Rain....

[tic]

There is something seriously dodgy going on at the BOM.

On the website, the daily rainfall for Brisbane's dams for 24 hours to 9am Thursday 6 Sept were between 4 and 9 mm.

But watching the radar the night before, I watched heavy dumps over the dams. This was confirmed by the BOM's own radar image that night showing the dams under a green rainfall summary - indicating falls of between 25 and 50 mms.

I think the public are being seriously misled about this. And this happened during the last rainfall event approx 2 weeks earlier.

[Maroon Grown]

the radar is malfunctioning. today the radar showed steady rain over brisbane for much of the day but it definatley was not raining. weve been lucky to pick up 3mm today. its being too sensitive and is picking up far too much humidity or something. i couldnt believe it this morning when only a few mm were notched up over the dams. the one time when the radar shows really good rains over the dams and the friggin thing malfunctions. from memory, the radar karked it when a major hail storm was approaching once and no one knew of the severity of the storm. they copped big criticism.

[broadie]

if today was like what the radar said
wivonhe would proberly be full


tho its it feel slike theres a rain shadow threw brissy
from like the gold coast and sunny coast allways getting good rain 60m+ an brissy has been missing out

if i lived up ther wouldent be too happy

[Qantas743]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/climat...783415754.html

DROUGHT will become a redundant term as Australia plans for a permanently drier future, according to the nation's urban water industries chief.

And climate experts yesterday predicted the present drought would continue, signalling a cruel summer for farmers and sparking fears of higher food prices.

"The urban water industry has decided the inflows of the past will never return," Water Services Association of Australia executive director Ross Young said. "We are trying to avoid the term 'drought' and saying this is the new reality."

Bureau of Meteorology national climate centre chief Michael Coughlan said hopes were fading fast for desperately needed rains. "Is this drought over? Certainly not — we can't predict when this drought will end," Dr Coughlan said.

Murray Darling Basin Commission chief executive Wendy Craik said irrigators on the Murray River, including many Victorian citrus growers and dairy farmers, faced their worst ever summer. Fresh produce would be hit and food prices would probably rise, Dr Craik warned.

The experts were at a drought briefing in Melbourne organised by the Australian Science Media Centre.

More than half of Australia's agricultural land, including all of Victoria's, is now drought-declared, costing the Federal Government $1.8 billion so far.

Exceptional circumstances funding for many areas will run out in March next year.

But the Government may extend the emergency relief, Department of Agriculture drought manager Matt Koval said. That would mean spending hundreds of millions of dollars extra to bail out farmers.

Victorian Farmers Federation president Simon Ramsay said it was crunch time for farmers.

"If rain is not forthcoming (over the next week or two), there's going to be … quite a few farmers, particularly those dairy farmers on the Murray, that will fall by the wayside," he said.

Dr Craik said combined storages and inflows in the Murray system were at record lows and the situation was deteriorating. "These are the worst conditions since the Hume Dam was completed in 1936," she said. "It will take multiple years for storages to recover and the outlook is very grim."

Mr Young blamed climate change for the nation's water woes. "No one predicted how savagely low inflows would be under climate change," he said. Strong population growth combined with low inflows had created a dual squeeze on city water supplies.

Melbourne's water stores were yesterday at 38.7 per cent, 8 percentage points lower than the same time last year. They have risen by only 0.1 of a percentage point in the past 10 days.

The city is on stage 3a water restrictions, but may move to stage 4 bans over summer. Adelaide and Brisbane also face a dire summer of restrictions.

Dr Coughlan said the La Nina weather system, originally predicted as a drought-breaker, had so far dumped rain over the eastern seaboard and into the ocean without sufficient impact on mainland Australia.

He warned Australia could face another El Nino (which would bring more severe drought conditions) within 18 to 24 months.

[JayT]

They should do the following!

Massive I know but just a dream.

- Dam an area just to the north of Port Augusta in South Australia creating a massive lake the size of a small sea. The lake will eventually flood a large portion of inland SA, Qld and NSW. It will be MASSIVE!!! Check out topographic maps as it can be done.

- Secondly divert some rivers from North Queensland into the basin to fill the dam creating a permanent inland sea.

The creation of an inland sea and the prevailing winds will bring moist humid winds to the western slopes of NSW and Southern Qld increasing rainfall and rural output west of the Great Divide. Added flow to the Darling river will benefit Western NSW as well.

The creation of an inland see will be a boon for SA as it will create a dry subtropical coastline for the state. It will also increase productivity for SA as well. I would imagine Port Augusta would boom if this happened.

LOL - this is just a pipe dream but can anyone else see it?

J

[Bond James Bond]

^
Sounds kinda like my old plan for the Outback Sea.

[gappa]

Central Australia used to be a sea a long time ago. Also around a hundred years ago someone floated the idea of digging a canal from the ocean to the great depression containg the vast salt lakes, therefore creating a new sea.


No river in Australia has a flow large enough to sustain an inland sea. The Murray/Darling would, if diverted into lake Eyre only keep up with evaporation and not actually fill it, so an inland sea would be impossible.

[Maroon Grown]

calls to say that australia will experience a permanant dry is a bit pesamistic seen as though eastern victoria, eastern nsw and central to south eastern queensland have experienced higher than average winter rainfall and that northern queensland also experience normal rainfalls during summer which produced widespread flooding. also, this years snowfalls have been sensational and even inland areas like qld's darling downs have got thier fair share. i think normal rainfall may be on the way for this summer.

[JayT]

Originally Posted by Bond James Bond

^
Sounds kinda like my old plan for the Outback Sea.

Yep basically something like that but withouth the connection to the Gulf of Carpentaria. It would be more like a very big dam wall just north of Port Augusta which would enable the interior of Australia to fill with water. As said they'd have to divert some coastal rivers from Tropical North Queensland to fill it but it could work.

The greenies would have a fit though - LOL.

j

[Brissy_Lad]

It would have to be fresh water to so farmers can irrigate from it. Salt water would more than likely destroy any form of living plant....

[broadie]

hopefully we will get our first storms of the season today

[Maroon Grown]

what a fizzer. they are still predicted for friday and saturday when the air will be a fair bit warmer, so hopefully theyll fire up then.

[broadie]

Yeah the air was way to dry
i think the weather people should have known how to predict that
but yeah if i dont get exited about storms today
there will be storms
haha;P

[Lightness]

Originally Posted by Brissy_Lad

It would have to be fresh water to so farmers can irrigate from it. Salt water would more than likely destroy any form of living plant....

Salty sea water can only be diverted into lakes that are already salt lakes, quite a few of the SA lakes are. NT rivers can be diverted into fresh water lakes though.

Salt lakes can't be used for irrigation but they can be useful in increasing rainfall in the region.

Jay T, I'm with you! Surprising how similar our thoughts are on this. I've been thinking along the same lines.

[Bond James Bond]

^
Yeah my thinking for the Outback Sea was to create additional rainfall. If you look closely, I even took the dirt/rocks from the dugout area of the Outback Sea and created some new and bigger mountains to its west. That way the trade winds would pass over the new sea and fall as rain on the new mountains. From there you could build dams along some rivers, irrigate valleys, build cities, etc.

[Lightness]

Has there been any plans to attempt anything like this? What would be the challenges?

We could at least fill one of the salt lakes isn't it?

[MILIUX]

Originally Posted by Lightness

Has there been any plans to attempt anything like this? What would be the challenges?

We could at least fill one of the salt lakes isn't it?

$$$

[Maroon Grown]

up to 32mm has fallen on wivenhoe dam tonight with the storms. also, good falls have been observed over somerset and north pine by myself watching the radar.

we live at bridgeman downs and we recorded over 30mm in 20 mins this afternoon in an absolute torential downpour. hopefully those good falls reached the dams as well. usually, the figures dont reflect an accurate figure until the next day if the rain falls at night. this downpour was on top of another which probably totalled 10mm, so we probs got betwn 40-50mm today on the northside.

[tic]

Excellent news - with good summer rains/storms we may start to see these dams back up to decent levels early next year. This will be great with the 9 billion dollar water grid being rolled out over the next couple of years - finally some infrastructure to back up a precious resourse.

[LanceDriver]

Originally Posted by Lightness

Has there been any plans to attempt anything like this? What would be the challenges?

We could at least fill one of the salt lakes isn't it?

From http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=482624

I came across the document below that was created by the large farming organisation called Farmhand. It was created to debunk some fanciful wayout but also serious and visionary schemes that have been proposed to turn our deserts into green pastures with a good water supply.

The document makes a very interesting read and is here -
http://www.farmhand.org.au/downloads...er_Part_10.pdf

In summary, there's five proposals that they critique. These are -

1 - Making Rain Clouds - This is pretty straight forward with some interesting ideas around the subject.

2 - Whiping up a cloud - Now things start to get interesting. This involves creating a machine that acts like an "egg whisk" that would whip up a storm!

3 - Dig a Transcontinental canal - Now the really good ideas start coming through. This involves digging a trans-continental canal that disects the continent in half from top to bottom. It would follow one of the 2 proposed routes in the diagram below -

image hosted on flickr


The main canal would be 2300km long and would pass Uluru! This would give passenger ships a nice bit of scenery to look at or a great stop-off point on their cruise. Yes, the canals would have the secondary function to act as a primary shipping canal. Here's an artists impression of the canal going past Uluru and through the desert -

image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr


The way this canal would water the desert is by creating a network of desal plants along the canal. Yay, endless water!

image hosted on flickr


4 - Connect Lake Eyre to the sea - Many of you would have heard of this one or at least thought about it. The idea is to build one or two canals to Lake Eyre so that it once again becomes an inland sea. It involves flooding other large salt Lakes as part of the system. The thought here is that the evaporation of the inland seas will fall as rain in many parts of the desert, especially western QLD, NSW and Vic. Also, desal plants could be built, and we could creat a new Gold Coast by the sea! Sounds great yeah?

Here's the propose routes -
image hosted on flickr


5 - Build a Mountain - This one's great, I love it! Even though it is alomost 100% impossible with todays technology it is very visionary, would probably turn the whole of central Australia into the green fields of Ireland, but the best thing, it's just so silly!

The idea here is to build a large mountain range that is 4km tall, 10km wide at it's base with a 2km wide plateau at the top covering a distance of 2000km from northeastern WA to southeastern WA. It would be close to the NT and SA borders. The idea here is that the huge mountain range would create lots of rain to it's east because of the orographic effect.

Here's the route for the proposed mountain range -
image hosted on flickr


Wow! I won't write it all down, there's loads more in the document and it does make a good read if you're interested. I think we should invest in them all, it's about time our government spent some money on infrastructure for our future!