few degrees since then which might be a bit of an influence from the milder air slowly wafting in from the south stopping the temp from getting into the mid 30s. A little bit of middle level cloud coming through also and some of it showing weak convection, a sign the DPs may be on the rise.

Looks like a big downgrade for tomorrow with temperatures roughly similar to today, perhaps a degree or two cooler. Mild weather Monday, cooler Tuesday with a shower or two fairly likely over that period depending a lot on whether the warm bay has an influence, otherwise the airmass may be too dry. Wednesday the heat builds up again. Thursday is a big worry although GFS has scaled it back a lot since last night as expected. Mildura has downgraded about 4C with the 850T but Melbourne area has upgraded several degrees to almost match Mildura! It still looks a bit weird to me and EC has 33C here which would translate to about 37C for Melbourne.

After that if you believe the models, EC in particular, things are going to change very dramatically with the pattern turning on it's head. Huge LWT passage slow moving through the SE starting Friday and follow up fronts by the looks of things in the following days. Likely to get very wet, a lot cooler and almost back to a classic spring pattern, even a bit more September/October looking than mid to late November. Perhaps a sign that this whole setup of the past week or so was just a massive blip in the general pattern, most likely a result of El Nino suddenly organising itself in the last month.

Paddocks to the SE of here in the rain shadow areas of Riddells Creek have only just started drying out and yellowing in the past week or so. Here it is still green and plants are still growing rapidly, there has been very little effect yet from this heatwave.

Once you get to Sunbury and then further into the western suburbs it is 100% cured well and truly. If we can get this big rain event and change of pattern that the models are suggesting for late next week onwards then it's possible we might just survive here with only partial curing or not much at all and that would allow grass to grow again and would help the gardens around here and stop them from being set back.

Grassland areas away from the ranges and west of Melbourne are already in summer mode though so grass fires are a huge threat now as soon as the wind picks up from the north.

Not much difference here, wind has shifted around but temp is still steady, we are on 32C at the moment so seabreeze taking it's time coming inland. Still plenty of green around here but some minor garden casualties from this heat so far, just need some rain soon to top up the tanks or this will be a long dry summer.

If Thursday plays out how GFS has it at the moment it will definitely crack 40 in the city.

Massive upgrade for all areas and NW wind gusts up to 120 kph, possibly higher in elevated areas.

According to the latest forecast the system will move very quickly and Friday day won't be hot, although the early morning will still contain some heat.

Weatherwise it may be one of the craziest days/nights of the year.

It's been hovering between 29C-32C all afternoon, southerly has been a lot weaker than forecast and hasn't penetrated inland, only very light winds here. It was still expected around 30C here today but the Melbourne area seems a bit warmer than we were expecting.

Tomorrow looks around 2C to 3C cooler to me, so about 30C here and mid twenties to 30C in Melbourne depending on the strength of the sea breeze. Monday will be very warm again into the 30s before the change moves through slowly during the afternoon. Tuesday looks like a mild one with low 20s and a shower or two. Wednesday warms up again after a cool start, into the low 30s again I'd say.

Thursday is Armageddon. Don't know what EC is saying but GFS is indicating a November version of Black Saturday with record breaking temps almost a certainty for central and western areas and probably 41C or 42C in Melbourne.

After that we head towards the opposite end of the scale with troughs, fronts, intense lows with upper level support etc. that is likely to bring us all kinds of weather, most notably very wet and very stormy with gales. It doesn't actually cool down properly until the very end of the progs when we could be looking at a return to winter with cold unstable air producing hail and thunder.

Clearly, if the current model scenario pans out, we are in for potentially the wildest and craziest period of weather of all time. Brace yourselves is all I can say with extraordinary record breaking heat followed by intensely severe storms and rain etc. Climate change (global warming) has its signature all over this.

The end of the GFS run looks interesting: Cutoff low forming with a significant upper cold pool.... atmospheric dynamite if that comes off!

In the meantime, Thursday looks a shocker in every way.

Only positive for Thursday at this stage is that GFS is also progging a fairly substantial cloud band over us. It's happened quite a bit before where a potential 40C+ day has turned into a low to mid 30s day thanks to altostratus and cirrostratus. Still would be a horrible day though even if that is the case.

Another thing, GFS has instability over the state Thursday so could be even cloudier with some storms around. Maybe a bit of hope for us there.

I see BOM still sticks with 36, what do we take as more credible? BOM has seriously been underestimating heat over the last few weeks, but then again Saturday and Sunday did get a big downgrade. Probably a bit more chance of Thursday coming off though.

I_Love_Storms wrote:I see BOM still sticks with 36, what do we take as more credible? BOM has seriously been underestimating heat over the last few weeks, but then again Saturday and Sunday did get a big downgrade. Probably a bit more chance of Thursday coming off though.

BOM will never forecast record temperatures 5 days out, they have gone ultra conservative. I guess it also depends on what EC is saying. Just this morning it was only progging 31C for Melbourne with a possible shower (from yr.no site under 'detailed long term forecast'), so you never know, perhaps GFS is going a bit nuts. It often overestimates the severity of heatwaves or cold outbreaks. The major concern though is it was right on the mark for Black Saturday up to a week out but this is a different event and the specifics will be different so anything could still happen.

As i keep saying we will no doubt break other records shortly, with this extremely hot and moist air about going to mix with very cold antartic air fireworks will be coming up in one way or another..

Upper cold pool over warmer than normal Bass Strait and superheated land mass.... one can only guess....

In the meantime, MJO pulse has stalled in phase 3. That could limit moisture infeed. Typical El Nino.