27 February 2024

Why someone should put a BOM under El Nino - and run for cover

| Sally Hopman
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Rain falling into buckets

So much for the forecast hot, dry summer – it bucketed down. Literally. Photo: Sally Hopman.

We know you’re up there, El Nino, and your Mrs, La Nina, but we have to wonder whether you know what you’re doing?

Clearly, Nina is in La La Land when it comes to the weather she’s supposed to be producing, so we can almost excuse her.

But El Nino, maybe you should read your own forecast. You’re supposed to be hot, and we’re not talking Taylor Swift here, she’s way too cool – we’re talking the real sweaty stuff. Perspiring rivers. The need for a deodo-rant rant.

We had geared up for this summer to be hot stuff. All the clever meteorologists, once they got over the fact that we were going to continue to call the BOM, the BOM, regardless of what their media advisers said, reported, constantly, that we were going to experience nothing short of a sweater, sorry, swelter, this summer. After all, they had forecast it on the 7 pm news.

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Many of us started to complain, admittedly mildly – with only a hint of cloudiness – before the season had even started. But we were preparing to get hot under every collar.

Stores started bringing the dusty old fans out from the back of the storerooms, aircon installers couldn’t wipe the smiles off their dials. People started worrying about how they would look wearing fewer and fewer clothes as the temperatures climbed higher and higher.

The heat was on.

But it wasn’t. It got warmish for a few days, maybe half a dozen over 30, but certainly no wave of heat. Sure, there were a couple of nights when loved ones decided they didn’t really love those ones so much and opted for the other side of the bed.

Storm clouds over paddock

We weren’t supposed to have this sort of cloud cover over summer, but someone forgot to tell Mr Nino. Photo: Sally Hopman.

Then there was the rain we weren’t supposed to have. It bucketed down. Clearly Mr Nino didn’t see that one coming, or he would have headed for shelter.

Forecasting weather would have to be one of the hardest of professions. Even if you’re right, you’re wrong, as far as some folk are concerned. Imagine being burdened with the responsibility for determining what people should wear every day, whether they can go on a picnic or would be better off in their cars going through the drive-through, or that long dreamed of beach wedding.

If you forecast rain and it doesn’t, you’re to blame and vice versa.

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Perhaps we should stick to that tried-and-true, not very scientific but just about almost foolproof method of, wait for it, going outside and, if you get wet, well … you know what to do. If you don’t, do what the rest of us do – just run for cover.

Can’t wait to hear how cool the forecast for winter is going to be.

Original Article published by Sally Hopman on Riotact.

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