Victor Szwed
There was a Super Moon on the 27th of April. This occurs when the moon is closer to earth and can appear to be larger. The two photos I took are of the Super Moon seen at Dover about an hour south of Hobart. The first is as it was rising through smoke haze from forest fire management burns which caused the great colour. The second was about an hour later after the moon had cleared the smoke haze which was sitting low on the horizon.
If you missed this Super Moon, then you are not out of luck. Not only will there be another Super Moon on Wednesday 26th May but also a total eclipse of the Moon. Hopefully the weather conditions will be suitable to view this as they were to view the April Full Moon.
If conditions are right, then at around 6.47pm there will be some visible dark areas on the moon known as the Earth’s penumbra touching the Moon’s face. Around 7.44pm a partial eclipse commences developing into a full eclipse by 9.11pm and lasting for 14 minutes. By 10.52pm the eclipse will have cleared.
Back to less exciting things. Rainfall for April was recorded by the Bureau at 16.8mm, well below the long term mean of 64.1mm. The total for the first four months is 194.mm close to the mean of 199mm. However, we had around half of this year’s rainfall late in January.
The wet weather earlier this week was welcome. Some milder autumn conditions were forecast for the end of this week to provide a nice balance. Good time to get into the garden to organise winter crops, prune some of the fruiting plants and get ready for winter.
The Bureau modelling indicates that May to July rainfall is likely to be close to average. Maximum and minimum temperatures are expected to be above average. The El-Nino, Southern Oscillation and most other climate drivers are currently neutral. What is the Southern Oscillation? Well, the BOM web site can keep you busy for hours with lots of information, modelling, historical conditions and climate change analysis.
Victor Szwed is a Daylesford resident who contributes a regular monthly weather column to The Wombat Post.
