Bang! Crash! Boom!

We have had some stormy weather this past week. This is storm season here around Queensland, most years we often get storms in the afternoons and sometimes they hang around for a week or so while the weather patterns waffle around. This week we have had some whoppers, but for some reason, our little house sitting area missed most of them. But on Wednesday night we got rain, it was wonderful to hear the rain, we stood out on the deck watching it coming down in buckets. It didn’t last long, but it was a good heavy shower that lasted maybe 30 minutes or so. The grass loved it.

Well, yesterday it was our turn. Late in the afternoon it started rolling up from the south east. A great wall of grey cloud.

 

Then came the rain and wind.

An hour later is was clear and we had a brilliant sunset.

The weather people in Australia are the Bureau of Meteorology. They have a very good website with radars that show all the weather coming, and it’s easy to see the storms brewing and moving across the country. Considering that generally weather forecasters are berated day and night, I reckon they do a pretty good job and are mostly accurate. And all through the storms, the planes come in, every minute or two and land at the Brisbane airport not far from here...



You can see the massive line of severe storms coming our way. You have to
look hard to see Brisbane City on this map...that is our area....

There is also a Facebook page called Higgins Storm Chasers. I follow them on Facebook if there are storms about too. They have some fabulous pictures sent in by all and sundry who keep up to date with this Facebook page.  Here are one or two of the pics from yesterday from Higgins Facebook page.

 

It's not so easy to see the refracted light in this pic, go to  his Facebook
page and see it....its amazing.

RARE* Rainbow with light refraction! This is only the second time in my life I have witnessed and captured the phenomenon... both times as the sun was setting behind me after a storm!

 How does this occur??? The change in speed that occurs when light passes from one medium to another is responsible for the bending of light, or refraction, that takes place at an interface, in the case water droplets or rain.
 Photo taken north of Canungra SEQLD this afternoon.

 Image © Jeff Higgins

You can see the refracted light better in this shot...amazing?  Yes!

 

 Poor Ellie, the dog here we are caring for is not happy when it is thundering. The storms we get here can be vicious, tropical type storms, with great flashes of forked lightning and massive cracks of thunder. Poor Ellie was sitting on Peters feet, her little heart going nineteen to the dozen. She will often head for the bedroom and hide under the bed.

 Anyway, we have had a couple of beaut storms, with some wonderful rain. Short sharp bursts, but enough to do some good.

You know, lightening is one of the most wonderful things ever created. I had a really bad fright when I was 14, when walking home with my best friend, we were standing on a corner when lightning hit the power lines above us, exploded the transformer beside us and all the power lines fell around us with lines spitting and sparking. The sound of the electrical transformer blowing up is impossible to describe, a boom like a bomb and the blue of the electricity exploding above us. It took me many years to get over that, and get used to storms again.

But I have been really fascinated by lightning, and know it serves a very important function in nature. Check out this video, showing blue lightning, red jets and sprites.

 

The video shows all kinds of lightning, even some from a planes cockpit.

It has taken scientists many years to work out just how lightning works, and they still don't know that much. But what they do know is that the lightning also goes above the clouds. We can't see that, but with satellite's they were able to study storms from above.

And one of the things they have found out is that it is lightning that keeps the electrical field around the earth topped up. For many years they wondered how the magnetic field around the earth kept its power without going flat. It seems to be a bit like a battery, and needs constant topping up. Apparently it is lightning that zaps up to the magnetic field and constantly feeds it electricity. Pretty good eh?

 

I live to tell another tale. And it rained!!!

Haha, okay I made it through the night and survived. I am stiff and sore but happy.

Anyway the most exciting thing that happened is that it rained! After living n New Zealand for most of my life, and being used to it raining a great deal, coming here to this often drought ridden land, having rain is a very exciting event.

When we first moved to Australia we lived in a town called Bundaberg.  Let me digress for a minute...I will go completely off subject.  When we lived in Bundaberg I tried to find out why it was given that name. It was  a funny name for a town. No one knew why Bundaberg was called Bundaberg.

In New Zealand, many towns have Maori  names and we usually knew why they were called that name, or it was easy to find out, you just asked someone. I lived in Te  Awamutu. That town was at the junction of two smaller rivers and it was as far as the Maori could go in their canoes, so they made camp there and eventually it became a town over the years. It means the end of the journey. Perfectly sensible. Another town  I lived in was Paraparaumu. It means dirty dirty oven. Apparently it was known for something to do with dirty ovens. Next to Paraparumu was Paekakariki. (Said pie kok a ree kee). It means the place where the parakeets flew. Apparently there used to be cockatoos or parakeets on Kapiti Island and all around there in the past. And the English names were usually after famous people in NZ history.

Anyway, no one knew about  Bundaberg. It took me four years and a great deal of asking to find out that it meant the town of the Bunda people. It seems the local Aborigine tribe were the Bunda people, and a man who lived there as the town was forming was a German man. In Germany, berg means town, or similar. So he called it the town of the Bunda people, or Bundaberg.  Once I heard that it made sense.

Okay, back to the rain. When we lived in Bundaberg, generally shortened to Bundy, (where the Bundy rum is made) it didn't rain very often, but when it did, it poured. The towns in the north of Aussie are built with concrete channels all around the towns to take away water quickly. So often it would rain just a few times a year, but they would be downpours that might last a couple of days. Or with the tropical weather, in the summer storms would often go over in the afternoons and drop a heap of rain in just a few minutes then the clouds would waltz out to sea and the sun would be back. So we would stand on the veranda, ooohhing and aahhhing that it was raining.

Well, we have been about six or seven weeks here without rain and it was getting really dry. The lawn grasses around here are just amazing. If you don't water them, they just die,they go brown, and crunchy. If they go without water for long enough, the grass more or less disappears and you have dry ground. But when it rains, the grass is back in a few days. It is truly amazing! You can almost see the grass grow.

Well, over the past few weeks our grass at this house sit has got browner and browner, and some of the trees and shrubs were looking very sad. (We had checked with the owner, but he said not to worry, don't water the trees, all will be well when it rains.)  Then on Monday night we got about 26 mils of rain and yesterday a bit more. Overnight, the grass has  become green.

Aussie is full of frogs during the summer. This little critter is on the outside of the kitchen window in one of our New South Wales house sits.


 The frogs are coming out, a sure sign summer is on the way, and the trees and shrubs have perked up. October and November are storm months around here, so often afternoon storms roll over and drop a good soaking rain before they head seaward. Our weather generally comes from the hot inland during the summer, humidity and heat builds up for storms.

This picture is not our current house sit, but one in New South Wales. I took this during a thunder storm. You can see the heavy rain bouncing on top of the tank, and it is pouring out of the top by the white pipe and running down the sides of the tank.


Anyway, it has rained, I have lived through two sessions at the gym, we have some friends coming for lunch and all is okay.