Tuesday morning in my little valley. It’s almost 9am and I sit, wrapped up, waiting for some warmth to shine into the air. Got pretty chilly over night. The sun is out, the sky is blue and the air is still a chilly 10c/ 50f.
I am reading of coming, predicted, soon to be at a theatre near you, Weather Events.
It is predicted to be wet for the next many months. And where its not wet, wet, wet it shall be hot, or cold, or tsunami, or something in the middle… but it shall be nasty and abnormal and scary and…
Yes, Chicken Little, the sky is falling… everywhere, all at once.
As near as I can tell, “weather” is what is happening “outside” all the time, everyday, every year. It is never the same, it is always changing, and predicting it is pretty much impossible.
Tho we keep trying.
One thing that we can do with general weather “predictions” is look into the past. Not to predict the future but to compare and report. We have a number of years of records to review, to use, to assist in “trying” to prepare for what comes next. Of course we have learned through generations of observations that certain winds blow in certain directions during certain times of the year. We know that certain winds are dry, others are wet. We know storms, cyclones, hurricanes and tornadoes have seasons, sorta.
In the equatorial tropics of the Solomon Islands I learned that there is generally a wet season, and a wetter season. But sometimes we went into drought.
For the area where I live, I found this bit of essential information… The annual rainfall in the Maleny region typically averages around 2,000 mm (79 in). However, rainfall can be highly variable, with some years experiencing totals reaching up to 4,000 mm (160 in). Monthly and daily rainfall can also fluctuate significantly, with monthly totals sometimes exceeding 1,000 mm (39 in) and 24-hour totals reaching up to 300 mm (12 in)
Maleny, referenced above, is 20 minutes uphill from me. Its is on a peak of the ridge-line, overlooking the coast. I believe weather gets stuck on the ridge, holds and collects moisture. Often the area around Maleny is shrouded in low hanging cloud cover. Fog is a common occurrence.
My valley is in what I consider a “rain shadow”. I’m on the backside of the ridge-line that separates the coastal zone from the country zone. We normally get more rain than the coastal zone, but when the big storms blow in, when the cyclones come, they normally make land fall and hug the coast line, giving us little of the cyclonic effects. As the coast gets battered we sit snug in our valley. But when the weather gets stuck on the ridge-line (which is common) we get dumped on.
These past couple years have been wet, wet, wet… after a year long drought 2019/2020.
Weather collection locations are all over the place, but none really close to where I am. I know from experience that a short distance towards the coast, or a short distance away from the coast means big differences. Travel west, less than an hour from here, and it gets dry very quickly.
So I look at the weather from a number of locations around me… I found this useful resource… http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=136&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_startYear=&p_c=&p_stn_num=040169
My take on predicting the weather is that we cant, really. We can record what has happened and try to think we know something useful from the study of the collected date… but we suck at predicting the weather of tomorrow.
And the beat goes on.
More later
The Native Iowan 
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