Tag Archives: Australia

Terms like “mini tornado” or “weak tornado” leave me a little baffled. I mean, that’s like saying “little great white shark” or “little stealth bomber” — using the term “little” doesn’t much change your circumstances. As a meteorologist however, I know there are indeed tornadoes of varying degree. In fact, the Enhanced Fujita Scale is used to classify tornadoes from F0 to F5. The scale represents increasing degrees of damage based on the estimation of wind speeds and post-storm surveys of damage. So yes, “weak tornado” is a valid term and one that can be defined, but that doesn’t mean you want one to visit your neighborhood.

The weather has been so pleasant here on the Gulf Coast that it’s difficult to believe there’s still a month of winter yet to go. In fact, much of the globe is enjoying a bit of a break from extreme weather. And though that term can be subjective to many, ImpactWeather’s Gmaps reveals there are only a few global hazards

In YourWeatherBlog last week we talked about the devastating floods that hit Australia and today the government is saying it could be the country’s most expensive natural disaster to date. However, it’s not just Australia that’s dealing with disastrous floods. Heavy rain has also fallen in Brazil causing devastating floods and landslides. So far more [...]

It’s cloudy and unusually cold in Houston at this writing. Not exactly the stuff of La Niña, yet eastern Pacific waters are cooler than normal allowing western Pacific waters to be warmer than normal which, in turn, allows abundant precipitation across Equatorial waters of the western Pacific. Translation? Classic La Niña.

Yesterday, Dave brought you the latest information on the Australian floods and today I’d like to show you an image captured from the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite. Notice the muddy brown flood waters inundating the city. Heavy rain will continue across southeastern Australia and Tasmania over the next few [...]

it’s been weeks of flooding that has befallen eastern Australia. Low pressure troughs seem to just park themselves over the area with widespread rainfall totals of up to three inches per day — day after day. Yesterday’s news reported six inches in 30 minutes in Toowoomba, a city that typically receives 37 inches of rainfall annually. It was this heavy rainfall that lead to the flooding which earned the nickname, “the inland tsunami.”

Wet and soggy conditions continue over eastern Australia. Actually, “soggy” is not the appropriate word as many areas are indeed flooded, while Queensland’s coal mines are shut down and more than 200,000 people have been affected. Experts are already estimating flood-related costs above $5 billion, when considering infrastructure rebuilding (transportation has been particularly hard hit) and economic losses.

More than three inches of rain fell in and around Adelaide, Australia late Tuesday as thunderstorms pounded the South Australia city famous for its long beaches and overall high rankings in “most livable” cities comparisons. The storms and flooding disrupted power to as many as 10,000 properties. As the Southern Hemisphere summer draws to a [...]

This isn’t the first post on YourWeatherBlog discussing the unusual weather across Australia. From high heat to flooding to tropical cyclones, Australia is no stranger to severe or unusual weather. This time, severe thunderstorms over Melbourne delivered flooding downpours and large hail Saturday — hail the size of lemons, it was reported. You likely don’t [...]

I’m a gearhead. Motorcycles mostly, but cars, too. So the headline “Fastest Golf Slowed by Aussie Heat” from the Brisbane Times grabbed the gearhead lobe of my brain as well as the (just a bit smaller) meteorological lobe of my brain. Turns out Europe’s largest automaker has decided to not send the new high-performance Golf [...]