Yes, this is big news.
Today, something really strange happened to me, something that I don’t think has ever happened whilst I have been living here in Queensland.
Today, during the daytime, at around 4:30 PM to be precise, I went outside to be greeted by (as usual) a very sunny and clear blue sky, but something was missing.
The heat.
Yes, my usual phrase describing the weather as ‘hot, sunny with clear blue skies’ was reduced to just ‘sunny with clear blue skies’. And here’s the real shocker…
I had to put a sweatshirt on.
Obviously I have worn sweatshirts before, but never (as far as I can remember) here in Brisbane in the afternoon while the sun has been up.
I knew it was going to be cold today, the weathermen forecast it on Friday.
Indeed today was the coldest Brisbane morning June has seen for 12 years, so the coldest June day I have ever seen here. It wasn’t just cold in Brisbane either, southern Western Australia also had their coldest morning for a couple of years and we haven’t yet reached the middle of winter.
It’s even colder in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales though, here’s the weather report from Thredbo…
Back to Brisbane
It’s not as bad as all that though, it may be icy cold over in Thredbo, but that’s exactly what the skiers want. Here in Brisbane it may get pretty cold in the middle of the night, but during the day we often get temperatures in the low 20s Celsius.
As you will have seen in that first video, those sweat tops do come off quite early in the day. But by 4:30 PM in the evening when I went out, temperature had dropped to around 17° C, that is now cold for me.
Seven years ago back in England, 17°, sunny and clear blue skies would have been a beautiful day. How things change once you have acclimatised.
In just over a couple of weeks I’m due to write my latest Winter in Brisbane vs Summer in London post and the odds are getting shorter and shorter that London could, once again, take the lead in this fascinating battle of the Mercury dial.
On the weather – here in the UK we’ve had some extremely nice days recently, though over the weekend it got a bit grim. Fortunately it seems to be picking up again!
I was talking to my dad (he lives near Melbourne) on Sunday and he was complaining that tomorrow’s weather (in Melbourne) was supposed to be about 14 degrees – which, I remarked, was what our weather here in the UK was also supposed to be! But, as I say, we did have it a bit grim over the weekend and it’s picked up. Certainly I remember my trip to Melbourne in November a few years back and the weather was a tad uncertain (still nicer than a lot of our weather in the UK at any time of the year). Next time I go to Australia it’ll be at a nicer time of year.
Still, as I mention, our weather in the UK is nice at the moment. I walk to work and, even though the area of the city I walk through isn’t a nice area and a bit run down, I enjoy it. There’s plenty of trees, grass and shade – something we seem to do very well in the UK. I’ve never noticed quite the same shades of green anywhere else. However, I do know that the dismal, indifferent weather won’t be that far off, and everything will be back to the usual “different shades of grey” look.
Yes, it has to be said I suspect that anyone making a list of things they like about the UK is very unlikely to put weather at the top. When I remind myself of the weather back in England I usually think of dull, grey and drizzle.
It might be cold here in Brisbane at the moment, although only ‘cold’ by comparison to what it’s normally like, we all know for sure that even though we are not yet in the middle of winter, very soon it will be hot again.