| Past Week’s Weather. We have had a mixed bag of weather during the past week due to instability in both the lower and upper levels of the atmosphere. The week started with two severe thunderstorm warnings issued by the Weather Bureau. They said the one on last Sunday evening would reach Maleny at 9.05pm and bring structural damage. Thankfully, by the time it reached us it had spent all its energy. Top daytime temperature was w last Sunday with 27 degrees; and lowest overnight went down to 11 degrees yesterday. Mid week winds backed south-easterly and we had gusts up to 21 knots. Bright Sunshine hours were 51 for the week, seven hours down on the previous week. Precipitation was 7 mm, bringing the total so far this month to 141 mm, The week’s evaporation was 23 mm
Present Weather The past week’s weather with reports of severe thunderstorms with some large hailstones is a timely reminder we are now coming into the season of thunderstorms. Here in Maleny we average 30 thunderstorms a year of which ten are with hail. With approaching thunderstorms the first indication we get is thunder and lightning and its distance away can be gauged by counting in seconds from the instant a lightning is seen to when the thunder is heard. Then divide by three and the answer is in Kilometres. The thunderstorm activity is the result of unstable weather when hot moist low level air is trapped by a temperature inversion from the cold dry air above. In such a scenario the low level air becomes agitated and driven by hot winds desperately tries to break through the barrier and when it does a towering storm Cumulonimbus cloud develops, rising to great heights. Hail is a spectacular by-product of thunderstorms. It begins life as a frozen droplet of water that is carried aloft in the updraft area of a thunderstorm. Sometimes as it falls back to earth it will be trapped in the updraft a second time before falling again. This can happen several times resulting in another layer of ice being deposited on the growing hailstone. A hailstone cut in two reveals a ring-like structure like an onion. As many as 25 rings have been counted. Sometimes dust, pollen and small insects can be seen when the hail has melted. Two well recorded episodes of orange-sized hail in Sydney were on 1st January 1947 and 14 April 1990 when there was tremendous damage to vehicles and houses. Permanent evidence of the size of hailstones was made by a Sydney dentist who made a dental impression of two hailstones and used these moulds to produce replicas of them. They were similar in size to a tennis ball. |
| The earliest mention of hail that I could find is in the Bible Old Testament’s Book of Joshua describing the discomfort of Canaanites armies during a hailstorm, and I quote
“… the Lord cast down large hailstones from the sky on the Canaanites, and more of them died from the hailstones than were killed by the swords of the Israelites…” |
| Joke: Patient:.. .Doctor, can I have a second opinion? |
| Doctor:: Come back tomorrow. |
