It’s the end of the month monthly totals are in 1225mm for the month for me with a year to date of 1910mm and what looks to be a few days of sunshine before the return of more rain. Going to enjoy the sun while it lasts

11mm overnight

And 447.2mm here in Gordonvale. 444.6mm at the Cairns airport, just 7.6mm above average. Its been a damp, but unremarkable wet season to date here with no notable flooding to speak of really.

Well most of yesterday was beautiful sunny and warm then mid arvo rain again.
20mm in the gauge this morning, just to keep things wet.


Yeah GT, mates in the south just can't imagine how we get so much rain, Places I worked as a young
fella in SA get annual falls that we get in a day or 2.



cheers

2.5mm here. Seemed to be some heavier stuff over the race track way yesterday arvo. Should be good weather until the weekend.

YTD: 1229mm

Yeah Tropo, unless you have experienced a decent wet in the FNQ hinterlands then its very difficult to actually imagine what proper day after day torrential rain really is..

The Port Douglas thing translates down here as well as most of the coastal areas from Kurrimine through Mission Beach to Cardwell probably only see half the rainfall that we get just 15kms west towards Tully, El Arish, Mena Creek etc in or at the bases of the ranges ...for much of the year if we drive home from the boat ramp or the beach in full sunshine there is almost always cloud on the mountains just behind our place often with areas of showers visible....the only coastal place where i see such a thing is Mt Bowen on Hinchinbrook Island..I really wish there was a gauge there because its a serious rain catcher and then creats a rain shadow for Cardwell, Kennedy and as far up as Tully heads..

Also we used to host Wwoofers , often from Uk and Europe, and have had quite few that we have tried to say that the wet season is probably not the best time to arrive here as, of course, its very Tropically humid and wet..but almost always the Poms say "well i live in London (or Paris etc) so I am well used to lots of rain.."....it often doesnt even register when I point out that London has an annual average of 550mm of rainfall, Paris about 650mm and we are closer to 4500mm... we had one pommy guy stay with us for 3 months during a wet season years back and even though we received his hometown average rainfall over a 2 day period he stayed out in it and continued to work away....he still stays in contact and now is a primary school teacher and says he tells his students of his experiences here because its was such a memorable spinout of an adventure for him....almost everyone else is shocked and horrified to realise that we still work outside in storms and torrential rain though and wont accept the challenge, particularly Frenchies...personally up until a point I find it quite Ok(working or weeding on benches in a shadehouse or cutting back wild raspberry or vines on the forest edges etc, can always find something to do out of the mud even on the wettest of days..) and mostly better then sweating it out in 35c sunny days IMO...but Frenchies complain about that too....the lowland tropics in the Hinterlands certainly isnt for most folk.....

Couple of cracking days ahead guys..might be time to take a sickie and get amongst it..

Edited by user Wednesday, 1 March 2023 12:02:34 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Thanks for this scott that was a great read especially about the pom going back to tell the story to his students how good. I have family in tassie south of hobart were they average 600mm a year and they cant understand how we cope with so much rain, i kinda explain that the terrain here is built for it we have very steep mountain ranges just to the west of us that drain out to sea very rapildly thankfully. My father in law was up from tassie once when we had a 300mm plus night and he couldnt believe how fast it all disapeared like nothing had happened, he said down there it would have been an apocalyptic affair.

In saying that though the rainfall in tasse has huge variations and the west coast of tassie is actually the second wettest area in australia after the north tropical coast, around lake gordon tassie averages 3.5m a year with the wettest periods in winter. but much more consistent monthly than our rainfall.

And your not wrong if we didnt work outside in the rain and heat heck it would be a jungle jobs still need to be done. I prefer working in a raining day than a sunny day after rain in the wet season all day everyday. Heck my wife stood out in a thunderstorm in october last year that had lightening and howling winds above our house to hold onto one of my prized durian trees that looked like it was about to snap while i was at work.

I didnt know it was that proper wet in the west of Tassie Tropo...I always thought it was just miserably cold, windy and drizzly wet...

and your missus's experience reminded me of when Category 5 Cyclone Yasi smashed us over 10 years ago .We went through the northern part of the eye here... I had been through many cyclones before but my wife had not. She didn't know what to expect. When the wind started screaching and trees started to bend and break, I noticed her staring through the glass doors. That look of fear on her face will stay with me forever. I couldn't help but feel desperately sorry for her. The winds worsened and the rain intensified. She stared hauntingly through the doors for hours until the eye came over and all went calm. When the wind stopped, I was finally able to unlock the door and let her in.

Sheriden Mist, most places can acheive high daily total rainfall events with the right weather event or convergence occuring but Port Douglas is just similar to our Beachside areas down here on the Cassowary coast...more or less 2000mm yearly on the coast and double that just 15-20 kms west against the ranges...

But why then does that pattern not hold true around Cairns...?...still around 2000mm but against the ranges from Gordonvale to North of Kuranda they dont get that same doubling of rainfall effect that we see to the north and south..?

and 28 you wouldnt like it here...the mould this year is just insane...even one of our dogs smells mouldy...

Edited by user Wednesday, 1 March 2023 6:57:12 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

A category 5 cyclone is something i never want to experience I can’t fathom how intense that would be copping the eye of it.

Yeh like Scott says there are plenty of places that have racked up big 24 hour totals I think the record for Australia is actually somewhere is southern qld from memory. Port Douglas can get big falls but it’s the yearly average that’s sorts the lightweights out from the heavyweights.

Kinda like at the moment is a good example if you look at the Mackay/proserpine region they had the big event in January of almost 1000mm in some areas over a few days, currently they are still in front of the mighty Tully sugar mill, one might look at that and think damn Mackay could have a wetter year than Tully. That ain’t going to happen Tully will reel them in by the end of the year 100%

Same as last year with all the big floods in Lismore etc they had massive rain once in a lifetime but over the year they still didn’t match our heavyweights up here in the daintree and Babinda.

Like I mentioned the only place that can mix it with the heavyweights here is a few areas on the west coast of tassie mainly around lake Margaret dam or lake Gordon dam that averages 3500mm if we had an ocean exceptionally dry year up here and they had a very wet year our heavyweights could well loose the golden gumboot in a rare event.

There is a good website if I can find it think it was from cyclone chasers as to why cairns misses the big rain compared to cassowary coast and up here and yep it’s to do with the angle of the coast line and lack of high mountains to the immediate west. Babinda and bellenden ker have 1600m high mountains creating huge up lift, daintree has Thornton’s peak plateau just under 1400m same as whyanbeel/bamboo we have the carbine tableand plateau at just under 1400m to west of us and Tully has 1200m high ranges to its west

I had read that and forgotten where, thanks I can share that with a few mates.


Loving the look of the forecast for next week, with plenty more rain, see how that goes with these idiots
at council and their ferry inspection, had hoped for a cat 2 while it was out.


Looks like another beautiful day up here. :)


Cheers