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Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby johobbit » Apr 15, 2020 6:06 am

fantasia wrote:so hopefully I didn't lose anything in my Fairy Garden because I didn't cover anything.

Is it too early to know if you lost anything there, fk? Hope those sweet wee plants survived.

Good to see you on the Weather thread, Justin.
:-h

Justin of A wrote:I visited Canada when I was younger. Even though I stayed in Ontario, close to Niagara Falls, ...

:D I am from Canada. A more rural part of Ontario, no less, and only a couple of hours from Niagara Falls.

We are having some great spring temperatures here. For example, it was -10C / 14F just before dawn this morning (my walking time, gorgeous!), and today is only going up to 3C / 37F. Later in the week we are warming up in the day to 10C / 50F, with rain.

We have had enough periodic rain over the past few weeks to ensure the grass is greening up really nicely. And the trees are just barely beginning to show their leaf buds. Planting the gardens will be starting near the end of May. Before that, we still have a chance of frost.

Last evening we had some lovely snow—at times quite heavy. There was a slight accumulation on the ground, which is now disappearing with the sun shining on it.
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby stargazer » Apr 15, 2020 12:04 pm

I've also heard that "everything in Australia is trying to kill you" but figured (just as in North America) the typical person (who probably lives in an urban area) was unlikely to see many of these dangerous things. It's great to hear a local person's perspective on the subject.

North America does have its share of dangerous animals, though I live too far north for some of them (notably poisonous snakes, though a few rattlesnakes have been seen in southern Minnesota). Even while camping or hiking in national or state parks, I've only seen a grizzly once (from a safe distance), other bears only a handful of times, and never seen a wolf (though I've heard them).

We had 7 inches (178mm) of snow Sunday, setting a local record for Easter snowfall; we also had snow squalls Monday and Tuesday that at times made visibility zero. Record low temperatures (around 10F/-12C) were set south of here, where they had more snow.

Fortunately the skies cleared last night so I could view the beautiful gathering of the Moon near Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn this morning.
But all night, Aslan and the Moon gazed upon each other with joyful and unblinking eyes.
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby Justin of Archenland » Apr 15, 2020 12:45 pm

Good to see you on the Weather thread, Justin. :-h



Thank you!


:D I am from Canada. A more rural part of Ontario, no less, and only a couple of hours from Niagara Falls.


Cool! From which city/town are you? I spent two weeks in Jordan, back in 2011. I must say, I've been in love with the country ever since :)

Sounds like you've had quite the weather lately. I'm glad you've enjoyed it so far.


North America does have its share of dangerous animals, though I live too far north for some of them (notably poisonous snakes, though a few rattlesnakes have been seen in southern Minnesota). Even while camping or hiking in national or state parks, I've only seen a grizzly once (from a safe distance), other bears only a handful of times, and never seen a wolf (though I've heard them).


Hmmm, that's doesn't sound too dangerous after all. Like I said, I know I have given in to the stereotypes of such places. Being from the Netherlands, I have no experience with lethal animals whatsoever ;;)
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby waggawerewolf27 » Apr 15, 2020 10:58 pm

Justin of Archenland wrote:
I also enjoy the Aussie stories. I'd love to go there (and New Zealand) not only for the night skies but for the scenery and unusual animals.


The scenery and animals definitely add much to the enjoyment. Although, for some sad reason I have given in to the stereotype that everything in those countries will try to kill me. I haven't recovered from that yet. :p

Sounds like you and coracle have already had your fine share of weather changes this year. It makes for a jealous Dutchie here.


:( Sadly, the recent bushfires from Queensland down to Victoria have reduced our wildlife somewhat, not only the allegedly deadly creatures but also kangaroos, koalas & sleepy, slow moving wombats. It would be nice to see them again, roaming freely.

Justin of Archenland, it is really nice to meet you. :) I don't think now I will ever go anywhere outside Australia, myself, especially these days. However, it would have been most interesting to go to the Rijksmuseum, in the Netherlands, had I ever got there, to see the original pewter plate Dirk Hartog left on the island named after him at Australia's most western point. The Dutch did do much of the early exploration of the Australian coastline, much more than a century before the First Fleet landed in 1788, to found present day Sydney, near where I live, & perhaps you would find these stories most interesting to read about.

