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From being in this forum for a while, I've been surprised how wet Australian cities are. My image of Australia was a place that is nearly desert.
It seems while most Australia is very dry, most Australians are concentrated in the wetter portions.
In strong westerly airflows the southern coastline, facing the GAB, including western Tassie where rain days can exceed over 250 - 300 pa, and to a lesser extent, southern WA, has a high number of rain – or showery if you like – days.
Eastern cities - Sydney especially - and Brisbane measures over 1200mm of rain a year with the majority of the rain falling from moist airstreams coming off the Tasman Sea during a trough/ECL/easterly or a rare black nor-easter and most favorably of all, a south to south-east wind, when the centre of a high is centred over Tassie, directing torrential/heavy downpours for days on end.
Out of all state capitals, over the past decade even though some years were drought ridden, Sydney has consistently been the wettest city with all other state capitals recording half of what has fallen here and I definitely love it :-)
I'm surprised there aren't more people who have chosen to immigrate to Australia.. must be due to politics, cost and distance. I've been to Australia before and I think it's a fantastic country with lots of wonderful climates....
It has all the good climates that the USA has without all the bad ones.
It all boils down to the cost of living which is very, very high here. It doesn't matter if the weather is "wonderful", if you can really call it that LOL, whatever the amount of sunny and warm weather doesn't really make up for the horrendous cost of living here. It's much cheaper in your part of the world, no wonder so many of us are leaving in droves. I know of many Americans and British folk who came here on holiday and were horrified at the high prices of everything especially eating out, drinking and buying clothes.
Definitely... the cost, distance and immigration bureaucracy are the main reasons why I have not moved there. If I had a decent job offer in something I could actually do, I'd move in a heartbeat. Same goes for the US...
I'd definitely move to the USA if I had a decent job offer in a heartbeat.. but with the economy the way it is...
In any case a bit off topic.... Suffice it to say, both Australia and the USA have excellent climates that I could really really enjoy..
Two cities on my list of places to move are Key West and Darwin
If I was offered a job in America, I'd move in a heart beat too . I would live in San Francisco or San Diego, especially the former as many of my friends have moved there and the summer fog/winter rains would be nice too . Only thing I don't like is that in America there's no equivalent to Medicare and PHI must be taken out which is quite expensive too...
Which site is that? One in the western suburbs? I think the figure I recall is in the 2400s, and I've seen something like 2500 for Chicago, but yes, I was just going on quoted figures, the reality might be different. I've also compared sunshine hour data to the number of clear/cloudy days; but that too is kind of subjective and the BOM and NOAA seem to use different methods. From comparing the number of clear/cloudy/partly cloudy days it actually seems the Eastern US should indeed be a bit less sunny than the sunshine hour totals suggest. 3000 hours a year for somewhere like Columbia, SC always seemed a touch high to me, considering they have quite a few more 'cloudy' days than Perth which gets about the same amount of sun.
The BOM averages probably don't really reflect the average 'impression' of sunniness one gets in Australian cities these days either. In the past 10 years Perth has probably cracked the 3200 hour mark more than a few times. We've had years with as few as 60 raindays, well below the 119 long-term average. The 30 year average would probably also suggest something lower.
Actually Perth, at the current site which opened in 1993, has cracked the 3200 mark twelve times. A quick skim of data from the old site shows the 3200 mark being exceeded just twice.
From being in this forum for a while, I've been surprised how wet Australian cities are. My image of Australia was a place that is nearly desert.
It seems while most Australia is very dry, most Australians are concentrated in the wetter portions.
The southern capitals are actually fairly dry, considering their exposure to southern ocean fronts and such cool damp airmasses. Melbourne only gets around 650mm a year, Hobart even less. Hobart Airport gets only 501mm per year (20"), making it the second driest capital after Adelaide. Melbourne's driest suburb recieves a grand total of 457mm.
Actually Perth, at the current site which opened in 1993, has cracked the 3200 mark twelve times. A quick skim of data from the old site shows the 3200 mark being exceeded just twice.
As I have already noted in this forum, the decreased rainfall and increased sunshine at Perth are a natural consequence of the southern retreat of the southern polar jet, going back to about 1979.
Does NZ or Australia have a site like National and Local Weather Forecast, Hurricane, Radar and Report or AccuWeather.com that shows the various fronts and wind patterns on the maps? I tried to find it on BOM's website but I couldn't. I'm curious because then I can learn the southern wind and jet stream patterns, since I don't know much about in both countries.
The southern capitals are actually fairly dry, considering their exposure to southern ocean fronts and such cool damp airmasses. Melbourne only gets around 650mm a year, Hobart even less. Hobart Airport gets only 501mm per year (20"), making it the second driest capital after Adelaide. Melbourne's driest suburb recieves a grand total of 457mm.
Hmm didn't realize that, though it's still wetter than my semi-arid image of Australia when I was younger. A lot of the temperate maritime climates in Western Europe record rather low precipitation, though they have colder winters so they need less precipitation to stay green.
Wikipedia lists Melbourne's precipitation as 528.5 mm. And 3000 sunshine hours. Apparently 2700 hours isn't enough for whoever is vandalizing the wiki page.
Does NZ or Australia have a site like National and Local Weather Forecast, Hurricane, Radar and Report or AccuWeather.com that shows the various fronts and wind patterns on the maps? I tried to find it on BOM's website but I couldn't. I'm curious because then I can learn the southern wind and jet stream patterns, since I don't know much about in both countries.
X2 for me.
I would love to watch the weather play out across NZ and Australia looking at the synoptic weather map each day. However, I would guess it would be way more fun in the cold season (winter) than now - as they are heading into summer. Just like the USA, as the time of high sun approaches, storm tracks/fronts/etc reteat north I think. So beyond local thundershowers in the more humid/tropical areas or the threat of a tropical cyclone...I would think the daily weather map is not too flashy.
Nothing lucky about this country when we're being battered by horrid droughts, killer heatwaves or murderous bushfires . Only when does the opposite occur do we consider ourselves lucky
Isn't Australia prone to floods as well? I remember hearing Brisbane being rather hard hit.
Sounds like your precipitation is very variable compared to the US Northeast. Droughts are rather unlikely here. Though flooding has been a big issue this year here. Liable to be one of the wettest on record here this year. One of the main east- west highways in the state is still closed from mudslides from Hurricane Irene.
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Liable to be one of the wettest on record here this year. One of the main east- west highways in the state is still closed from mudslides from Hurricane Irene.
