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Paul's weather word

Paul Higgins ABC Melbourne weather presenter
Paul has worked in commercial radio and television in a variety of roles from production to management. He has also presented the prestigious ABC TV education program 'Behind the News' as well as working as a journalist on a range of radio and TV News and Current Affairs programs.

Paul also keeps viewers throughout the Asia Pacific region up to date as part of ABC Asia Pacific's weeknight news team.

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Paul's weather word

Half way through April you'd hope that we'd have had something like half our normal rainfall for the month.

But in Melbourne just 3.4 mm of rain has fallen so far, despite gloomy skies as I write this. The long-term average rainfall for April is 57.9 mm. We have a long way to go.

There's been a lot of misunderstanding about the breaking down of El Nino.
The Bureau of Meteorology has already pronounced El Nino dead. But many people are wondering why the drought hasn't been broken. Or wondering when it will be. Unfortunately all it means is that our rainfall should return to normal levels. It doesn't mean a veritable flood of downpours to make up for the lack of rain over the past 15 years. Or even 15 months. So in the months that it normally doesn't rain all that much, it'll be the same now, even without El Nino.

So far this month the problem for Victoria is that the cold fronts coming our way have tended to peak in strength over Western Australia. By the time they arrive here, they're well depleted and bring only light shower activity mainly to coastal regions. We're still waiting for that elusive 'autumn break'.

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Paul's weather word

My street is strewn with branches this morning. Not twigs, but full size branches, the result of the strong easterly winds that roared across Melbourne and central Victoria yesterday and overnight.

Wind gusts to 49 knots or 91 km/h were recorded at the northern end of the bay late on Sunday.

It's unusual for Melbourne to have easterly winds. And certainly not with the ferocity and duration that they blew yesterday. They're usually fairly gentle, heralding a change from cool southerlies to warm northerlies as, for instance, a high pressure centre moves into the Tasman Sea.

The consequence is that the trees in Melbourne are not used to dealing with gusty easterlies. If you look at certain varieties of tree, they usually lean away from south westerlies if they're near the bay, and away from the north if they're well inland. That's because of the likely direction of the strongest winds we usually get here.

The ongoing drought didn't help matters either, with larger trees in particular weakened and stressed by a lack of water.

But there was some good news for Victorians living in Gippsland and parts of the north. Thunderstorms over the past three days dumped around 30-50 mm of rain in Gippsland, and up to 20mm north of the divide. Genoa scored the most rain over the past seven days, 140 mm.

The pressure trough that caused the weekend gales and storms has moved to the north west and weakened considerably. So our weather today should be far more
benign.

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Paul's weather word

At last, some rain in Melbourne. Admittedly not much. But it might've been enough to save you from garden watering duties last night.

Our brown lawns were the most likely to benefit from the light showers, given that the only water they're allowed to receive under the current restrictions is either from your rainwater tanks or the leftovers from the bathroom and laundry. But if your lawn is anything like most in my neighbourhood, no amount of rain is going to revive it.

It's frustrating to look at the satellite photos and see the broad mass of cloud up in the tropics just brimming with moisture. And a line of cloud pushing southwards from there along a pressure trough. Given that moisture has been travelling south along that pressure trough, why hasn't it been raining? One reason is that the atmosphere is so dry over Victoria that much of the rain that falls from the high based clouds evaporates before it makes
it to the ground. It's called "virga".

Our best hope for rain just at the moment comes from thunderstorms. And there's a beauty brewing west of Melbourne between Ballan and Ballarat as I write this. But it's a double-edged sword. Thunderstorms can bring such intense rainfall that flash flooding occurs and little rain actually soaks into the ground where it's needed. It simply runs off.

And there's the problem of lightning strikes igniting fires in the tinder dry
bush. A CFA controller remarked the other day that virtually any ground stroke will start a fire, given how dry conditions are at the moment.

The humid, unsettled weather is forecast to continue through to Sunday as the pressure trough currently over the state is replaced by another moving in from the west.

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