If you ever get to Australia to visit, yourself, you might like to visit cute little Quokkas, native to Rottnest Island, just off Freemantle, the port at the mouth of Perth's Swan River. Freemantle is the home of the National Maritime Museum, which holds not only the second pewter plate which Willem de Vlamingh left to replace the one in the Netherlands, but also the salvaged wreck of the Batavia, a Dutch East Indies ship, the ghastly mutinous history of which reminds me that the most dangerous creatures to be met on this earth can very often be mankind, itself.

Well might we celebrate Easter. We had a lovely televised service, very well done, with socially distanced choirboys, each of the clergy doing bits of it, hymns with the words displayed, plus plenty of natural scenery to replace the lack of congregations in their homes, watching the service. But the broadcast was interrupted too much by commercials.

Stargazer wrote:The moon really has been spectacular the past few days. wagga, the term pink moon doesn't refer to its color but is instead an old folklore reference to moss pink, or wild ground phlox, whose pinkish flowers are among spring's earliest flowers in the eastern United States. April's full moon is also called the sprouting grass moon, egg moon, or fish moon.


Thank you. :) Hopefully it is a nice good luck moon for all of us, & the Coronavirus will go away. I did see a bit of it, but well past the full moon. The clouds did clear up after a spot of rain. The Darling has now finally met up with the Murray River, for the first time in two years, but the rather hot day we had yesterday has given way to more cloudiness. So far, temperatures have been quite mild with minimums as little as 9C.
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby Justin of Archenland » Apr 16, 2020 6:34 am

Sadly, the recent bushfires from Queensland down to Victoria have reduced our wildlife somewhat, not only the allegedly deadly creatures but also kangaroos, koalas & sleepy, slow moving wombats. It would be nice to see them again, roaming freely.


Oh man, I totally forgot about that.. Combined with Corona, I can imagine Australia being in quite the disarray still :-\

The Dutch did do much of the early exploration of the Australian coastline, much more than a century before the First Fleet landed in 1788, to found present day Sydney, near where I live, & perhaps you would find these stories most interesting to read about.


I find these stories very interesting! I actually remember a history class in which my teacher proudly told the tales of the Dutch reaching Australia and being responsible for the names of Tasmania (after Abel Tasman) and New-Zealand (Zeeland is a Dutch province).

I didn't know of the pewter plates though. I live in the north of the Netherlands, so I don't get to visit Amsterdam that often. I'll be sure to look out for the plate when I visit the Rijksmuseum again sometime!

And may I say you make quite a convincing case for visiting Australia. I know flying there won't be anytime soon, since it's not low-cost, but I'm glad to already have some spots to visit when I do. Thanks a lot! :)
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby waggawerewolf27 » Apr 17, 2020 4:35 pm

Justin of Archenland wrote:Oh man, I totally forgot about that.. Combined with Corona, I can imagine Australia being in quite the disarray still :-\


I agree that it was quite a blow to a country which has endured at least two years of ever deepening drought, which made the bushfires so much worse than usual last summer. That very sharp drought was mainly due to an Indian Ocean Dipole which had also reduced Cape Town's water supply so very drastically that they were really suffering a year or so ago. That very powerful Indian Ocean Dipole was also delaying the monsoon cycle between the Northern & Southern Hemispheres. On the Pacific Ocean side of the country we had an El Nino effect as well, which finished in August last year.

The bushfires were really horrible, & we were really very grateful not only for the eventual rain which finally put them out, but also for the assistance other countries sent us, not only New Zealand, but also Papua Niugini, Singapore, Japan, Canada & USA, all fellow Pacific Ocean nations. But Australia for a long time has been known for "droughts and flooding rains". An enquiry has been launched to see how we could have managed better, at both State & Federal level, & to decide how we could avoid something similar or worse happening again next summer. Though the underlying drought has eased somewhat, since January, we still need more rain inland before our inland areas recover completely to what they were in 2016. Our longest river is the Darling (named after a New South Wales governor, Ralph Darling), & it has only just recommenced its flow, completely down to its confluence with the Murray River, which defines the New South Wales border with Victoria.

Justin of Archenland wrote:I find these stories very interesting! I actually remember a history class in which my teacher proudly told the tales of the Dutch reaching Australia and being responsible for the names of Tasmania (after Abel Tasman) and New-Zealand (Zeeland is a Dutch province).


