There was flooding and big surf along the New South Wales coast yesterday.
I drove down to Forster last night and thought I would check out the surf this morning. I watched one guy brave the very large waves. He caught a couple and then came in with his surfboard in two pieces – broken.
The storm should have started to fill up the dams north of Sydney.
What do they say about Australia? A land of drought and flooding rains. And we also have some good surf beaches!
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Jennifer: The question I have now; was it a tropical type cyclone that developed a typical eye during its more intense phase. If so any attempt at surfing was foolhardy.
Jennifer, the wild weather which has caused so much damage and distress in Newcastle and Central Coast areas, has also brought wonderful rain to Central Tablelands and Central Western areas. Flooding rivers, overflowing farm dams and re charging acquifers are the order of the day. And some of the major dams should get some good runoff too. This is the first time we have had our streams in flood since Oct. 1999. On the Hunter, Maitland is bracing for its worst flood since 1971.
Well guess what! We now wait with baited breath for the first AGW fanatic to tell us that this extreme weather event is caused by “global warming”.
Better surf at Nobby’s, 17.5 metres
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/06/08/IMG00198_gallery__470x376.jpg
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/06/08/_AZ_1040_gallery__470x322.jpg
Sid
No one weather event can be attributed to global warming. The questions is, does a storm that kills so at least eight people fall into the bounds of ‘normal’. Only a statistical analysis of long term trends can tell us that, but I don’t recall the usual winter storms having that high a death toll. Flooding for sure, that is not just expected, but necessary.
More evidence of global warming I say! Sorry what was that hanrahan?
How to get the Pasha Bulka off the sand at Nobby’s?
No worries; with forecast sea level rises caused by global warming, she’ll float off in no time!
Sid – it’s simple to remove – just take the typical contrarian position. What boat. I can’t see any boat. Sounds like alarmist bullshit.
Gavin – it was not a tropical cyclone, it was an extratropical storm. To be precise it was a ECL (East Coast Low).
ECLs are intense low-pressure systems which occur on average several times each year off the eastern coast of Australia. Although they can occur at any time of the year, they are more common during autumn and winter with a maximum frequency in June.
And it was not by any means a “really” severe one, by way of comparison the 26 May 1974 “Sygna” storm had wind gusts at Newcastle Nobbys around 165 km/hour. This storm (to be known as the “Pasha Bulker” storm?) had a max wind gust at Nobbys of 126 km/hour.
I hope that the the ship can be salvaged and moved… however there are a lot of factors going against it. The low pressure system passed right over the top of it at high tide. There would have been some storm surge associated – I saw 995.4 at Williamtown (which is a deep low) – and with the wind and massive swell it was driven over the top of a reef (which is now on the seeward side) – so this will impede any recovery attempts.
Further, the reason that it did not go out to sea was probably becasue it already dumped it’s water balast in preparation to go into port and be loaded. (With no balast, if it got broadside to the big swell it could quite easily overturn.) This means that aside from the fuel on board, there’s nothing that can be easily removed from the ship to make it more buoyant and so assit attmpts to tow it out.
The bad news was that another ECL is proged for next weekend – though as I write this, it is being downgraded to be not so severe as this one… but then this one was predicted not to be so severe either…
cheers
Arnost
CSIRO have done some preliminary modelling on east coast low effects under climate change. Early days.
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/e-print/open/mcinnes_2005b.pdf
The typical contrarian position is that it is not a boat it is a symbol of greed, rampant commercialism, globalisation and free trade run aground by the tobacco lobby and Exxon.
Thanks Arnost for an excellent account of ECL’s, and a realistic assessment of the plight of the Pasha Bulka. I grew up in the Lower Hunter, and have seen several floods associated with these ECL events. In fact June is the most common month to get them.
CSIRO’s ‘preliminary modelling’!! Ha ha, did you see their ‘Important Disclaimer’, before they commenced their fairy story. The CSIRO is now highly politicised in favour of AGW and has lost all credibility in matters climate. With that arch green fundamentalist, Ian Low, holding a ‘consultancy’ position with them, and armed with $millions more from the Feds. we can expect a lot more of the same.
