What’s Wrong With Brisbane?

First post of 2014, happy New Year to you. I hope this is the year you all achieve your dreams, maybe I might achieve one or two of mine as well. Here’s to hoping!

I’ve had a jolly good holiday break since before Christmas and spent part of that time in a small seaside town called Yamba. This is Yamba…

But I’ll tell you all about that later in the week, today we have…

What’s wrong with Brisbane?

I live in Brisbane and I absolutely love it here. After six years, from what I’ve seen, there is no other city in Australia where I’d rather be. Not everybody feels that way though, so what is wrong with Brisbane?

Judging by the comments I get here, it seems that for many people Brisbane is simply too hot. I’m sure there are other reasons many people do not like Brisbane, but the heat and humidity are most commonly mentioned.

I mentioned this now because it’s been hot here over the last few days in all of Queensland, very hot. Records were expected to be broken in Brisbane CBD over the weekend, but they weren’t. The city only managed a measly 38.7°C, the record is 41°C.

I don’t live in the city though, I live in western suburbs. Our weather station is in Archerfield:

‘Archerfield, west of Brisbane, recorded its highest ever temperature since records began with a top of 43.5 degrees, just eclipsing the previous record of 43.3 degrees.‘

That’s hot! For those interested, it’s about 110°F.

I can tell you though, that where I live which is further out west than Archerfield, my thermometer tickled 46° C (about 115°F) during the afternoon. If you want to know how uncomfortable that kind of temperature can be, read my article It Was a Hot Day.

Needless to say, I was sweating buckets just staring at a computer screen. Who knows how much sweat I might have produced had I been doing physical work. I know, let’s not think about it.

Melting, me, Mrs Bob and Elizabeth actually drove to a shopping centre, didn’t want to do any shopping, we just wanted to be in the air conditioning. On the way we drove past my favourite thermometer which once read an astonishing 36° during the winter.

This time it was too hot for me to get out of the car to take a picture, so here’s one I made earlier…

Yes, it’s been hot. It’s been hot in the morning, it’s been hot during the day, it’s been hot in the evening and it’s been hot throughout the night.

When all is said and done though, I still love Brisbane. Sometimes, yes, the weather borders on intolerable. Maybe that’s just for about five weeks in the year. For the other 47 weeks though, it’s like paradise for me.

But then I do like hot, I’m comfortable up to about 32°, it’s only when we get beyond that that it becomes uncomfortable and 46° is way beyond that.

An Australian heatwave

It’s not just hot in Queensland though, this poor baby koala could barely cope with the heat in Adelaide…

What happens next?

I can tell you exactly what happened next and it’s what usually happens. At some point during the heatwave, and for us it was today, we are told storms are on the way.

Our storms hit at around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, a quite common time for storms to arrive. As the storm breaks and the rains begin to fall heavily, the people of Brisbane line the streets, clapping and cheering and shouting…

“Hooray, hooray, the storms are here, hooray, hooray!”

Well, they don’t, not in reality, but inside they are. Within minutes, temperatures fall. By 6 PM we were at 25°C. Tonight we will all sleep a little more easily.

So will the people on Stradbroke Island who you may have heard mentioned in the above video. The eye of the storm passed right over the fires on the island, hopefully snuffing out the danger that threatened their homes.

Update January 8: According to the news last night, 60 mm of rain fell on the North Stradbroke Island fire zone during the storm yet, incredibly, the fire continues to burn dangerously, threatening homes.