Today’s forecast will be hot with fog
Everyone outside Victoria picks on Melbourne’s weather with the same rabid assertiveness when debating other national obsessions like Tony Abbott’s choices of sports wear each week.
I love Melbourne’s weather. I love telling visitors to wear their bathers but bring an overcoat when they pack, I love not putting away the bulk of my winter clothes until late November (and never putting them all away just in case!) and I have an absurdly passionate relationship with the upside-down days when sweltering nights are hotter than the days that follow. All that wasted time trying to sleep in the heat when the cool change could have rolled in a few hours earlier – you bitchface, Mother Nature, but I still love you!
Sydney’s energy-sapping humidity sucks. I remember the week I moved there and was sporting perennially Shirley Temple-curled hair from the humidity, and the first rain I’d experienced dripped down the office windows. I yelled something along the lines of “EUREEEEEEKA, A COOL CHANGE!” and ran from my desk past surprised co-workers who were wondering why the new person had gone troppo. I shot down to ground level, burst out of the building and almost cried in public when I discovered the air-temperature rain just made the heat more wet and soul draining. I took my sopping self (now with new and improved double frizzy curls) back to the office and the sympathy of other homesick Melburnians who got the whole cool change thing. The locals thought I was a fucking idiot with impulse control issues.
Brisbane’s morning heat in summer is horrid. I’ve walked from hotels no more than 200 metres to offices and dripped sheets of sweat, which wasn’t a good look when trying to impress groups of impressionable young folk. The attempts I made to sound convincing as a trainer were belied by my crumpled clothes and sweaty pink face that made me look more like a late-night TV used car salesperson. The balmy climate was more pleasing though at night when I got lost going for walks and spent hours trying to work out how to get out of the big park I’d accidentally discovered. The park was probably a relaxing, pretty place during the day but I scanned the papers to make sure Brisbane wasn’t overrun by warm weather-loving, park-dwelling serial killers at night.
Perth is nicely hot and the Freo doctor is a marvel of refreshment but does it ever rain there? I receive e-mails from a friend high in Perth’s tallest building complaining when a cloud passes by but he has never mentioned the trauma of water falling from the sky.
I’ve never been to Darwin but the locals seem addicted to air conditioners and copious amounts of beer six months of the year so I already know it’s not the city for me. Now that I can knit above the level of piss-poor amateur, I think I’d like Hobart very much because I can wear my scarf and beanie experiments more often. I’ve never been to Adelaide but the summer seems similar to Melbourne’s except for the lack of psychotic cool changes so it might be a nice place to admire the weather, and Canberra, well, it seems too hot in summer and too frosty in winter but kind of unexciting the rest of the time. Landing at Canberra airport once on a frosty morning made me vow never to fly near the place between April and October.
But now I have to buckle and confess that Melbourne’s weather is well and truly bizarre. The days have been sweltering all week, and the nights not dipping below 22 degrees, but what the hell is this pea-souper fog? I turned on the headlights, fog lights and windscreen wipers yet had the windows open and took some clothes off because it was so bloody hot outside. Freaky weather town, I still love you but I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.
Crank-o-meter: dumb-arse weather
February 11th, 2010 at 9:52 pm
I believe Canberra is very dry - so if you straighten your hair it stays straight but your face peels off in lizardy chunks.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:08 pm
Today was the best day ever!
I ran about giggling and shouting at the clouds and rain and whooped at the lightning that hit my Dad’s property. When I drove down the hill it was foggy and humid and still raining. I adore Melbourne’s weather, it keeps you guessing, it can be 5 things in one day. On days like today 774 Melbourne gets distracted by the weather and goes berserk.
I wish I’d stopped and taken pics of the fog too, glad you captured some.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:12 pm
ms c, u probably know the Franga-Cranny Rd, well, i was in the city today and came home after the arvo deluge to find a past shoreline of leaf litter a good metre or 2 away from the gutters and up on nature strips. Foggy this morning, hot as, then pelted down a few times into a rather mild evening (still 19C here in Frankghanistan and it’s past midnight).
Gotta luv it.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:40 pm
Melbourne’s weather is funny because even when it gets hot, it doesn’t get hot for long! Adelaide and Perth are similar for dry heat, except that Adelaide doesn’t get a Fremantle Doctor equivalent to cool things off in the afternoons (it has to be said, though, when it’s really hot, the doctor hits West Coast Highway and stops. Quite annoying given that the highway is 20m from the beach). Brisbane’s humidity is unbearable once past 30 degrees. Darwin is lovely during the Dry, but the Wet would, naturally enough, send me troppo. I don’t give a stuff about Sydney’s weather.
And it does sometimes rain in Perth. Everyone stops to look at it like they’ve never seen such a thing. In September, though, the gales are strong so that the rain goes sideways. Many umbrellas die.
February 11th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
Oh, and re: parks - I have actually been kerb-crawled once. And it was while walking around an inner-city Brisbane park. It was either a serial killer, a rapist, a prostitute-seeker or a plain-clothes policeman looking for drug dealers. Or, maybe all four. I lived.
February 12th, 2010 at 7:21 am
Foodycat, straight hair vs lizard scale skin is a tough decision. I might take the whacky hair and live elsewhere :-).
It rocked, Fen! I can’t stand humid, sultry days, but once the change rolls in I’m WOOOO HOOOOO!
I love your use of the local vernacular, comrade. Good old Franga-Cranny Road, home of where youths throw rocks and bollards at cars, and Karingal Hub!
That’s disturbing, lila, about your experience in Brisbane. I’m glad you got out in one piece (and me, too, now the goosebumps have settled). I shan’t set up an umbrella stand in Perth as my next job then :-).
February 12th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Great trip around our nations weather MsC! I have been hearing some crazy things out of Melbourne. Sydney is indeed disgusting, and at the moment the humidity is foul. The other day it was so bad it was hard to breathe.
February 12th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Hi, HH! It was a great virtual trip considering I haven’t been to some of those cities ;-). We had feral storms last night, although the only damage in my part of town was me getting wet as I haven’t repaired the hole in my car roof. Poo poo on Sydney’s humidity — so energy draining and hard to do anything when the air is that sticky.