Watch that first disclaimer. It’s a doozy!
Arnost: Thanks but my question “was it a tropical type cyclone that developed a typical eye during its more intense phase” was a bit of a trap based on the recent chatter about tropical storms moving further south under a warmer atmosphere. To me an intense low is a threat wherever it forms despite the glib comments from Sid and rog regarding some welcome rains etc.
With six decades of ECL experience I have maintained a constant theme here on the importance Bass Strait influence over SE oz weather events including bizarre storms.
Bass Strait is the original storm grinder and regional whipping post including large lows extending further up the NSW coast.
Arnost, the capacity of this and previous storms is not completely measured by wind speed here or there. Total water dumped in on or two rivers is not much of a guide either.
Surging seas and coastal subsidence records do not get into daily weather records suitable for modeling change. Sure this makes me an amateur coast watcher at best but what else have you got hey.
The Hunter region cops a hiding every now and then. After substantial forest clearing we put up levies but still people get washed away. The SES turns up from all over but what have we learned? Ignorance is a costly business. Unless someone is at sea or is out in orange overalls for the duration we can remain glib.
Luke: That study is very interesting given Burnie was once my nearest port. Since Stony Point is a wee bit more protected, let’s examine the models re the fate of the North West end of the island for a mo as the short term indicator of sea rise (fig 12). It’s been my opinion this is the most sensitive region in the country for sea level rise and impacts from storms. Several blog masters may recall a photo or two of the appropriate coastlines.
Here’s a closeuo shot of Pasha Bulker’s bow – showing just how close to shore she is.
http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s268/flaxidcricket/11_06_07NewcastleStorm24.jpg
If you look just to the left of the boy on his dad’s shoulders below, it appears there’s an ominous crease in the ship hull. The news was saying tday that the outer hull was ruptured as the ship was dragged across the reef.
http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s268/flaxidcricket/11_06_07NewcastleStorm17.jpg
Hoping that the can get it off the beach, and not just to sink a couple of hundred meters of the shore…
For the weather junkies. Here’s an infrared satpic loop from 10am Tues 5th to 10pm Sat 9th June. File size is about 4.8mb.
http://australiasevereweather.com/storm_news/2007/satpics/200706_east_coast_low.gif
It shows most of the earlier rain band that gave the Queensland coast its good falls, then the east coast low and upper cold pool which caused this rain event.
cheers
Arnost
What a skanky knife job from an uninformed Sid – but what do you expect from bigots. Reality CSIRO had kept climate change research alive for long periods of the “great political darkness” before any of this field was trendy or popular. We’re talking decades. Their international credibility has improved – see IPCC representation. As for any disclaimer – yep standard stuff. I assume you’re happy for Australian researchers to be taken to court by sleazy spiv litigants from Asia looking for a quick buck. Have your research tax dollars shipped off to Honkers by flash Harrys.
So here we have a request from a regional body to ask the CSIRO about the current state of the art – what a climate change world might mean for these events. Substantial caveats in process understanding are noted explicitly. Similar projects have been requested by the Gold Coast City Council who unlike Sid have to consider legal implications for not considering climate change impacts on future development. The extent to which the information is used is up to the organisation involved. It doesn’t go to the janitor’s desk – it actually goes to engineering groups who have to make formal probability of exceedance calculations.
Gold Coast for example see it as “a factor” in wider considerations. It’s called risk management. So really what a disgraceful scumbag comment against some really good people.
The next high spring tide is at 8.00 pm this Friday. If they want to get that ship of the beach this is the time to do it.
The long range forecasts have potentially another low building in the Tasman of the coast of NSW and predict another rain event and associated high onshore winds early next week.
http://forecasts.bsch.au.com/apf.html?region=aus&days=7.5
I am concerned that they are pumping in water and are not sending the tugs down – this looks like a holding strategy. If another ECL does eventuate, this may really cut out the work for the salvors.