Yes Abel Tasman was a very important explorer down here. There is a town on the west coast of Tasmania, called Zeehan, after the name of Tasman's ship. But he originally called the island of Tasmania, Van Dieman's Land, after the then Dutch governor of Batavia (Jakarta, now), who commissioned his explorations. Before Australia's Federation, in 1901, it was the Tasmanians, themselves, who, on becoming a state, in itself, wanted a change of name, to separate themselves from a rather grim past as a convict settlement. One of my own British ancestors helped found Hobart, Tasmania's State capital, in 1804, the same year Matthew Flinders circumnavigated & christened the mainland of Australia.

That Marine, serving with the then Lieutenant Governor, David Collins, bore the distinction of being the groom in the colony's first official marriage on the 16th March, 1804. Having been widowed at the end of 1816, about the time an Indonesian volcano, Tambora, erupted, disrupting world weather, he was able to remarry a Scottish-born convict woman, sent to what would be later remembered as the harshest of Australian convict settlements, for the term of her natural life, for the :-o "horribly dastardly crime" :-o of stealing as many as six handkerchiefs, in collusion with another woman.

Now, if it was as many as six boxes of paper tissues, today, :-o would she still be sentenced to hanging, commuted to transportation for life, I wonder? ;;) These lockdown days we are rationed to two boxes of tissues per person plus one packet of toilet rolls per purchase. It is quite a bargain when sometimes what is on the shelves to be sold are boxes of tissues, in packets of 3 boxes. ;) It is something amusing to ponder these lockdown days whilst awaiting my turn to be served on the self distanced queue (don't forget to stand on the x marked spot) to the checkout. :D
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby Wanderer Between Worlds » Apr 17, 2020 8:37 pm

I agree with you, Justin; these stories are fascinating! :)

waggawerewolf27 wrote:Having been widowed at the end of 1816, about the time an Indonesian volcano, Tambora, erupted, disrupting world weather, he was able to remarry a Scottish-born convict woman, sent to what would be later remembered as the harshest of Australian convict settlements, for the term of her natural life, for the :-o "horribly dastardly crime" :-o of stealing as many as six handkerchiefs, in collusion with another woman.

Now, if it was as many as six boxes of paper tissues, today, :-o would she still be sentenced to hanging, commuted to transportation for life, I wonder? ;;)


Haha, I've never heard that story before. =)) Those must have been some valuable handkerchieves! Stealing six of them! What nerve, what gall! :)).

I hate to admit it, but I must confess that I too have fallen victim to the "everything in Australia can kill you" cliche. However, I will echo other NarniaWebbers when I say I would love to travel there some day! I find the biodiversity and variety in the landscape alluring, and all the people that I have seen/met from Australia have been very nice. A group at my school was actually planning to take a trip to Australia and New Zealand this summer (I was not able to go in the first place), but now that has been cancelled.

Here in Tennessee, the weather has fluctuated from 32 degrees Farenheit on one night to 70 degrees Farenheit the next day. 32 degrees Farenheit is not what I would call spring weather! But then again, Tennessee always seems to have strange weather anyway. :D
"I am,” said Aslan. "But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.”
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby Courtenay » Apr 20, 2020 10:07 am

Just on the topic of Australian magpies again, here's a video that my family sent me today. Lots of fun and I love hearing their song! :)
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby stargazer » Apr 20, 2020 11:45 am

"The best waterpark in Australia is my backyard." ;))

They look similar to, but certainly sound different from, the magpies in North America. (Incidentally, I live too far east to be in their usual range, so I'd never seen or heard one before a camping trip to Badlands National Park about 25 years ago).

The trees seem to be taking their own sweet time leafing out this spring, unlike other years where it seems everything becomes green overnight. Our weather remains variable, with it trying to snow one day and temperatures around 60F/16C the next. No mosquitoes yet at least. ;))
But all night, Aslan and the Moon gazed upon each other with joyful and unblinking eyes.
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby Courtenay » Apr 20, 2020 12:38 pm

stargazer wrote:They look similar to, but certainly sound different from, the magpies in North America. (Incidentally, I live too far east to be in their usual range, so I'd never seen or heard one before a camping trip to Badlands National Park about 25 years ago).


Ah, your magpies are almost identical to the European magpies that we have here in the UK. All-black head and a tail that looks far too long for their body! They're interesting to watch (not to listen to, though :-o ), but they're in a completely different family from Australian magpies, which got the name from unimaginative colonials who (understandably) couldn't think of anything else to call a large black-and-white bird. :p

stargazer wrote: No mosquitoes yet at least. ;))


Now there's one thing about Australia I DON'T miss!! :D
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby waggawerewolf27 » Apr 20, 2020 7:56 pm

Welcome to NarniaWeb, Wanderer Between Worlds. It is nice to meet you. :)

Wanderer Between Worlds wrote:I agree with you, Justin; these stories are fascinating! :) Haha, I've never heard that sttory before. =)) Those must have been some valuable handkerchieves! Stealing six of them! What nerve, what gall! :)).


When I looked up this family history record, I found out the handkerchiefs were made of silk. So it might be the material rather than the object that caused such a drastic sentence. I'm still rather surprised that I found out that anyone had written such an informative article about my great great great grandmother. :-o

There was an article I read three weeks ago that said we are indebted to a 19th Century American for the original manufacture & use of such paper sanitary products, but it wasn't until about the 1960's that we got to use disposable paper tissue hankies routinely. We used to have cotton hankies, sometimes impractically dainty for women & larger, plainer ones for men, which we could boil up in a gas-filled copper installed in laundries, for hygienic reasons, hung out in the sun to dry, then ironed, for use during the next week. One economist has said that the 20th century invention which had the most impact on the the world was actually the washing machine.

stargazer wrote:The trees seem to be taking their own sweet time leafing out this spring, unlike other years where it seems everything becomes green overnight. Our weather remains variable, with it trying to snow one day and temperatures around 60F/16C the next. No mosquitoes yet at least.


It might end up being considerably cooler this year than it was last year, perhaps, despite its fiery beginning down here. Autumn so far is also cooler than it was a year ago, even though May has not arrived yet. Daytime maximum yesterday was as low as 21C.

Courtenay, that was a really nice video snip for the magpies. :D I loved the birdbath, with all those shells on it, also.
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby johobbit » Apr 21, 2020 11:25 am

That's a really cool video, Courtenay!

Today is what I call an adventurous weather day. B-) We had rain pre-dawn, then snowsqualls started around dawn. They have coming about once an hour and lasting for 20+ minutes each. Sometimes they have been so strong that I could hardly see across the road or, behind us, across the field. Then in between, brilliant sunshine. It's around 2°C / 25.6°F. Most nights it is still below freezing, and some nights, a good bit below (as in -10C / 14F).

A couple of weeks ago, the hyacinths, daffodils, and crocuses were peaking out of the gardens, but now, since the cold has come upon us again, they're all confused and kind of closing up again.
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby fantasia » Apr 30, 2020 1:22 pm

I'm honestly not sure if we've ever had a nicer spring. I've pretty much had the door and windows open non-stop (except at night) for the past several weeks. We've had a couple cold fronts come through that made me close them up, but that's about it. Helps that there are minimal bugs too.

I think it's going to finally get a bit toasty this weekend and next week, so I may finally have to turn on our A/C.
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby coracle » Apr 30, 2020 7:28 pm

Today is the First of May, and yet our weather is still mild and sunny most of the time here. It's one month until Winter, so either it's about to change suddenly, or it will be a very late 'slow cool-down'.
I've begun weeding my garden again, as the weeds love the sunshine. I'm waiting to mow my lawn once more before winter. Yesterday I had a 6-feet-apart picnic in the local park with my sister, whose house is about 2 miles away. We took our own packed lunch and drink, and sat under dappled shade as it was actually hot! I probably got a bit sunburned. :ymblushing:
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby stargazer » Apr 30, 2020 10:28 pm

Our spring weather has been up and down, but we've had some glorious days, of which today (Thursday) was one. Crystal clear blue skies, low humidity, no bugs (yet) but with a little tree pollen. We had some rain the other day and it may not be too long before lawns need to be mowed here (for the first, rather than the last, time this season).
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Re: Everyone wants to talk weather part 2

Postby waggawerewolf27 » May 02, 2020 2:23 am

coracle wrote:Today is the First of May, and yet our weather is still mild and sunny most of the time here. It's one month until Winter, so either it's about to change suddenly, or it will be a very late 'slow cool-down'.


Well so far, so good. But yesterday (1st May) was the coldest day for this time of year for more than a decade. We have had quite the brush with winter we could have expected this time of year. If those up in the Attic are considering turning on their Air Conditioning to cope with future heat, We Down Under have been forced to consider turning on our own Air Conditioning to cope with unseasonably cold autumn weather.
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