Michael West’s Blog

OK, so this blog isn’t intended to be solely about Canberra’s weather but it has been pretty interesting lately. We have had a lot of rain here in the past few days and as such Lake Burley Griffin is now full - mainly due to stormwater and other runoff from North Canberra. As such for the first time in 5 years there is talk of opening the floodgates on Scrivener Dam. At present 3 of the sluices are open and allowing flow into the Molonglo River. Word from Christina, who works for SunWater - they have responsiblity for Scrivener Dam - is that the people there are working around the clock monitoring the water levels in the lake and it seems that extra people will be sent to Canberra from the Brisbane office (where she is) to help out. Sadly, Christina is in a different division so won’t get to come down. Above is a photograph I took last night and below are some photos I took this morning on the way to work.

Not that I’m complaining or anything - I like cold weather (except when I have soccer training of an evening) - but according to the Bureau of Meteorology forecast it is going to get down to -4 deg C tonigh in Canberra! Sadly, it won’t snow but we will get some cool frosts tomorrow. The ABC did report yesterday some snow on the Brindabellas - up to 10cm.

Yes, that’s right! South eastern NSW has been hit by a big low and so its been very cold here in Canberra. It was -5 deg C the other night at my house and the Bureau of Meteorology warned that the airmass over Canberra was cold enough that if it rain it was likely to fall as snow at higher elevations. Well in the early hours of the morning today it did! OK, so it hasn’t snowed in Canberra proper but it did to the north east at Bungendore and Queanbeyan. The ABC reports falls of up to 6 inches in some places and has some nice photos on its website here. The weather has resulted in traffice chaos, a rarity in Canberra, while the rest of us are just left with grey skies, rain and ice cold winds!

Yes winter is here and you definitely know it when you live in Canberra! On Tuesday night a big cold front came in from the west and brought some good rain (15+ mm) and 80km/hr gusts of wind. As a result the following night the temperature got down to -2.9 deg C in the early hours of the morning in Tuggeranong! It was bitterly cold and I was outdoors at soccer training as well when it was about 4 deg C. It was OK while running around but once I stopped to do some goalkeeping drills the ends of my fingers were numb. I was very grateful for the beanie I borrowed and will never forget mine again!

Apologies for the delay in getting these images up, I have been busy writing my first paper for publication.

So the damage at the ANU was pretty extensive as an article in ANU’s On Campus Newsletter reports…

“Just under 60 buildings across campus received major damage this week during one of the worst storms to hit Canberra in recorded history. The freak storm cut a swathe from Belconnen to Civic late on Tuesday 27 February, pelting the area in large hailstones and heavy rain. A thick layer of hail still carpeted the campus on Wednesday morning when University authorities began an extensive damage assessment and clean-up operation. Water inundation was the most common cause of damage in many buildings, where gutters were blocked by hail and roofs gave way under heavy loads of rain. This resulted in extensive harm to ceilings, walls, carpets, computers, books and documents. The School of Art, School of Music, Chifley Library, and the Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering, and Computer Science and Information and Technology buildings were among the hardest hit. The hail also damaged some windows and skylights on campus, destroying up to 80 per cent of the glasshouses at the School of Botany and Zoology. Several more buildings received minor damage, mostly related to water leaks.”

The full article can be found here.

At lunch on the day after the storm here my research group went for its usual walk to the other side of campus for lunch and the following are photos of some of the things we saw.

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Last night’s storm was a cracker - in fact it was what is known as a supercell! There is widespread damage throughout the inner north of Canberra with most of Civic closed today along with the ANU and numerous schools and other businesses. I made it into work just before the ANU was ‘closed’ and was greeted with a few surprises - according to the ABC over 70 buildings on campus received flood damage. The internal roof of the brand new Le Couter building (opened late last year) has collapsed as the downpipes clogged with hail, 2 inches of water has flooded the ground floor, several windows have been broken near the workshops here at RSPhysSE and people have been seen shovelling hail from the roof of the new John Curtin School of Medical Research. The huge solar thermal dish at the back of the School was in the ‘up’ position last night and undoubtedly its glass panes will have shattered - it probably filled with hail as well. Fortunately there was almost no damage to the Oliphant and Wiegold Buildings where our offices and labs are respectively. So our experiments are all safe!

Here are some photos that I took last night in Campbell and this morning as I walked around our end of the ANU campus. The photo of the open expanse is the causeway near my unit that was a torrent of water last night.

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A very intense storm has just come through Campbell at about 10:30pm. There has been heaps of lightning about all evening which eventually reached a crescendo just as it passed over my unit! Then the hail started, small at first, then more frequent and larger - about the size of a 20 cent piece. Then the rain came and boy did it rain!! The BoM radar had it in the 360+mm/hr range - the highest on the scale.

When it settled down a bit I went and had a look outside to find a river about 25 metres wide and 30 cm deep flowing between my block of units and the ones across the causeway. I went for a wander up to the Campbell shops, basically across the street from my place, to find the road cut off and a torrent flowing down from the shops, across Blamey Cr, past my block of units and down into the lower parts on Campbell. You could almost surf the waves that were formed!! A few houses and ground floor units will probably have some minor flooding and several of the shops across the street definitely do. According to the BoM weather station at Canberra Airport about 37 mm fell in under 30 minutes!

I took my camera with me when I went outside and will post some of my shots soon.