weather – Page 13 – dangermouse.net

Making more bad graphs

It rained heavily again overnight, and more during the day. The weather seems to be the only thing everyone is talking about around here – the rain has just been so relentless. And more to come, we have another 80 mm forecast for Tuesday, and the Bureau of Meteorology says don’t expect the rainy weather to end any time soon.

Besides my daily run, and teaching ethics classes, I worked today some more on the lecture for the data presentation part of the data engineering course. I followed up my bad graph of a couple of days ago with some more today, and interactive material which will be run during the lecture to quiz students on aspects of visual presentation. I’m nearly done with this task now – maybe another coupe of slides tomorrow and I can move on to other jobs.

New content today:

Engineering data 2

It seems this intense rain weather system is very unpredictable. We were bracing for very heavy rain today, potentially the worst so far, but it turned out nowhere near as bad as yesterday.

Still, what rain there was, and flash flooding, interrupted train services. I had to travel into the university this evening for lecture 2 of the Data Engineering course. I could leave a bit earlier since there wasn’t the ISO meeting this week, and I did so, planning a leisurely dinner at a nice Asian place in the “Spice Alley” food laneway near the uni. But I ended up waiting 40 minutes at the station for a train – about 6 or 7 trains in a row were cancelled. And of course by the time a train finally showed up, it was full of people – meaning I had to cram on in what seemed like a ridiculously dangerous proximity given COVID.

I got to the university too late for a sit down meal, and wasted time tried to find a sushi place where I could just grab a take-away bento box, but in vain. In the end I ended up in the university food court, where half the places were closed for the evening already, and I chowed down a chicken schnitzel on a tortilla quickly before heading to the lecture room.

The lecture went well, and I had to wander around the room during the tutorial exercises and answer questions form students. It was pretty easy today but will get more complex as the course progresses.

New content today:

A bit less storm than expected, so far

After yesterday’s apocalyptic rainfall predictions, today turned out less wet than expected. Although that seems to be because the low pressure system causing all this rainfall is moving south a bit slower than expected so it’s just taking a bit longer to get here. The morning wasn’t too bad – a few heavy showers, light rain, and even a break or two. The really heavy rain has waited until late this evening, and is now expected to extend well into tomorrow. Some parts of Sydney have had around 150 mm today, and we’re expecting another 150 mm tomorrow, followed by smaller amounts (around 30 mm) every day for the next week.

This morning I had my second face-to-face ethics class of the year at the school. Some of the students away with COVID last week were back, but there were still half a dozen or so kids absent. But I had another 4 kids who said they thought they should be in ethics, but weren’t on the class roll, so I added their names. That brings the class up to about 20 kids, which is near the maximum size of 22. We started the first topic, which is about “a fair society”. And the kids were really good! They got into the discussion, and were giving good, thoughtful answers, and they were all behaving well, raising hands to talk and not interrupting or talking while others were speaking. It’s early days yet, but I think this may be the best behaved class I’ve had in my 6 years of teaching these classes.

Back home, I worked on some comics – I needed to make a Darths & Droids strip, and a few Irregular Webcomic! strips for this week. I didn’t do a full batch of the latter – that will wait until next week.

And this evening I had three online ethics lessons in a row, on the new topic of humour. I posed the question if it’s okay for people in difficult or tragic circumstances to joke about their situation as a coping mechanism. One kid said he’s seeing a lot of that now, since he’s in Romania, near the Ukraine border, and there are a lot of refugees passing through his town. And they’re all making jokes about their situation. I knew this kid was in Romania, but I didn’t know what city he was in, and had no idea he was near the Ukraine border. Last year for a few classes I had a kid who was actually in Ukraine. It was several months ago and I haven’t heard anything from them since, but I hope they’re okay.

New content today:

The calm before the storm

Quite literally. Yesterday, the forecast for Sydney for today and Wednesday was 15 and 30 mm of rain, respectively. When I got up this morning I checked the forecast again and it had been increased to 70 mm for today and 90 mm for tomorrow.

Around midday today they increased tomorrow’s forecast to 200 mm of rain.

This weather system has been causing havoc up the coast, from southern Queensland around the Brisbane area, then moving into northern New South Wales, and tomorrow it’s going to hit Sydney full force. We’ve seen historic record level flooding in several towns, and 8 people are now confirmed dead, with 2 missing, and fears that more bodies will be found once floodwaters recede. In NSW alone, around 40,000 people are now subject to mandatory evacuation orders and another 300,000 are under evacuation warning. Flood warnings have been issued for more towns, including Sydney.

But for now, it’s calm, and not even raining. It was raining very heavily this morning when I took Scully out for her morning toilet. By the time I got back in, I had to change all my clothes because they were wet, despite having a large umbrella. And dry Scully off, despite her wearing a doggy raincoat.

