Hot, cold, windy, calm

Brisbane waters - flat calm in December

Summer is meant to be sunny, calm, warm and perfect for the beach but this year we have alternating extreme heat, cold, storms, wind and floods.

December was hot and cold, flat calm one day and stormy the next. January has been even more unpredictable.

Stormy seas on the beach tonight

The first week of January was so wet a lot of people were rained out of their camp sites or, in the Hunter valley, flooded out of their homes.  (The coffee shops did very good trade as there was little else to do.)

Then came the heat.  41C on Thursday was incapacitating and was followed by big winds and thunderstorms that chased away the rest of the campers and cut power to eighty thousand homes in western Sydney.  Temperatures dropped from 41Cto 22C in a matter of hours and yesterday was cold, windy and wet. Today is still cool with stormy seas.

We are not alone I know; Melbourne and Adelaide have been even more extreme and bush fires in Victoria and Western Australia have razed great swathes of land. 

Our recalcitrant government is disinclined to take action against climate change but lack of demand for coal and gas might force the issue. China, it appears, is leading the way.