Weather extremes

Started by j, August 11, 2007, 05:28:50

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Ulrich

Yeah, it's becoming too hot and too dry. Can't do much about it (maybe "prayers for rain"...?)!
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

MeltingMan

After getting pretty wet on Friday, we now have at least 50cm of snow and freezing temperatures. Who would have thought? I shoveled snow this morning, but it didn't do much. It's still snowing and it's very windy. I stay at home. There was a severe weather warning for the region. 🥶
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

Ulrich

Quote from: MeltingMan on February 07, 2021, 16:05:42I shoveled snow this morning, but it didn't do much. It's still snowing and it's very windy.

I know the feeling, when you finished shoveling and could almost start again...

Quote from: MeltingMan on February 07, 2021, 16:05:42There was a severe weather warning for the region. 🥶

Heard about it. Here our snow was melting for days (rain/wind), but now it's colder again.

Yesterday we had a strange-looking yellow-greyish sky!
-> (pic from Stuttgart looks almost exactly like I saw it)
https://www.gmx.net/magazine/panorama/wetter/gelber-himmel-saharastaub-faerbt-himmel-sueden-deutschlands-schweiz-frankreich-35513596
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

@MeltingMan pointed out to me that something I posted as being very much on my mind would also fit into this topic.  Here's the link:  http://curefans.com/index.php?topic=8725.msg774643#msg774643

:)
SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Yesterday was nice and warm, today it snows (again)...  :unamused:
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

FLOODS AND MAYHEM

It's been an extreme winter here, after three years of drought. We only had 50-60% of normal annual rainfall here in 2018, 2019 and 2020, and now we've got one of the wettest winters on record, and this is not good news - it's too much water all at once turning low-lying and flat areas of the landscape into a bog for hundreds of square kilometres through this region. We drove to Denmark for a day out last week. crossing three rivers, and I've never seen them as high as they are now - my first year here was 1994 - they're almost up to the bottoms of the bridges, and all around the region the roadside drainage was full to the brim, in places running like whitewater and in others spilling out over the roadways.

We've had severe weather events at least once a week for the last six weeks or so - sleet, hail, torrential downpours, gale-force winds and accompanying livestock hypothermia warnings. On the weekend we had another; over 50mm (about 2 inches) of rain were dumped here in under 24 hours on the Sunday - and that's after a similar day the previous weekend, and other surrounding days with falls of 10-30mm. This is what our place looked like on Monday morning.

The farm dam has never been this high and is overflowing through the back.




The seasonal wetlands in the bushland-covered valley floor are overflowing, and the water flow from these has eroded the bank in places (and also, I saw this morning, on our neighbour's dam, where water was still running over the eroding edges like a mini Niagara Falls).



This is taken off the dam wall - you can see it overflowing into the field, and how wet the whole landscape is:




Water from this and the general load all across the landscape is making its way across the field into the roadside drainage ditch. The water is flowing towards the road on the north, and you can see it banking up along the fence because the roadside drainage ditch can't cope with it all:



This is our seasonal creek - usually nonexistent in summer, and a tiny thing in winter that horse or person can easily leap over. It takes excess water from the valley floor and its seasonal wetlands to the roadside drain.




The valley floor is so oversaturated it's spewing water at every edge, not just into the creek. Here it's flowing straight out onto the pasture as sheet water.



This is our driveway. We were finally able to afford to have a decent driveway built last year, and Keith and Tom Abbey did a fantastic job on it, cambering and compacting the gravel and installing drainage to keep the water away from it. It's stood up to the wild weather of the last six weeks superbly. Before we had this driveway, in prolonged wet weather we'd have to park the car three quarters of the way to the house and cross the mud patch/miniature swamp with gumboots to get to the house. We love our driveway.



This is the driveway drain diverting water away from the driveway:



So far, so good. But yesterday morning, the roadside drains overflowed, and flooded our road crossover.





Excess water overflowing into the drain from over the top:



You can see it eroding the driveway surface there - it's washed the clay and silt out on that side of the driveway, and left mostly gravel etc. That's also why the water looks red.

A few more photos:




(That, by the way, is our mailbox - someone gave us a hive box that was narrower than our standard Langstroth hives, and we needed a mailbox, so I turned it into one - pretty apt considering we sell honey, and roomy for parcels etc.)





We were able to cross through the water with the car because it wasn't too deep; this morning it's no longer spilling over the crossover. The driveway at the crossover is usable, but the surface is damaged on the drainage side. We may get the whole driveway re-compacted at the start of summer - we'll see.

And this is just a minor example of what's going on it the region. Driving to Denmark last week, quite a few sections of road were inundated - shallow enough to get through, but other roads have been completely blocked by points like this being too deep to cross by car, and after Sunday's over 50mm of rain and 80km/h winds, widespread waterlogging, flooding and damage are worsening from west of Denmark to east of Albany.

Livestock all over the area have been in super-wet pasture for six weeks, and it's eating away at hooves in cattle, horses and donkeys alike. Where they have access to higher ground, they seek it, but even there the grass is wet. Our own place has never been as wet as this in the ten years we've been here. The animals here are hanging out on higher ground and have sodden hooves after each severe weather system. I've been using Stockholm tar before each new onslaught to give them an antimicrobial and water barrier, which has helped our susceptible donkeys not to go lame through rot.

Nelly still has mild laminitis for unknown reasons - her hooves actually looked OK because she hangs out on high ground consistently. It's the wrong season for laminitis, she didn't get into a feed bin, we've not had a donkey with laminitis before etc so I'm scratching my head. She's been on anti-inflammatories/analgesics nearly a fortnight and is improving, but I'd like to know why it happened so I can prevent a recurrence. I've started feeding dolomite in the bucket feed to get extra calcium and magnesium into them all. Usually I don't feed it because it interferes with the vitamin/mineral supplement I give them as standard, or I alternate the two. Right now it's all going in - I can't do two separate feeds and don't want to alternate in case the problem is acute and to do with calcium/magnesium supply (supplementation is recommended on kikuyu pastures, but so is feeding extra selenium etc etc).

I've only ridden a handful of times in the past six weeks because it's either raining or the ground is sodden in most places. Also, there's other problems. The generator we use to top up the home battery supply when there's not been enough sun took several services before the inverter decided it could talk to it and let it charge the batteries. So we went through the start of winter with minimal electricity (sun only and there wasn't much) whenever we had bad weather systems coming through, while the generator kept returning to the service department. Finally, over the last two weeks, we had the luxury of a generator which actually charged the battery bank when we needed it to - it was wonderful.

And then yesterday morning it started malfunctioning again and the inverter spits it out and tries to shut down the whole electric system, which discouraged me from persisting with the generator. So we had to turn all the fridges and freezers off last night and hope for sun today and I will have to take it in to the service centre tomorrow again, for the third time this year.

By the way, we're lucky compared to the people on mains power in the district, because they've been having regular outages over the last six weeks, some lasting over a day, while the electric companies scramble to repair the damaged grid. We've only had to ration - and we've only ever lost power completely once, in the eight years we've been off-grid, and that was only for two hours one morning after we'd red-lined the system (the system automatically shuts down if battery levels go under 30% and they're not actually supposed to go below 60% for optimum battery life).

Fingers crossed, we'll figure out what's wrong with the generator. It's something that kicks in after a while, that makes it malfunction under load, and then the inverter spits it out. We're wondering if it's vibration changing the internal settings - would a vibration mat help? Currently it's bolted to a concrete floor to stop it walking. Or maybe ants or other critters got into its air supply somewhere between last week, when it was working perfectly, and yesterday...
SueC is time travelling

MeltingMan

We had the longest day of the year yesterday. Of course, I had to think about how 'winter' looks in the other hemisphere. Thanks @SueC. With us, the summer is just taking a break after it has really started. I now have 24.4 ℃ in the living room. Outside, however, it is only 15 ℃ - not yet extreme weather, but headache weather. It rained. Sometimes we already had floods - in March. Whether there will be enough rain in the annual average remains to be seen.

Quote from: SueCWe drove to Denmark for a day out last week.

🤔

En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

Ulrich

Quote from: MeltingMan on June 22, 2021, 10:46:16We had the longest day of the year yesterday.

Yes, didn't use me much though, dark clouds and thunderstorm/rain, so it didn't really make a difference to shorter days (for me at least).

Quote from: MeltingMan on June 22, 2021, 10:46:16not yet extreme weather, but headache weather. It rained.

Ah, good to hear I'm not the only one, I've had a headache since Monday... :unamused:
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

Headaches all around apparently. Had an actual migraine Saturday and again yesterday. Beastly things. That's after not having one for a long time. Sleep is the best cure for me and when you have a migraine oblivion is the best thing anyway. Sniffing one of those menthol nose unblocker sticks for colds also seems to help. Get better soon, you lot. I wonder if certain types of weather do make headaches more likely?

@MeltingMan, the coast around here is full of Nordic names like Elleker, Torbay (Tor Bay), Bornholm and...Denmark!

And for more extreme weather - there was snow on Bluff Knoll recently - and that's the only place in Western Australia that really gets any...you'd probably laugh at the amounts but this short YT clip I found gives you an idea:

SueC is time travelling

Ulrich

Quote from: SueC on June 22, 2021, 15:45:30I wonder if certain types of weather do make headaches more likely?

For me, yes (not always, but often): warm winds from the south blowing across the mountains (named "Föhnwetterlage"); storms coming up; extreme heat...
The holy city breathed like a dying man...

MeltingMan

Quote from: SueC on June 22, 2021, 15:45:30I wonder if certain types of weather do make headaches more likely?

If a storm is announced or the temperature drops / rises abruptly, I will notice it in advance. Most of the time I have this typical migraine aura that lasts 30 minutes - mainly at night. The pain is not as bad as it used to be. 😮‍💨
En cette nation [Russie] qui n'a pas eu de théoriciens et de démagogues,
les pires ferments de destruction ont apparu. (J. Péladan)

SueC

I'll have to keep an eye on the weather and see if it correlates with my headaches. Physical triggers for me include stress, dehydration and electrolyte depletion, heat, humidity, not eating five times a day, and for some reason going to town on errands (probably through the above), although that one wasn't behind the last two.

More extreme weather: A friend in Vermont USA reported an unusually extreme winter just gone by. They were up to their ears in snow more than normal, and this was interspersed with huge rains that inconveniently melted the snow and caused much mud, flooding, etc. The snow got so high that it partly covered windows.
SueC is time travelling

dsanchez

A tornado just destroyed a few places in Moravia (south of Czech Republic), about 150Km from where I live. It's VERY rare to read about a tornado in Europe...
2023.11.22 Lima
2023.11.27 Montevideo

Ulrich

Quote from: dsanchez on June 25, 2021, 00:06:01It's VERY rare to read about a tornado in Europe...

It is not as rare as we think!

QuoteEuropaweit ist besonders ein Streifen von Nordfrankreich über Benelux und die Nordhälfte Deutschlands bis nach Polen, den Baltischen Staaten, Weißrussland und Russland betroffen. Insgesamt werden in Europa pro Jahr etwa 300 Tornados registriert, die Dunkelziffer ist hoch.
http://www.unwetterzentrale.de/uwz/558.html

Currently we've had severe thunderstorms with lots of rain and/or hail here in the area.  :o
(Luckily, my hometown hasn't had any damage so far.)

The holy city breathed like a dying man...

SueC

I had no idea there were tornadoes in Europe! Thanks for the info, both of you.  :cool

@Ulrich, your photo reminds me of a huge hailstorm we had here 20 years ago, which produced a famous photo:



I remember it was so cold and windy for days I spent the weekend curled up reading in front of the fire. I even remember what I was reading because the weather was so unusual and I read two days straight.

...and you've got this in mid-summer!   :1f635:
SueC is time travelling