Weather: October's cooling...Ahhhhh..., 1 by tropicbreeze

tropicbreeze wrote:
Billyporter, cyclone season is officially 1st November to 30 April. But as the sea here is always above 26C (78.8F), which is the temperature needed to maintain a cyclone, historically they have been recorded in all months of the year. Monsoon is actually the prevailing wind which determines the season. So we get the south east monsoon during the dry season, not normally thought of as "monsoon" since it is dry. Then there's the north west monsoon during the wet season, which is what most people think of when they hear the word monsoon.

I remember one year when it rained for 3 months non-stop, mostly light and only sometimes heavy. Mostly the monsoon comes and goes during the wet season so you might get a week or two (or more) of rain and then periods of hot humid weather without rain, except afternoon storms.

Just now it seems like the monsoon is here early. We're getting unusually high rainfall for this time of year and low temperatures. I don't mind, although I would have liked to have done a lot more work on surface water drainage on my place. In a normal year I still would have had time.

Kelli, ocean currents generally run clockwise in the northern hemisphere. Northwards along eastern Asia and southwards along northern America. The warm water moves up northwards displacing cold water southwards, along the California coast and out to Hawaii. We're close to the equator along the north of the continent so the water circulation is always warm. The southern part of the continent the water does get colder, expecially in winter.

Minimum temperature this morning was 24.9C (76.8F), maximum today was 32.9C (91.2F). Rain is continuing and becoming more widespread, but not heavy everywhere.

I've added a map (from Google) to give a clearer picture of the layout of the land here. Islands top left are part of Indonesia, the land top right is part of New Guinea. I put in a 500 kilometre (about 310 miles) line to give a perspective on distance.