Heavy Weather

'looks like we're in for heavy weather, there's a bad moon on the rise'- (Credence Clearwater Revival) - they were probably singing that in Mumbai last week, if they were prescient, today its 'raindrops keep falling on my head' as record 24 hour rainfall causes chaos.

Meanwhile, the same moon has bought a record low rainfall for the month of July for Albany and most of the south west of W.A. We've had about 60mm(nothing more than 5mm/day for 2 weeks) as opposed to an average 160mm, in what is usually the wettest month of the year. So much for reliable rainfall.

Both these events have been triggered by mass movements that are starting to occur in the climate system as the climate shifts between dynamic equilibriums.

One factor has been the position of the southern jet stream over the last two weeks which has been in a strongly zonal pattern with little variation in latitude. This pattern is on the verge of breaking up tonight and the IDES/GRAS computer models suggest that it will be wiggling all over the place by next week. This should see a return to rain in the south west with what looks like potentially heavy conditons.