Take the Weather With You

[kuriaken]

Are we in for an unusually wet walking season on the Central Plateau, etc ? Crystal ball /feeling in your bones/forecast?
Phil

[weetbix456]

was quite moist up there this past weekend i must say

[ollster]

Are we in for an unusually wet walking season on the Central Plateau, etc ? Crystal ball /feeling in your bones/forecast?
Phil

OK, yes. I admit all these times people ask for ball gazing I am amply supplied with sufficient balls to enable me to provide exacting weather details up to five decades in advance.

"The weather in the Central Plateau this walking season is guaranteed to be variable, mostly warm to hot with a good chance of rain and wind, and possible ice, snow and hail."

Glad I could be of help.

[bluewombat]

So standard weather patterns then
bw

[alliecat]

Hi Phil,

The official BoM 3 monthly rainfall outlook is here: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ahead/rain_ahead.shtml. As you can see they are saying there's not much chance of a wet summer over Tassie.

However, the BoM seasonal forecasts are one of their weakest products (and they acknowledge that). They have an experimental site for their large scale climate model. That shows a slightly wetter than normal next 3 months for Tas. But, that model is known to not be so good with rainfall, especially over Tas, so that's not much help either.

A multi-model ensemble at IRI shows nothing unusual over Tas for Jan-Feb-Mar: see here: http://iri.columbia.edu/climate/forecast/net_asmt/

We can say that we are in a really strong La Nina that is going to be with us for a few months more at least. Historically, La Ninas have been associated with (a bit) wet conditions in the central highlands - Great Lake, the Mersey/Forth catchments and around there. If I was forced to make a call I would say we're in for a continuation of the warm+wet conditions we're seeing now for at least the next 2 months; after that I'm not willing to commit to anything So that's the alliecat forecast - a bit wetter than normal, but warm too.

Cheers,
Alliecat
[Edit - but yeah, what Oll said ]