Today I set myself four tasks: Revise the homework for my ethics extension student and send it to him; complete notes for the science student from last night’s class and send those to her; write up rules and design cards for the “Family Argument” board game that I’m working on with my creative design student and send that to him; and write Thursday’s Darths & Droids comic. I managed to get almost all of them done – the first three, and most of a strip written I just need a punchline and that can be done. I guess tomorrow.

New content today:

Rain and floods update

The big news in Australia, which was even ahead of the war in Ukraine on the TV news bulletin tonight, is the absolutely massive amount of rainfall and subsequent flooding currently hitting the eastern coast. Six people are confirmed dead from floodwater incidents, and it’s feared another has died but no body has been found yet. Brisbane’s Wivenhoe Dam is now up to 180.6% capacity – from the 120% that I reported yesterday. They are doing controlled releases of water to avoid dam failure, which means it’s washing downstream towards Brisbane. There’s already flooding of central Brisbane streets from the elevated river level, and flood warnings have been issued fore many suburbs. Current estimates are that around 1500 homes will be flooded in the city tonight and tomorrow.

And that’s just the city. There are smaller towns around the region that are experiencing much worse. Some river levels are up to 22 metres above normal, and thousands of people are being evacuated.

The heavy persistent rain is set to continue for another day or so, and the weather system is moving south, into New South Wales, which is already experiencing flooding in many regions. It’s not anywhere near as bad all the way down here in Sydney, but we’ve received 250 mm of rain in the past four days, and the forecast is for another 150 mm or so in the next few days.

Besides watching the weather reports, I had the 4th class of 6 in my current run of the game design course. Today we worked on combining ideas into a playable set of game rules. The main concept the student came up with for the game is “disagreeing with everyone”. I proposed a few possibilities for how to theme it: (1) a simple party game where you propose business ideas and everyone criticises them, (2) a meeting of philosophers, who naturally can’t agree on anything, or (3) a family gathering, where everyone gets into arguments about various topics. The student chose theme 3 – so we’re now working on a game which is set at a family gathering, and the goal is to argue with all the family members.

I’ll make a first draft of the game rules and equipment—probably just a couple of decks of cards—this week and send it off to the student to playtest before our next lesson next Sunday.

New content today:

Post-super busy week: Saturday

Ah, finally, a day off.

The rain continues. It rained heavily all night, and for much of the day. I managed to get my run in during a period if relatively light rain. And I also went out with my wife and Scully in light drizzle to take some product photos of her new range of hand made bangles to match the doggie bandanas she’s been selling on Etsy. She’s planning to launch the bangles on Tuesday.

The rain is much worse further north. Parts of northern New South Wales are in flood emergencies, and southern Queensland is even worse. Wivenhoe Dam, the main water supply storage for Brisbane, went from 55% capacity to 120% in the past 48 hours. The 100% “capacity” level is defined as a safe storage level, above which Queensland Water must release water downriver. It can actually get up to 225% before the dam overflows – but they won’t let it get that high as that would damage and possibly destroy the dam. Last time this happened, in 2011, the released water flooded the streets of central Brisbane. Oh, I just checked news and a flood warning has been issued an hour ago for parts of Brisbane.

I haven’t kept track, but about half a dozen people have died in floodwater so far. Some towns have been evacuated and are preparing for the worst flooding in recorded history.

For dinner tonight I made pesto using bunya nuts, fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, salt, and pepper. I served it on penne pasta.

I’ve put most of the bunya nuts into the freezer, because there’s no way we’re going to get through them quickly enough. They’re too rich to eat every day, and I think we have enough for at least a dozen meals, maybe more.

New content today:

Super busy week: Friday

The day kicked off with picking up the groceries from the supermarket. Then I went for my run.

I had a little time before the ISO meeting started at 2pm. But I got a message from the new downstairs neighbour asking if Scully would like to come down and play with their dog Billie, because Billie had been cooped up because of the rain for the past few days and needed some exercise. So I said yes, because Scully also could do with some running around.

The weather, I should mention, has been dreadful the past week or so. We’ve had about 200 mm of rain in the past few days. Parts of Sydney have had more and there have been flash floods in various places. But this is peanuts compared to some places in Queensland, which have had over 300 mm of rain in just 4 hours yesterday. La Niña is walloping the east coast with crazy amounts of rain. And the forecast for Sydney for the next 7 days is heavy rain every day.

Anyway, I waited until there was a break in the rain, and then went down and we let the dogs go berserk in the yard. Which was soaking wet, littered with puddles and mud. After half an hour of playing around, the dogs were filthy. I took Scully back up and immediately gave her a bath. There was no way I could let her stay that dirty.

After bathing Scully it was straight into the ISO meeting. It was the final administrative day, and it led right up to the start of my first ethics lesson.

