Australia Is Having A Wild Start To Summer

Huge hail piled up in Sydney Australia just
before Christmas. Photo via News
Corp Australia

First the hail, now the heat.

It's summer in Australia, and the weather this time of year Down Under tends to be volatile. You get severe thunderstorms with epic hail and winds, big time heat waves, droughts and scary wildfires.

These summertime hazards in Australia seem to have been getting more intense in recent years, and this season is off to a bang for sure.  

It started just before Christmas in Sydney.  A hailstorm it, and it was the worst in a generation. See the videos at the bottom of this post.

The storm really caused a LOT of damage. The Guardian reported:

"Tennis ball-sized hail smashed homes and cars in Sydney's west while golf ball-sized stones battered the city's inner suburbs an hour later...

Reports of 'extensive damage' to cars and homes had been received from Sydney's west to Bondi Beach."

The damage mostly consisted of smashed windshields, banged up cars and roofs with holes and pockmarks.  Since the hail hit in a highly populated area, this is turning out to be a really expensive disaster.

According to Reuters,

Lots of cars in Sydney, Australia looked like this after the worst
hailstorm in 20 years just before Christms. 

"Australian insurer Suncorp Group Ltd said on Thursday it has received about 24,800 claims following a Sydney hailstorm last month, with the figures likely to rise over the coming weeks as customers return from holidays. "

The insurer expects total claims to be close to $500 million.

Following the hail, a heat wave settled in to much of  Australia. If you want to warm yourself up a bit in the midst of a cold-ish Northern Hemisphere winter, read on.

Obviously, heat waves are not unusual for the Land Down Under in December and January, but this one is especially nasty.

During the final week of December, the temperature soared to 120 degrees in Marble Bar, Australia which is within three degrees of the all-time high temperature record for the entire nation.

Since Christmas, the Australian heat has been waxing and waning a bit, but is generally hanging tough. Meteorologists are predicting a hotter and drier summer than normal for vast stretches of Australia.

In southeastern Australia, Melbourne caught a brief break from the heat over the New Year's holiday when high temperatures fell into the 70s for a couple days. But the heat returned, pushing temperatures well above 100 degrees by Friday.  This was considered a one in ten year heat event.

To combat increasing heat waves, Australia is making efforts to green
up its cities, including on this Sydney building. 

This doesn't bode well for wildfires, which are often a dire problem in many areas of Australia.

One wildfire in Tasmania, a large island off the southeast coast of mainland Australia, a wildfire turned skies eerily dark over the city of Hobart, which was 60 miles froom the fire.

Like everywhere else in the world, heat can be more intense in Australia in urban areas, where concrete, buildings and asphalt collect and concentrate the heat.  

As heat waves intensify in Australia, in large part due to climate change. the country is beginning to look at how to mitigate these "urban heat islands."  I tried and true solution is to plant more trees and greenery. Poorer neighborhoods in particular tend not to have a lot of trees and grass. Plus some municipalities resist trees, because of course they can topple and cause damage in storms.

However, the push is on to make Australia literally greener to combat these intense heat waves.

Here's some of those hailstorm videos I talked about:

First, the very noisy hail in a parking lot trashing scores of cars:




Just as noisy in a Sydney office as hail crashes through the sky lights. Note how many hailstones are on the carpet:





Here's the hail churning up Sydney Harbor: