weather – dangermouse.net

A big storm

As I’m writing this tonight a severe thunderstorm is lashing the city outside. Two of my friends have lost power at their homes (and are chatting online from their phones). I had three ethics classes in a row this evening and told the kids in the last class that if my power went out and I disconnected from Zoom, then the class will be over for today, and least they’ll know what happened.

Until the storm hit, it was a hot and humid day. But the wind has picked up and the temperatures has dropped dramatically in the last hour, as the rain pounds down and the lightning flashes. I just checked the power outage website and there are over 100 separate outages across Sydney, with over 61,000 buildings affected at the moment. Wind gusts up to 100 km/h have been recorded too. And… wow… we had 30 mm of rain in just half an hour. And it’s still coming down.

The good news is tomorrow and the next few days will be cooler than the past few days, down to around 25°C, although rainy.

Today I had some totally free time in the morning since my wife took Scully to work. I thought about going out somewhere, but in the end I started tidying up my email inbox… and three hours later I realised I still hadn’t gone out. Then I spent some time in the afternoon pricing up some more Magic: the Gathering cards in preparation for selling them. And then did some thinking about planning story stuff for Episode IX in Darths & Droids.

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That La Niña arrived quickly

I just said yesterday that the Bureau of Meteorology reported the formation of La Niña conditions, heralding the possibility of a cooler/wetter next two months of summer, and today it magically seemed to have come true. Today was really chilly, and very wet. The temperature was a minimum of 19.3°C overnight, and rose to only 20.3°C during the late morning, before plummeting down into the 17s for most of the afternoon and evening. We’ve had nearly 30 mm of rain as well, in windy squalls blowing intermittently across the city, which make it seem even colder. It was actually the coldest day in Sydney since mid-October.

I didn’t go out much, but I did get in a 5k run early in the morning. I started in a brief period of no rain, but it began raining on me halfway through the run

My wife took Scully to work and I had to go pick her up at lunchtime, but I drove rather than walking in the heavy rain at the time.

This evening I was really back into my online ethics classes, with three classes in a row. I had a new girl in the first one, who was very sociable and talkative, and engaged with the class questions really well, giving some very well thought-out answers. And after the class she wrote me a note through the Outschool platform to say how much she loved the class and how it made her think about the topic in new ways. That was really nice to receive. So I think I have a new enthusiastic student, which is great!

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Missed Monday, back to work Tuesday

I just completely forgot to do my blog post yesterday until it was too late. I had a day full of working on comics stuff, and avoiding going outside as much as possible because it was very hot.

However I did have to go out in the morning to drop the car off for an annual service, and then walk home in the heat – it’s about 25 minutes walk away. And then in the afternoon I had to walk back to the service centre to pick the car up again. There was an additional expense as the car needed a new battery installed, but otherwise it’s in good condition.

The heat broke with a cool change overnight, bringing some rain. Today was gloomily overcast all day, much cooler, and threatening rain, although there was barely a sprinkle. The Bureau of Meteorology today issued a report that La Niña conditions had returned, which may indicate increased rainfall for the remainder of the summer. I’d been enjoying the relatively dry conditions for the past few weeks, after the rain-soaked and very humid summers of the past four years.

Today I did some more comics stuff, making the first strip of Episode IX for Darths & Droids. I ran out of things to make lunch with at home, so had to go out and decided to get some pies. But when I got there the pie shop was closed! Probably still on a Christmas break. I ended up getting some Vietnamese rice paper rolls instead. Then I caught the Metro to my wife’s work to pick up Scully and walk home from there with her.

Tonight I restarted my online ethics classes, after two weeks break for Christmas and New Year. The new topic this week is Journalism. With questions such as:

Is it generally more important for news to be reported quickly, or accurately?
What purpose does journalism serve in our society? Why does it exist?
How can we tell if the news we see is really true?
Has the Internet made journalism better or worse?

It should be an interesting week!

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Early board games night

I’m able to write this post tonight because we had our fortnightly Friday night board games gathering early this week. There were only four of us who could make it, and one friend wanted to bring his young daughter along, so we decided to start at my place at 4pm instead of the usual 6pm, and finish early so they could go home before it got too late.

Because we had a young girl (about 9 years old, I’d guess – I didn’t ask how old she was), we played some lighter games with her first. We started with a game of King of Tokyo. Then we played a few hands of Uno: Show ‘Em No Mercy to start. Then while the girl entertained herself with an iPad and headphones the rest of us played a game of Evergreen. Then she rejoined us for a game of Camel Up (second edition). And finally we rounded things off with some hands of Uno Flip!

We ordered pizza during the gaming and also had plentiful snacks. I was hoping to have them eat some of the copious sweet things we have leftover from Christmas, but they brought so much other stuff that there wasn’t much room for those.

Earlier in the day we basically just took it easy, staying inside as it was extremely hot out. It reached over 37°C in the city, and just a fraction shy of 40°C in some suburbs, despite an early storm which dumped heavy rain about 9 o’clock in the morning. That just served to keep the humidity up. Another storm hit about 4:30pm, which dropped the temperature rapidly. We now have a strong southerly blowing, which will cool things more overnight. Tomorrow should hopefully be nowhere near as hot.

We did take Scully out in the late morning, after the first storm, but not for a long walk. We just went to the nearby park, where she could run on the grass and there was plenty of shade, rather than walking on hot concrete paths.

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Cool relief, Christmas ham

Today was thankfully much cooler than yesterday. We had a stiff breeze blowing and the temperature only reached around 24°C. Rather than having the air conditioning on all day, I had the windows all wide open. It rained a bit in the morning, including when I went out for a 5k run. I managed a much faster time than any other recent run, in the cooler air.

Then I drove over to the nearest Aldi supermarket that has parking – there’s one a bit closer but it’s in a business area with lots of office buildings and impossible to park anywhere nearby. So I almost never go into Aldi. But I wanted to today to pick up a Christmas ham. I also grabbed a few other things while there: a Christmas stollen, a panettone, and some brie and sliced turkey for making lunch sandwiches.

After eating a lunch of turkey and brie sandwiches on my home made sourdough bread, I walked up to my wife’s work to pick up Scully. And when we got home I worked on some more Darths & Droids comics, trying to build up a buffer.

I made some pesto pasta with broccoli for dinner, before my three ethics classes in a row, which took up the evening.

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Hot weather, southerly buster

The record-breaking heatwave affecting inland Australia made its way to the east coast today. Inland suburbs of Sydney touched 42°C, but it remained a bit cooler nearer the coast where I am, thankfully, in the low 30s. But the humidity was still over 50% in the hottest part of the day here, whereas inland it dropped into the 20s for that dry heat effect.

Knowing this was the forecast, I took Scully out for a long walk around 7am, before it got too hot. We did the Waverton loop, going around the harbour shore. There’s one house that we pass where the owners always plant sunflowers, and they were in bloom.

The birds were out in force in the morning, especially by the water. I spotted this group of eight little black cormorants… or was it seven with a clever imposter??

(Spoiler: It’s a silver gull.) I did a couple of bird counts for eBird and recorded 18 different species.

Back home, I sheltered in the air conditioning for most of the day. working on Darths & Droids comics. I want to get ahead because there’ll be some time spent story planning for Episode IX when we start that very soon. And I need to build up a buffer for upcoming trips in the new year.

This evening I had the first class of the final week’s critical & ethical thinking topic for the year. We’re just having fun this week, with hypothetical “What if?” questions, getting the kids to think through logical consequences of weird scenarios. For example: What if social media likes were used as money? What if nobody agreed what colour anything was? What if everyone had a twin who it was impossible to tell apart?

The last one generated some very interesting discussion. One kid said people could commit crimes and nobody could be punished, because it would be impossible to know if you arrested the correct twin, and you’d have to avoid punishing the incorrect person. But another kid suggested that if it was truly impossible to tell the twins apart, they might be treated like a single person, and share one identity, one bank account, one job, etc. And if either one committed a crime, both would be punished. Actually all of the questions generated interesting discussions of the consequences. So it was a lot of fun. Perfect for the last class before Christmas.

Just after 8pm the southerly buster arrived with force. This is the local name for the cold front coming through from the south which rapidly reduces the temperature after a hot day, and brings cold strong winds and thunderstorms. We had very close lightning and loud thunder, and about 30 minutes of absolutely torrential rain, before it eased off. Thankfully it’s a lot cooler outside now, although the humidity has skyrocketed back around 95%. Tomorrow is forecast to be much cooler than today, around 25°C. Phew!

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Hotness, classes, and D&D logging

Today was very warm. Much of Australia is enduring an heatwave, with the highest temperatures we’ve seen in five years (the past four summers have been cooler and wetter thanks to La Niña). Some towns in western New South Wales today were expected to potentially break their highest ever recorded temperatures, around 47°C. Inland suburbs of Sydney got into the high 30s, but fortunately the coastal strip was significantly cooler, reaching only 29°C in the city. But the humidity remains stupidly high, so it felt oppressive being out there.

After two morning ethics classes, I walked with Scully up to the fish & chip shop, and grabbed an Express Post envelope from the adjacent post office for mailing some documents. I didn’t want to walk back with the large envelope, and a box of fish & chips, and have to carry Scully over the parts of the road and footpaths that were baking in the sun and would have burnt her feet, so I ordered my lunch to eat in at the outdoor tables. Although these are shaded, it was so hot and humid sitting there that the sweat was just rolling down my face and body.

I got back home in time for my afternoon classes. After those I completed writing up a log of the previous Dungeons & Dragons session that we played back in October, which I hadn’t yet written up. Thankfully I’m now fully up to date with the campaign logs, all 12 sessions played so far. Next time we meet we should be starting a new adventure, which will be nice. Although the party has to contend with a curse placed on them by the God of Swords: to kill 9 people with 9 different swords in 9 days, or die! My players are a fairly moralistic group, so this presents them with a significant ethical dilemma. They’re not just going to go around and slaughter the next 9 people they come across. It will be very interesting to see how they deal with this.

For dinner I made a cool falafel salad. I tried boiling two eggs to add to the salads, but I think I must have set the stove too low to simmer them, and the first one I tried to peel was too soft-boiled. I boiled the second egg for another 5 minutes and it came out fine, so we ended up with half an egg each instead of a whole one in our salads.

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Dungeons & Dragons and hot weather

Friday I had my usual ethics classes, and then in the evening I hosted our intermittent Dungeons & Dragons game with my friends. Our last session was in October, and we picked up where we left off.

The party were attempting to collect a series of magical swords. They found one being wielded by a giant octopus and engaged in combat. One of them severed the tentacle that was holding the sword, and two of the others tried to catch it before it fell into the deep pool of water, but both failed, so they had to do some diving into the water after the octopus had been dispatched, and incidentally obscured the water with ink and blood.

But the highlight of the evening was when they encountered a somewhat crazy mermaid queen, who challenged individuals to defeat her in combat, and promised to marry any who could do so. Well, the human fighter of the group managed this (after the elf failed), and was quickly married in a ceremony, and even crowned with a crown made of coral.

Later they encountered a vampire who was immobile, staked to the wall by one of the magic swords they were intent on retrieving. They had to work out how to gain the sword without letting the vampire loose to attack them. Overall it was a great fun game, with lots of amusing events and much fun had by all.

This morning I did my 5k run in warm and humid conditions. I fear it’s going to be like this until summer ends in a few months. The weather bureau has warned that the next few days are going to be the hottest days in five years for much of Australia.

In the heat of the day we drove over to my wife’s mother’s place to help her get out all the Christmas decorations, to ready the place for the Christmas Day lunch. Traffic was bad heading out towards the coast as lots of people were heading to the beaches. And on the water were lots of boats full of people enjoying the sunny weather.

We came home and I made pizza for dinner. And afterwards we walked Scully in the cooler evening air, after sunset. Although it was still 24°C. It’s probably not going to get much cooler than that overnight.

For dessert we had a mango. This time we had a Kensington Pride variety, which is no doubt the most “mango-ey” variety in flavour. It’s the fourth different type of mango we’ve had so far this summer. As the season progresses other varieties will ripen and become available, so it’s an interesting progression in flavours and textures.

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Games night and a very sticky Saturday

Friday morning I picked up the groceries from the supermarket. Normally I take Scully up to meet my wife at the gym nearby after her early morning class, but her gym has closed down and so this week I just went up alone. Berries are all pretty cheap at the moment as they’re in season, so I bought punnets of blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries as part of our fruit haul. (Also two varieties of apples, bananas, and an orange. I skipped the mangoes this week.)

During the day I had four ethics classes on the Alien Invasion topic. One kid who a few weeks ago in the Robots topic was obsessed with rounding up and destroying all the robots because they were evil and wanted to enslave humanity, this week decided that when aliens come to Earth we need to round up all their robots and destroy them.

For dinner we decided not to eat out, but rather to get take-away from Green Gourmet, a vegan Chinese restaurant that we used to frequent before we got Scully. Unfortunately they are on the highway and don’t have outdoor tables, so we’ve never dined there with Scully. While my wife and Scully waited outside the front door and I went in to order, I explained this to the woman who took my order, pointing at Scully outside. But she said it was no problem, we could bring a dog inside to eat at one of the indoor tables! And she said if the front room was full, there was a small room out the back where we could eat with Scully too.

Having dogs in the indoor dining areas of restaurants is not normal here. In fact, strictly speaking it’s not allowed according to the law (apart from service dogs), but some places are more accommodating about it than others. Which is why we normally have to sit at an outdoor table when taking Scully. But now that we know that Green Gourmet will let us take Scully in, we can go back to this place. They have some delicious meals. We took home some vegetable and faux-pork steamed buns, Szechuan deep-fried cauliflower, and a hotpot dish with protein balls and vegetables. And rice. It was really good, and there was plenty left over for my dinner tonight too.

While eating I joined my friends online for board games. We played a game of The Castles of Burgundy. It took me a while to remember the rules, but I did pretty well, coming second of four players. We tried a new game, Rallyman: DIRT, but none of us knew the rules and it was too tricky to work out quickly enough, so we abandoned that for another day. We moved on to Just One, and had an absolutely awful start to the game.

Three of the first four words were guessed incorrectly, despite none of the five clues being duplicated (and hence removed) in each case. In fact, weirdly the only clue that was duplicated in the first 6 or 7 rounds was “Rumpelstiltskin” (for the word “spinning wheel”). We ended up scoring only 8 correct answers in 15 rounds. Pretty awful going. Then we moved on to Jump Drive and played about five or six games, of which I won two. I also had one miserable game where the winner ended on 97 points, while I only had 28!

Today was awful, weather-wise. It began with a loud thunderstorm that woke me up at 5:30. By the time I got up and had breakfast and was ready for my 5k run, it was already 24°C and 94% humidity. It was really oppressive and difficult to run. I felt very slow and thought I’d be lucky to stay under 30 minutes, but was surprised when I managed 28:15. I was absolutely soaked with sweat though! I had a cold shower immediately, and then another one about half an hour later after I’d cooled down some more.

I worked on Darths & Droids and Irregular Webcomic! strips today. I have enough of the latter written to do some Lego photography tomorrow.

We went out for a walk with Scully just before 5pm. It was gloomy when we left, having been raining on and off all day, and I thought it wouldn’t be too bad, but the clouds parted and the sun came out as we walked and steamed things up. The temperature had stayed around 25°C most of the day, but now while walking around it warmed up to almost 29°C, and with humidity around 80%. It felt like the times we were in Bangkok, or the Amazon jungle. Really, really draining just to walk at a normal pace.

In other news, the agenda for the next ISO Photography meeting in Tokyo in February has been released. This is the last thing required for me to get travel funding from Standards Australia for my trip there. So hopefully that will be processed soon. I’m beginning to really look forward to being in Tokyo in February, where it will be nice and cold!

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Like Garfield, Mondays are the toughest days of the week

A total of six ethics classes eat up a lot of the day. I walked Scully at lunch time, but not too far as it was a hot day. The roads and footpaths get so hot in the sun that I only really let Scully walk on shaded areas. If they’re in full sun, I reach down to feel the paving and it was definitely too hot today to let her walk on without potentially burning her feet, so I had to carry her part of the way.

In the early evening I made pizza for dinner. And then went for a walk as the sun was going down with my wife and Scully. It was cooler, but still on the warm side and humid. But now at least the paths had cooled down so Scully could have a solid walk.

I think the nearby shops that we walk past should have a gelato shop! But interestingly the fish & chip shop is now open on Mondays. It never used to open on Mondays. My wife thinks that it must have new owners who have decided to extend the opening hours.

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