There’s a joke floating (pun not intended) around Newcastle:
Cancel the salvage attempt, convert the ship to units and sell to Sydney-siders at hyperinflated prices as “absolute water frontage with 360° ocean views…” (Sorry if offends)
cheers
Arnost
The flood in the Hunter raises one important factor which has been swept under the carpet so far…The Kerabee Dam. The main volume of water which caused so much damage, and then ran out to sea, came from the Goulburn River catchment in the Upper Hunter. If the proposed Kerabee Dam had been built back in the 1980’s, so much of this flooding would have been mitigated, and the wasted water stored for the use of agriculture, industry and domestic use.
Why was the dam not built? As I mentioned in a previous thread, since the rise of Green Fundamentalism, hardly one new major dam, (and base load power station), has been built. Not only must governments, who abrogated their responsibilities to build these utilities, as they grovelled for the Green Vote…be held acountable. But also these Green NGO’s should be held accountable for their economic terrorism. I was for eight years, in the 1980’s, a Trustee of the Hunter Valley Conservation Trust, (a forerunner of todays Catchment Management Trusts)and during this period, saw how a governments resolve to build a much need utility, can be eroded by the actions of these environmental groups.
Well, Luke I also know some fine people who work in the CSIRO. However, I re-state that their climate division, instead of conducting independent and impartial research into climate change, has become an active player in promoting the AGW cause. By doing so, they are abrogating their responsibility, as a public funded body, to provide unbiased advice to industry and agriculture on possible ways to mitigate climate change problems. The whole thrust of their advise is how to deal with a hotter drier world with rising sea levels. They are quite irresponsible by not providing advice on how to deal with a colder climate. (Which would be far more devastating). In fact they flatly dismiss compelling evidence that the latter could be just as likely as the former.
Perhaps, Luke, they are like you, reality deniers too. No matter how feeble the evidence supporting AGW is, the believer has to stick to the cause and deny reality to the end. I am sure that an appropriate memorial inscription to you would read…..’Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem’.
So Sid you want them to give advice on adapting to a colder climate in a warming Australia. That’s logical. “Compelling evidence” you say – which is what? Published where?
On what basis do you suggest their research is impartial. Essentially you’d like them to give
“equal time” to something their data and science doesn’t indicate? So doctors should also be taught witchcraft and sorcery to make teh superstitious happier?
Their research indicates a hotter drier Australia – not the world necessarily.
And in terms of dealing with rising sea levels how have they been alarmist? Mainly they’ve done work on storm surge issues for coastal systems.
So Sid you can spin it but you rarely back it up. A rhetorical assertion doesn’t simply make it true.
Sid; today we have major traffic interruptions round our city. It seems snow and black ice is everywhere. Hooray we need the water! How predictable is that? I can’t recall exactly when snow falls at 580m were such a problem but let’s say it was 1987.
Likewise a couple of major floods up the Hunter over hundred years or so can’t be used as evidence of global warming by CSIRO or anybody else. Let’s agree on that hey.
Although I don’t know your country in detail, I reckon major land clearing has contributed to the severity of heavy flooding in the past hundred years. Recall, I have lived in much wetter and wilder regions and seen rapid river rises as a mater of fact in what is now mainly hydro country.
Eighty feet under the EBR bridge up the Pieman R. in half a day was the norm in a big storm. Trees washed out to sea were regularly thrown back inland by the Indian Ocean surges in the following seasons. Records from almost daily F111 recon missions probably started mid 70’s. A nasty day or two of heavy weather (1975) suddenly ended that program!
Building dams up the Hunter with the capacity to control huge floods during that era was not possible as all the resources including expert engineers, construction teams and federal funds were focused in my region for decades following the Snowy Scheme.
Sid: Its worth more than a glance at the potential of all those dams to produce power today.
Rates of change will keep the likes of CSIRO scientists busy for some time yet. Forecasting remains at best an art. Dam builders as good as they were can’t change that.
SEE the snowman here and the local discussion re climate change
http://www.abc.net.au/canberra/
The recent flood is a very strong localised event.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21896637-30417,00.html
“SYDNEY water authorities are 40 years too late to build new dams that could have taken advantage of the flooding rains last weekend, a water expert said yesterday.
Barry Thom from the Wentworth Group warned that it would require the flooding of the picturesque and now World Heritage-listed Colo and Grose valleys in the Blue Mountains to augment Sydney’s depleted water storages.