And after two of those, I went out with my wife and Scully for dinner. We went to the French crêpe place, which is a short drive over a couple of suburbs. The two dinner specials were a beetroot salad galette and a barbecue pulled pork galette, which we ordered. And then for dessert they had a crêpe with chocolate sauce, whipped cream, pretzels, and marshmallows. I had to try that, and it was delicious, with the crunchy pretzels adding a nice texture and hint of salt to the sweetness. A strange combination, but it worked really well.

We walked back to the car, and it was raining. And as we walked it got heavier. And heavier. And heavier. By the time we got back to the car it was pounding down. We got completely soaked climbing into the car and trying to get our umbrellas down. We drove home and had to immediately change clothes and towel off.

Now it’s virtual board games night with my friends. I’m losing as usual…

New content today:

Super busy week: Tuesday

This morning I got up and took Scully out, then had breakfast, and then went for my run. I tried to get it in early before the rain closed in, because the forecast was for a lot of rain today. I managed to get that done. The sky was dark and thundery for several hours before the rain finally arrived around lunch time.

Then the rain pounded down most of the afternoon, very heavy at times with loud rumbles of thunder, interspersed with medium rain. It’s still quite heavy now, late in the evening.

From 2pm I had the ISO Photography standards meeting, held online. One of the first agenda items was to move the first technical session from late today to early Thursday, so we ended up doing only administrative things today.

Before the ISO meeting started, I had to complete work on the new ethics class for this week, since I’ve now moved classed from Thursday evenings to Tuesdays, to give me time to attend the university for the Data Engineering course on Thursdays. But this means I have a day less in between to write up the new topic (I was often doing it on Wednesday mornings). And since the first ethics class was hard up against the end of the ISO meeting, I had to get it completed before 2pm. (Although as it turned out I had a spare hour because of the agenda change, but I didn’t know that in advance.)

For dinner I made pizza, and topped it with pumpkin and some of the bunya nuts that we’re working our way through.

They’re not crunchy like walnuts, which is what I usually use, but added a nice subtle flavour and a different texture.

And finally, in about 10 minutes, I have the second ethics class of the evening. The topic is genetic engineering, which I think will be a good one. The first class went well, and I think the kids enjoyed it a bit more than the patriotism topic.

New content today:

New running bests

On my 2.5k run today I recorded a new best time, 12:01. My current goal is to break 12 minutes, so that’s now tantalisingly close. (My previous best was 12:03.) Strava also informs me that the first mile of the run was my best time for a mile as well, 7:36 (previous best 7:38).

It was another hot day today, after the rainy weather cleared away for yesterday. We got over 30°C both day. But now in the late evening we’re sitting under a big thunderstorm, which is cooling things down again and bringing more rain. And the forecast is for more rain over the next few days. It’s been a very wet summer.

And it was another busy day of ethics classes, with 4 classes on Thursdays. The good thing about Wednesday ands Thursday being so busy is that a full half of the classes I teach are done on just those two days, and the rest of the week is a bit less intense. I had a bunch of administrative things to take care of today, with parents requesting transfers to different timeslots and sending me messages asking questions about things. I was telling my wife all the things I had to do to keep on top of it and she said, “You really have a lot of admin stuff to do with that, don’t you?”

New content today:

Wet, soggy, moist, damp

Today was all about the weather. Since my last blog entry, we’ve had almost 90 mm of rain here in Sydney. It mostly came in two large bursts, about midnight last night, and at lunchtime today. I heard the heavy rain in the night. The midday rain was amazing – it was absolutely torrential for about half an hour, with heavy rumbles of thunder.

I took a photo, but this was after the peak, when the rain had eased off a bit:

By 2pm or so the rain had eased to a sprinkle, but the weather radar implied that we’d be getting more later, so I went out for my run, and just got wet. I didn’t have time to do it in the morning because I had two ethics classes, at 9am and then 11am. And this evening I have two as well, 6pm and 9pm. The 9am class is a new one, that a parent requested because none of the available time slots were suitable. This is the first time I’ve been doing 4 classes in one day, and it’s a bit exhausting, and doesn’t leave time for much else.

In between the morning classes, I took some time to go down to the garage and clean off some of the mould that I’d found growing down there the other day. Disgusting stuff, but alas inevitable in this sort of tropical humidity we’ve been having for over a month now. I installed the damp removers in the garage cupboards – hopefully that will keep things under control from now on.

This evening my wife found a leech in our living room! A leech! That’s how wet it is! I suspect what happened is that during the walk I took Scully on around 5pm, after all of the rain, she picked up the leech while walking through the wet grass. And then once we got inside it dropped off after getting a taste of her anti-parasite treatment. My wife caught the offending annelid in a tissue and we disposed of it before it could attach to a human.

New content today: