<-- Gero met office Lining up to land:

Taking off and landing are my most hated parts of flying. On this occasion, both were painless. After a short run-up, the plane lifted off the ground quickly and effortlessly. My initial panic (there was a lot of it) melted away as I got my camera out and admired the view, now green from the recent rains. Landing also seemed very fast, and didn't end with a bone-jarring thump as it sometimes does on airliners.
Then we took the plane back to the hangar:

All in all, a pretty good experience!

Rain and a surprise visit

The rain arrived Thursday morning which made for a crazy day at work. Everyone was phoning to find out when it would start, then when it was going to stop, and when it did, if there was more on the way.

Between issuing aviation weather reports every few minutes for change in visibility, low cloud and wind gusts, and phone calls, I didn't have time to breathe for the first few hours.

Then I got a phone call from "Jeremy at the Prime Minister's Office" asking for an update on the forecast and whether it was as bad as it seemed. Indeed it was - winds sitting on 30kts gusting to 40kts, 2000m visibility and rain. He said he might have to cancel the PM's visit to Geraldton because it involved being outside.
WHAT?? The PM was coming to town?? And I had possibly cancelled the visit?! Whoops!

Fortunately he decided to come anyway. Here is his plane parked at the terminal about 700m from my office. I was too busy issuing visibility SPECIs to see him land.
He was here to attend a meeting about the new port that the Fed Gov has pledged money towards. He was meant to go out to the site which is north of Gero, but it was too wild. He visited the HMAS Sydney Memorial which was declared a nationally significant monument or something. Speaking to someone who works for a car rental company, apparantly a few days before the unannounced visit, someone phoned all the car hire places to try to hire some Holden Statesmen cars. It's unlikely that one exists north of Perth. So they got SUVs instead.

Of course Geraldton can't not be sunny, even when it's raining. So the sun kindly showed it's face.

^Waves from the wind in our driveway puddle

After 1.5 hours, Rudd was off again.

By the time I left work, over 20mm had fallen (in the rain gauge that is - the rain was horizontal a lot of the time so I reckon a lot missed). My friends and I went to the pub to celebrate.

dust devil

plowing the fields before dry seeding (and then praying for rain) all around the office

harvester+heat+wind=dust devil

Sad but true

Ok, so even my weather nut friends will think this is sad, but yes, I visit weather stations in my spare time! The white box has the thermometers in them (often automatic ones), and the cylinder is a rain gauge. Some sites have co-operative observers that read the instruments once or more per day.

Rottness Island: sited on a hill opposite the hill the lighthouse is on (not fun to ride up, I tell you!)



Cape Leeuwin - the most SW point of Australia, where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet (also near the lighthouse). Automatic rain gauge.

Manual rain gauge at Hamelin Pool and disused screen. The gauge is actually on top of a sand dune which I was surprised about because there are specific rules about siting these. Turns out that the old one was washed away in a flood last year, so they had to put the new one on higher ground!

Windy balloon release

The black and silver cylinder is a remote balloon launcher (RBL). The balloon is inflated inside here. Attached to the balloon is a target (silver) and an instrument (Radiosonde, pictured below) which measures pressure, temperature and humidity as it goes up into the atmosphere. It has a spool of string so it hangs beneath the balloon which unwinds after lift-off. There is a 10m long cord which goes from the RBL and attaches to the instrument with velcro. Once the balloon has moved more than 10m away, the cord detaches. This is to try to prevent the radiosonde hitting the side of the RBL and getting damaged.

Light at the end...?

Had a crazy day at work yesterday. Winds gusting to 44kts (82 km/h), rain, changing visibility....

I couldn't open the balcony door because of the winds!

That was fine, until the automatic thermometers went down! I was sending out reports every 5-15 mins instead of the usual 30 mins, and had to run through the wind and rain to read mercury thermometers. Then I had to try to fix the auto ones.

I couldn't get a tech out to fix the thermometers (why do things only break on a Sunday?) so walked to the enclosure every half hour to read the temperature. I was feeling bad for the guy who had to do this on night shift.

They were supposed to be fixed today, but weren't. And now the auto rain gauge doesn't work either. So it's lucky there is no rain today!

So now I am on nightshift, wandering out into the dark, cold night twice an hour. I'm hoping it doesn't get as cold as last night: 0.4 degrees!

But at the end of the day I was rewarded for my efforts by witnessing these amazing rainbows!

What a busy day! It's all happening here!

Firstly the new radar was hoisted up on top of what had looked like a giant chimney, so I was running around trying to get photos in the early morning light while preparing my balloon. Unfortunately the computer decided to crash, so my balloon was late.

Then 7 microlights arrived at the airport. I am mates with the guy who flies them up here, Charles and he told me they were coming. Actually, I'd been communicating with one of them for a few days through their blog. They were stuck in Pardoo for a number of days thanks to strong winds. A few days late, but eventually they got here!

Another group of charity thrill-seekers, this lot are raising money for Leukemia Foundation UK and Royal Flying Docs by flying from Perth to Brisbane via Darwin.

Their website is here: http://www.youvegotwings.com/

and blog: http://blog.youvegotwings.com/

These are interesting contraptions, and I don't know anything about them. I have been in Charles' just taxiing from the terminal to his hangar/house and I found the motor very loud.

But not as loud as the BAE Hawks that have been taking off from Broome this morning!

And apparently and Antonov is arriving in the next few days to deliver a new helicopter. It's all happening at Broome Airport, folks (and Darwin, according to Rowland)

...In with the new

Getting the dish off the truck from Melbourne

Attaching platform, the radar and the dish


Putting the dome over the giant pizza cutter

Out with the old, in with the new

(well not quite yet!)

The End is Nigh

The time for my departure from Broome is fast aproaching.

My last shift here is in two Sundays time, and I fly back to Perth the following day. I will then be working in the office in the city (ie not observing).

So unless I find something interesting in Perth, I will be posting a lot less, otherwise all I will be writing is 'I'm boooorrrreeeeddd!'. I have only been into the city twice for leisure and once for work, so I should really do some exploring there.

It took me more than 6 months to begin to like living in Perth, and less than 2 weeks up here to forget that fact. So I guess I have to learn it again. I will be living in a new house, so hopefully that will help.

Good things about going back to Perth:

• seeing my friends who have just moved there
• seeing other friends
• trying the coffee at Epic in the city
• cheap(er) takeaways
• Falafel souvlakis in Freo
• Having my stuff (though not looking forward in moving it out of storage into the new place which will be smaller)
• Visiting the new patchwork store near my old house which opened while I was away
• Going back to Melbourne for a few days

It's going to be pretty cold for me down there, so I'm planning on wearing ALL my clothes at once until I get the rest out of storage and find them. And I'll have to buy some 'office worker' clothes, grrrr.

How green??

Today on local ABC radio, Brekie host Ben was promoting the new initiative by ABC called 'green at work'. The website has lots of energy saving tips and advice from the 'Green Guru' about cleaning toilets (among other things).

There is also a quiz game on there which asks you to rank 5 energy-saving methods in order of effectiveness. I can't load the game on my PC, but Ben made me his 'first victim' playing it over the radio.

It has jungle-like noises in the background (which made Ben very hard to hear over the phone), and ends with a picture of the world and how much you saved it. I got 3/5, so the grass was green, but the butterflies were killed by lightning.

I'd like to know how you go (if you can make it load up!)

Ben only got 1/5. He also tested other people on the show (rural reporter, other presenters, the Green Guru herself) and got people to text in what they got. Because I scored 'high' my name got banded around a bit because after every news update/other report, he'd explain what he was doing and what scores people got. So 'Andrea from the Weather Bureau' got mentioned a lot! It gave me incentive to keep listening while I was working!

The Green Guru got 3/5 too (even though she wrote it!), and another radio presenter managed to get 5/5, so good on her!

Check it out here: http://www.abc.net.au/greenatwork/

fogged

Well I think it's winter. Felt icy this morning, temps down to 9 degrees (warm for some, I know). Friday and Saturday mornings we had serious fog.
<--looking out to instruments 20m away

Riding to work on Sat was a challenge as vis was down to about 15 metres. I knew the main road was ahead of me...somewhere. My light just reflected off the fog and didn't really help. The worst bit was when I got on the road to the office (which I almost missed!) which has no lighting at all. It winds around and there are huge pot-holes. At least you can tell when you are going off the road because the gravel and sand slows you down.

new building-->

I was very lucky to have the fog clear in time for my 7.15am balloon release. I have to be able to see the balloon to direct the radar at it. The balloon is white, so fog is bad. But someone was looking out for me (and some of the planes) because the fog cleared around the airport when I needed it to, and then came back in a few hours later.

The picture to the left shows the side of the fog bank. It was like this all around. Especially over Cable Beach.

I watched it on the webcam they have there. I had cafe owners calling to ask when it was going to clear (being clear at the station at the time, this was amusing).

At least I had some weather to report for once.

Broome observed

In the clean out of the office, we have come across the daily weather obs for 1940-1996. Post 1996 this form was computerised (thank god!).

The A9 records all the 3 hour observations for temperature, wind, weather etc. The A8 also records these things (still hand written). The A9 has a large (A2 paper size perhaps) page for each month, while the A8 is confined to a booklet per month. The A9 is kept on station, and the A8 goes to head office.

The earliest A9 is from September 1940. If you can make out the numbers you will see that temperature is recorded in Fahrenheit. The neatness of the writing amazes me and has inspired me to be neater on my own forms in case someone in 30 years time is looking back on them going 'wow, handwriting. How unusual'.

Records are missing from February and March 1942. During this time Broome was evacuated. However, according to a document dated in March 1942, the observing office wasn't evacuated (along with as much equipment as practicable) until after the first bombing of Broome on 3rd March.

Online, in the climate database, there are no records for the period of about 1-7 March.

So I am wondering what has happened to the pages from Feb and March 1942. Perhaps the observers were busy with a crazy wet season and war and decided to not bother spending hours re-writing the observations on the A9. I don't blame them.

Hard at work

Andrea is...at work with Amos

Yes, I have brought Amos to work with me. It is Sunday, so I am on my own, and the family I live with is away so he has no company at home.

He is very good at running along side my bike now which attracts a lot of attention and smiles. He was so excited to be coming this morning (at 5am!) that he pulled the bike half the way! I was hoping this would exhaust him, but no such luck.

He hasn't been much help at work, although I did notice shallow fog (MIFG) at the station while looking for where he was. So that's something.

This afternoon, after a ride to town and back, he has been napping. Partly because I'm boring (ie won't throw his toy/chase him around constantly) and partly because he's a Cavalier and that's what they do.

As the completion of the new Met Office crawls closer, the work site is beginning to encroach on the current site. This week must be trench week. I arrived on Tuesday to find a note warning me of holes near the instrument enclosure. I have to take readings at 0600, when it is still dark, so it's good to have the heads-up.

They have been laying new cables from the electronic instruments to the Automatic Weather Station (AWS) which sends data to the office. I've been a bit nervous that someone might cut through a cable and I'd lose my data (as recently happened in Derby), but they were careful.

Trenches and holes have appeared, then disappeared. My shoes are even more red now.

Yesterday I joked to the tech who is up from Melbourne that I'm going to come outside to do obs and find my screen (white box in pics which houses thermometers) has fallen into a hole. But sure enough, the next time I went out, they were digging around the screen!! I was JOKING!!!

I really should have gotten a picture of the screen when it was perched on a step ladder with a pipe under one of the legs to level it. They removed the stand (last pic) which had been installed with an over-kill of concrete. It took a lot of digging and the ute 3 gos at different angles to finally pull it out!

They also moved one of the rain gauges (I only calibrated it yesterday after which they told me it was moving).

3 hours ago they turned the AWS off! This means no electronic temp or wind data for my half hourly reports! I panicked when they first told me, but now I've remembered how to use the conversion tables and found the station barometer, it's not that bad. Plus I get to enjoy a few minutes of sunshine every 30 mins when I go out to read the mercury thermometers.

No explanation needed

Andrea is...really meant to be working, or something

I noticed this yesterday in our recently cleaned out and asbestos free store (read: junk) room.

I asked one of the techs if it is true, but he doesn't know.

Do I dare take a peek???

Did I tell you there used to be a huge python in the ceiling?

Talking of critters, I popped into the Giant Tides gallery today which I hadn't been to. It would have to be the strangest I've ever seen. Pretty much all the photos were of sea snails in macro scale. The colour and detail is phenomenal, but the snails still look very strange! Quite freaky actually.