He said that despite the scale of the flooding in the Hunter Valley over the weekend, the recent rain events were still relatively minor compared with the more extensive floods along the east coast of Australia in the 1950s and 70s.
“It was still a very localised event,” he said. “We didn’t see floods all along the east coast, as we did in the 1970s or in 1955.”
Professor Thom said state governments faced decadal shifts in rainfall patterns that have delivered predominantly dry conditions since the early 80s. Most of the network of urban dams in Australia was built during higher rainfall cycles around the 60s.
“If we are going to provide adequate water supplies there needs to be a recognition that, as population grows, we have to be prepared to manage for these lower rainfall conditions,” Professor Thom said. ”
SJT; Professor Thom writing for the Australian had me wondering who suports who on irrigation etc so I did the usual whois on google, I fogot he chaired the State of the Environment (SOE) report way back in 2001.
Interestingly the 2006 SOE report says “Climate change is undoubtedly a threat to Australia’s environment. Although Australia’s climate is so variable that the extent of change is uncertain, there is clear evidence for some warming and changes to rainfall distribution. The so-called millennium drought of the last five years was not the driest period on record in all parts of Australia, but the combination of low rainfall and warm temperatures exacerbated its effects. In the same period, rainfall over central west Australia has been higher than average. These trends are consistent with overall rainfall trends for the last 100 years”.
http://www.environment.gov.au/soe/2006/publications/report/atmosphere.html
Gavin , the snow storm at Canberra should help to replenish the water storages there. My daughter and her husband are graziers at Timor in the Upper Hunter, and last Sat. morn. awoke to find their house, at 550m. surrounded by snow. Glenbawn Dam, which received very little run-off from the rain, should eventually benefit from the widespread heavy snow in the catchment.
The widespread snow falls all along the NSW tablelands over the past week, are not unusual, although Luke may tell us that they are anomolies, which are becoming less and less frequent as Oz heats up. However, I don’t think so, I believe that the weather events of the past week all fall within the norm and can’t be attributed to global warming, or cooling.
The origional plan for water conservation and flood mitigation in the Hunter was for two major dams, (Glenbawn & Kerabee) in the Upper Hunter, as well as three smaller ones. Glenbawn to capture the eastern catchment and Kerabee the western. By the time that funding and resources were available for Kerabee, the Green Lobby was strong enough to stop it. If built, Kerabee would have largely mitigated the damaging flooding this week and stored valuable water for future use.
Barry Thom did make some sense.
The “Welcome Reef” Shoalhaven dam is another one that was nixed. Over 40 or so years successive state governments bought the land north of Braidwood for this purpose. If built as planned it would have held 25% more water than Warragamba and suplied water not only to Sydney but to Goulburn and Canberra – where the water is sorely needed. (The infrastructure to get the water from there to Sydney is already in place…)
A succession of governments, both federal and state, have failed dismally to keep up with the needs of infrastructure. Now we have buck passing between the levels of government over division of responsibilities vis a vis maintaining and improving infrastructure – and not only water, but roads, health, education – and nothing gets done! Govt’s should either privatise and get out of the way, or make some hard decissions and make things happen rather than spinning propaganda – i.e it’s far easier to blame water shortage on global warming rather than accept that it’s a result of poor infrastructure planning and development…
cheers
Arnost
Absolutely correct Arnost, all governments in this country have failed in the area of infrastructure research and development.
I am sure that there are many other major dam project around the Nation which have also been nixed for the same “environmental” reasons, which equate to the pursuit of the “green vote”. Yes, governments are quick to blame the water shortages on “global warming” which is a wonderful scapegoat for their own failings.
I would add to your list, base load power stations, construction of which would be fiercely opposed by the green taliban, which now, unfortunatly, seems to hold sway in this country.
Failure in the field of base load infrastructure by governments, is a huge time bomb which is yet to explode.
Pity SE Qld dams are attacked by NIMBY syndrome not green issues.
But do agree on woeful lack of investment in base infrastructure. But both sides of politics have been told to not borrow by their economists so .. ..