It’s been a lot damper and more humid than last year – which is fantastic…but we’re still to see big rains. We certainly got some decent downpours for some through yesterday…in fact the first of our summer-type storm days 🙂 I was hoping for similar today but the Bellingen Weather Station showed a marked drop in humidity around lunchtime…so suspect a dry line has moved through and diminished our storm chances for today:

We might have all the oceans in the world pointing the right way but once the Southern Annular Mode goes into the negative at this time of year it will trend drier…and that’s what is coming up over the next week or so. Here’s the SAM index for the coming couple of weeks. Last year we had strongly negative values up high, which slowly made their way down to the surface and gave us the monster fire season. This year is looking VERY different:

You can see the strongly positive levels up high, trying to make it down to the surface. A negative blip over the coming days…but we should, hopefully, then see the surface levels turn positive – and that means an increased risk of showers, storms and rain for us.

This is reflected nicely in the forecast rainfall anomalies from the ECMWF model. Here’s the forecast from that model for September (drier than average) through early next year (much wetter than average):

Positive forecast anomalies through our summer wet season means an increase in the risk of flooding – so worth watching the forecasts over the coming months. I’ll post updates on here when interesting weather looks like it is coming up.

This could be good timing for this page. Kombu currently hosts a Lavenders Bridge floodcam on the side of their building which gives one minute updates, together with an animation of the other council floodcams across our local rivers. Now that the NBN has arrived in the furthest corners of Church Street, Kombu is currently working with another local business, Snapfrozen, to make the flood cam a streaming cam – so you’ll be able to see what’s happening in real time. They’ll keep the timelapses in place as well, so you can also see the longer patterns.

I’m also working to get a local chat forum happening – you’ll find it here. It’s not operational yet…but if anyone out there has phpbb skills and wants to give me a hand we can get it operational before floods arrive 🙂

That’ll do for now. Images from the usual places – Meteologix, Stratobserve and Bello Weather. ECMWF animation via Bello Weather.