© Brett Martin/perthweatherlive.com
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Mother Nature put on a spectacular display off the coast of Onslow yesterday, where a menacing-looking storm was captured on camera by a tug boat worker. Jurien Bay man Brett Martin and his colleagues were working west of False Island when the thunderstorm, which had gathered dust and sand as it developed, passed over Onslow and out to the Indian Ocean. Mr Martin said the storm built up in a matter of minutes.
"We were steaming along in the boat just before sunset and the storm was casually building in the distance, then it got faster and faster and it went from glass to about 40 knots in two minutes," he said. "It was like a big dust storm under a thunderhead, there was a lot of lightning but not a lot of rain." Bureau of Meteorology duty forecaster Austen Watkins said the stunning view was created as wind and rain caused the storm to dump the sand and dust it had ingested while passing Onslow.
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Crank up the heat: It's going to be plenty cold in the Valley this weekend. Weather analysts are forecasting four days of freezing temperatures, starting Saturday night, running through Tuesday. The last time the Valley had four straight sub-freezing mornings was 25 years ago. Rain also is expected to arrive between 9 p.m. and midnight Thursday.
Chris Kuhlman with the National Weather Service said it will be a struggle to reach 50 degrees Friday.
"It will be very cold. Some areas will see the mid-20s for lows," Kuhlman said. "Other areas will be right at the freezing mark and below. This is a very large system coming off the north Pacific and very cold.
"Right now it's going across California and then we have a reinforcing shot of cold air coming down from western Canada on Sunday and that will keep our area temperatures about 15 degrees below normal."
Chris Kuhlman with the National Weather Service said it will be a struggle to reach 50 degrees Friday.
"It will be very cold. Some areas will see the mid-20s for lows," Kuhlman said. "Other areas will be right at the freezing mark and below. This is a very large system coming off the north Pacific and very cold.
"Right now it's going across California and then we have a reinforcing shot of cold air coming down from western Canada on Sunday and that will keep our area temperatures about 15 degrees below normal."
© Tim Holmes/AP Five young children and their grandmother huddled together under a jetty in the Tasmanian town of Dunalley were photographed by their grandfather Tim Holmes. The family was forced to stay in the water for several hours as homes around them were razed to the ground. Tammy Holmes, second from left, and her grandchildren, two-year-old Charlotte Walker, left, four-year-old Esther Walker, third from left, nine-year-old Liam Walker, eleven-year-old Matilda, second from right, and six-year-old Caleb Walker, right, take refuge under a jetty as a wildfire rages near-by.
Australia is bracing for more potentially dangerous fires, with temperatures on Friday predicted to soar close to 50C in the centre of the continent and up to 46C in parts of New South Wales.
The return of the scorching heat follows two days of relative cool, during which fire crews tackled more than 100 blazes still burning in New South Wales and Victoria, and built containment lines for more outbreaks.
"We are entering a very challenging fire weather period over the next three days," said Brydie O'Connor, of the New South Wales rural fire service. "We'll have 40 degree-plus days in many parts, with a number of fires from Tuesday still burning. Add that to some very strong north-westerly winds and we've got a very bad situation."
© UnknownWildlife Rescue South Coast Inc’s Gerardine Hawkins with one of the rescued grey-headed flying foxes from the local colony that was decimated in Tuesday’s extreme heat.
As temperatures soared above 40 degrees the grey-headed flying fox, which is listed as vulnerable, fell victim to the heat with at least 1000 members of the 11,500 strong colony being found dead.
Volunteers from Wildlife Rescue South Coast along with National Parks staff spent numerous hours in the colony on Tuesday trying to save the dying animals.
© Higgins Storm ChasingThis satellite image shows Cyclone Narelle forming off the north-west coast of WA.
The eye-catching photographs accompanying this story were captured by Brett Martin just before sunset on Wednesday afternoon, 25 nautical miles north-west of Onslow.
They depict a "tropical squall line" and a "gust front ahead of a storm line", with the red tinge resulting from dust picked up in the Pilbara on the way out to sea.
It was a rare, breathtaking sight: In a flash, a pod of about 1,000 common dolphins began a stampede, churning across the blue-gray waters off Dana Point at a rapid pace.
Dave Anderson, the captain of Capt. Dave's Dolphin and Whale Safari, said that in the decades he's spent on the water and out among Southern California's dense dolphin population, it's a phenomenon he's encountered only rarely.
Yet last weekend, it happened again ... and it happened twice: once on Saturday afternoon and again on Sunday morning. Boat hands captured Sunday's stampede on video.
"It's one of those things you can hope for it, but you can't plan for it," he said.
"It's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of beautiful and interesting things" on the water.
© National Weather ServiceHeavy rain is expected in southeast Louisiana today.
View full size Heavy rain is expected in southeast Louisiana today. National Weather Service
Plaquemines drainage canals have been pumped down and all drainage pump stations are fully staffed, according to Plaquemines Parish government.
© Bilal Hussein/The Associated PressSyrian refugee children have a snowball fight at the mountain town of Bhamdoun, east of Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday. The fiercest winter storm to hit the Middle East in years has unleashed flash flooding, strong winds and a snowstorm that killed six people in the past few days.
In Lebanon, the Red Cross said storm-related accidents killed six people over the past two days. Several drowned after slipping into rivers from flooded roads, one person froze to death and another died after his car went off a slippery road, according to George Kettaneh, operations director for the Lebanese Red Cross.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, a Palestinian official said two West Bank women drowned after their car was caught in a flash flood on Tuesday. Nablus deputy governor Annan Atirah said the women abandoned their vehicle after it got stuck on a flooded road, and their bodies were apparently swept away by surging waters. Their driver was hospitalized in critical condition.
In the Gaza Strip, civil defence spokesperson Mohammed al-Haj Yousef said storms cut electricity to thousands of Palestinian homes and rescuers were sent to evacuate dozens of people.
© Ekathimerini.com
The Penteli ring road was closed early on Tuesday due to ice and fog and was reopened to traffic later in the morning, while Dionysos Avenue remains off limits from Anatoli to Dionysos and drivers were advised to use snow chains on the road between Katsimidiou and Aghiou Merkouriou in Tatoi.
The old national highway linking Thiva to Athens was shut off to lorries and other heavy vehicles, with regular cars allowed access only with snow chains, as the road leading from the funicular to Mont Parnes Casino on Mount Parnitha remained closed from Sunday.
Several schools were also given the day off in Dionysos, Penteli, Nea Penteli, Kapandriti, Kalamos, Malakasa, Petroupoli and Liosia, among other parts of northern Attica.
Meanwhile, the city of Athens opened three emergency centers for the homeless on Monday at buildings on the corners of Lenorman and Alexandreias, Mamouri and Dymis, and Aghiou Meletiou and Xenagora. The 1960 hotline will also be operating 24 hours a day where citizens can report the location of homeless people in distress.
Municipal day centers for the elderly (KAPI) will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, providing heated shelter.
The meteorological service expects the cold snap to continue through Wednesday, with temperatures starting to climb back up on Thursday and Friday.
Comment: If the suggestion here is that Britain's lower so-called 'carbon footprint' than Australia's in some way implies that Britain is doing its part to save the planet, then, like everyone else taken in by the green movement, the author is completely deluded as to what is really behind 'climate change'.
Getting back to the real issue at hand, we wonder if fireballs reaching the lower atmosphere were at least partly responsible for sparking these wildfires?
Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction