I have also come to the very strong conclusion in the past month that modern weather forecasting has indeed gone up many wrong paths with trying to forecast ahead from global computer models...They will always suffer from only being accurate ahead a few days...They will always change dramatically with every run when forecasting more than a a few days ahead...They just cannot work any further ahead accurately, as they have no forecasting basis to work on, just a little background sea surface temperature, and away they run from a certain set of observations each time. they will run something like what will happen for a few days, but then with no forecasting basis to work onn they will chop and change and fail as they have and still do and always will, unless big changes are made imo.......The weather science imo made a wrong turn many years ago and have gone the wrong way ever since. (It suddenly came to me in a flash of divine inspiration from above...Could not have come from my feeble brain anyway, for sure!...Prayer always helps the inspiration for sure!)
Might very well write a book on it one day in the future, starting soon, and attempt to publish it when I finish my business, but I have to keep trade secrets at the moment unfortunately, to keep the wolf from the door! Would like to write it all down for all in the future, however, for sure. The whole weather and all is just so interesting and never a day, week, season or year goes by without something popping up that does not seem to fit, and the way to learn is like ROM does I reckon, and that is try to find out why it does not seem to fit...There is always a reason for everything that occurs with the weather, it is not random stuff at all, ever!...imo again, anyway!

This confession bit is becoming a bit of a problem!

CONFIDENTIAL
For IPCC staff and associated climate forecasting organisations CRU & GISS.

Our newly recruited staff member ROM will fit in very well with our policy requirements on climate forecasting .
As many of you know it is our policy not to put new staff members onto computer modeling of climate immediately on hiring.
As ROM suffers from a serious "fat finger" syndrome it is unlikely that he will ever be involved in such computer modeling per se.

However as a part of the IPCC's short term climate forecasting field work he was given the opportunity to read and divine the signs in the springs aligned along the southern edge of the Little Desert, using wondrous methods called "educated guessing".
These signs that are an intrinsic and vital piece of evidence that will contribute to a much longer three week climate forecasting model.
ROM's initial inspections and divinations were held in the highest regard particularly when those divinations forecast that the springs were due to rise and rain was but a bare few weeks away.
Further inspections were held as of Friday and again in accordance with IPCC policy objectives, this divination of the signs has required a modified hockey stick like a flat one with regard to future rainfall projections.
Or as ROM says ; where the hell is all the bloody spring water that was supposed to be here!
We assure all our compatriots that yes, it is still all wet at them there spring pools but the signs haven't changed and the divinations re climate precipitation of the recent past of good rain in three weeks are up the creek in a barb wire canoe.
Said canoe may float some time ahead but not in three weeks.

ROM is currently engaged in drawing up a new hockey stick profile for this year's precipitation forecast.
This precipitation forecast for 2010 is based on the profile of Dr Mann's unique and classical hockey stick profile which with further enhancements that, like Dr Mann's classic stick, have no basis in reality and will disavow the public that we might be looking a bit of a longer dry spell than we anticipated.

From our organisation's perspective, ROM does have a small but serious handicap, nobody has taught him to lie spectacularly and convincingly.
A press release with suitable soothing noises on future precipitation prospects will be made but we won't let ROM within a bull's roar of it.

I am sure ROM will be judged by his endeavors to be fully worthy of being included in the illustrious IPCC and CRU and GISS team of climate forecasting experts.
He gets it wrong just as much as we do although he has invented less excuses!

Signed

Choo Choo Porchari


PS; My next soft porn book can be bought at any quality porn shop or contact Amazon who will sell anything to get a buck.

CCP.

Ian I have been saying that for a while. One little error that occurs turns into a massive one the more times the bad data is used to create another forecast. I know many people say that climate and weather models are different in the way they operate but I don't think it makes much of a difference. Weather is a consenquence of climate and if the weather is so badly off course a few days into a run, something is wrong with the climate model too. I wonder how many computer models have assumptions about a warming climate written into them and if this is having an effect?

Anyhoo ROM did you get a look at the springs??? ANY ACTION????

Ah well , back to standard format.
That last post obviously didn't work.

Not good news Adon.
Those springs, and I looked at all three to see if I was missing something, just have not changed in the last week.
The water from the rain is gone out of the pool as per last week but the bottom of the spring pool is very wet and soggy unlike the very dry land around the spring pool and out into the paddock but it ain't running water out of the aquifer in any amounts as it appeared to be about to do last weekend.
And I think this is the latest yet that I have not seen those springs running quite well at this time of the year.
So I really have no further info or am willing to make any suggestions on the future outlook as it is all rather curious as to what is happening out there.
Apologies for this sort of info as you desperately need some decent rain to try and get something after the devastation from those locusts and we need a bloody good drenching down here as well.

Atmospheric wise, we won't get anything decent out of any fronts or troughs until we get that NW tropical water vapour infeed coming across that gap that has run across the middle of the continent for weeks now.

Ah bugger was hoping they would be going by now. Dunno abou this system coming. Too much wind for my liking. Hope we can get some out of it but they have a tendancy to blow over and not drop much.

Looks good for widespread rains of 10 to 15mm, isol 20mm in your area Adon to me from this system. Should slow up them nasty insects a bit!
My "non global model forecasting aids" suggest a reasonably good few weeks to come rain-wise.

That's what all those drifting spider webs a few days ago said as well Ian, so I don't know what is going on with the springs.

And rain is definitely on the way as the "thermal waves", those smooth curved lenticular shaped clouds that you sometimes see over and above the tops of cumulous clouds are quite prominent during various times of the day at the moment.
Where you see these thermal wave clouds, rain will usually follow within 24 hours.

If they are going to become visible due to increased moisture and the stability index above cloud base is suitable for their formation, they will show up around some 24 hours or often less in front of some reasonable rainfall.

Modern glider pilots often work these thermal waves over vast areas of totally flat country which are formed as the upper air stream, which is often a different direction to the air stream below the inversion levels, flows over the big hill like humps that is caused by strong thermals punching up through the inversion.
This is the same effect as air flowing over a mountain range or high hills and Lenticular wave systems forming only this time it is over thermal sources poking up through an inversion, thermals which are often marked by cumulous clouds.

And just for interest, you can identify from the ground with no instruments the wind direction and wind strength some thousands of feet up in the atmosphere above cumulous cloud tops by looking at the direction and lean of an individual cloud.
The way the cloud leans over and the direction it leans over gives wind strength and direction at the cloud height and above the cloud base.
Some very rough mental vector calculations are required as you also have to make allowance on just which direction and how fast the surface winds below cloud base are pushing that thermal source that creates the cloud along which of course also alters the way the upper winds affect the cloud lean.

Then just apply the "with your back to the wind, the low pressure area is on your right" rule and you have a rough guide on the synoptic situation in the above cloud and higher atmosphere for your area of Australia.
And from that you can roughly figure out how that upper synoptic situation wlll affect the surface weather.

Edit; POAMA are shifting their forecast quite quickly towards a wetter period just ahead.

OK! Springs have started running.
Only about 3 or 4 mms rainfall for the week out along the Little Desert's southern fringe and due north of Mt Arapiles, according to the crude rain gauge I have out there but this ties in with the about 4 mms here in Horsham for the last few days.
This time the spring pool had quite a large pool of water in the bottom and the soil in the pool floor was almost slop.
The second and more remote spring pool water level, which is right back nearly in the Little Desert Park, had risen a small amount since inspection last friday so I say that the local springs have finally started running and about time!

Spider webs drifting over the last week and a decent fog this morning at last and all the natural signs point to some reasonable rains in this region within a couple of weeks at the latest.

Hey guys, I really can't be bothered to read all the previous posts, so I hope I'm not repeating too much.

Basically, air pressure has no effect on the underground systems which cause springs. At a depth of 1m, there is a huge amount of pressure just from the weight of the soil, a small difference in air pressure is nothing in comparison. They are caused by a rise in the groundwater table, which could be a result of a rain event hundreds of years ago. I can go into more details if you want.

The fact people seem to notice the springs running just before a rain event is just coincidence.... you only notice and remember the things you want to.

Seeing as you cannot be bothered reading through the previous posts would you care to enlighten us as to to your reasonings/qualifications on this subject.
This subject has a fairly long and in depth study as to the actions of springs and their associations with rain events by some very knowledgeable forum members and you pop in here with your comments of you only remember what you want to remember.

Poppycock! The thing you must remember is that while yes there are significant pressures at work on groundwater sub-surface, those pressures are for the main consistent, without variation. So the variability of air pressure, while small, is just as plausible as it was before your post.

And I think ROM's work in inspecting and then reporting on the activities on his local springs is a bit more than him noticing and remembering things he wants to!

To start with I'm a civil engineer. So around half of my work is geology, and about a quarter of that is working with the saturation of soil and where aquifers are. Yes, water can travel upwards towards the surface due to something called 'pore water pressure,' but this is only in the top few meters of soil and in a clay soil the water only travels and around 0.00005m a second (and thats going down). So even if the pressure did drop at the surface for a few weeks the moisture in the soil would barely move.

What I meant with the 'remembering what you what you want to' comment, is that unless you go out every day and record which springs are running and which aren't, how long they run for, and which days it rains, you will normally only be remembering things which back up your opinion. If every spring is always running just before a big rain event then you might have a case.

The springs running for no reason in the middle of a dry period are almost definitely due to a wetting front moving along an impermeable layer of rock.

I understand that there are some very smart people in here and I'm not trying to offend anyone. My specialty is soil mechanics and i can tell you if the ground becomes less stable (which is what is being claimed) every time the air pressure drops a few pascals.. get out of your home now

And yes ROM is doing a really good study

If you had read through this forum then you would have known that ROM checks these springs on a regular basis and notes their activity in relation to forthcoming and past rain events.
The accuracy so far is very outstanding.

What I'm saying is the water that is appearing at say ROM's springs doesn't come from nowhere, it could have traveled from a hundred Km away. Its not the air pressure that is effecting when the spring runs, and how much flow there is. In fact it was the past rain events which caused the water to enter the soil. The only thing that controls when that water appears at the spring is the time it took to travel from where it originally fell. It's just a coincidence that these wetting fronts are reaching the spring before a rain event. Although it does seem impressive, its just a smaller scale model of the great artesian basin. Rain 3 million years ago in Eastern Queensland eventually reaches Western QLD. I will post a diagram soon to help show you what I mean.

Sorry ROM, just using your place an an example here. I don't know the landforms above or below the ground around his place, but the theory is still the same.




http://i878.photobucket.com/albums/ab347/seanno09/Untitled-2.jpg

Well that makes two of us Seann (Civil Engineers), when and where did you graduate?

I don't think anyone here is claiming there is a definite and irrefutable link between MSLP and spring activity; to do so would be foolish. And so it is the same with making your claim that there is definitely no link between the two.

There is much we don't know about the mechanisms at work below the surface (I just had the experience of observing a water deviner find groundwater at a depth of 100m through solid granite using a willow branch and he predicted the depth to within 2.5m, all on top of a hill) and to close one's mind off to possible explanations, I think, is fairly naive.

To say the timing of spring flows today are due to the timing of rains X years ago is far too simplistic. That would imply that there was next to no storage underground absorbing the variation in flows and that the whole system is a flow in equals flow out, with a simple lag period. This of course is not true, there is more than ample storage sub-surface to absorb the variation in inflows and provide relatively consistent and stable outflows. One would think this would lead to relatively consistent and stable flows at the surface (and in some locations this is true; my parents spring for example has not ceased in flows nor varied greatly in some 25 years) however the fact these often aren't, suggests there must be another mechanism at work. That, and the observation that these springs often begin to flow before a large rain event (and the onset of the 'wet' season in southern Australia, ie winter in general) would indicate that whatever mechanism is at work controlling the spring flows has some relationship to the mechanisms controlling the weather.

So, conincidence? I think that is unlikely.

Only problem is that the main spring that I have looked at over the last 8 years is near and perhaps only lower by about 6 metres from the top of a quite large sand hill.
Any higher ground areas are at least a kilometre away across much lower and wide smooth swales.
And when that spring is flowing good, there is, as I have posted quite frequently in the past, a soak line perhaps some 200 metres long that gets very wet and extends out into a cultivated area that covers roughly a hectare which also gets very wet to the extent that it cannot be driven across with the spray rigs when the rest of the paddock is still quite dry.

That is a bloody lot of water to come out of the top 6 metres of a sand hill that may be perhaps no more than 500 metres long..

And that same soak line then extends for perhaps a kilometre or more with another lower lying but rarely active spring also located on the same soak line.
The soak lines in this whole area where the aquifers are right near the surface are very easily identified by the native rushes type plants that grow along the soak line area and the where the shallow aquifers are very near the surface, occasional small patches of these same rushes, mostly in low lying areas although sometimes well up sides of the gentle slopes in the area are evident although there is no evidence of any surface water in any of these spots.

So those shallow aquifers extend a long way under swales and low lying parts and up across distant rises and hills to bring all that water into that spring area BUT it still does not explain why and how they so obviously start and stop running when they do.
Or why they only turn up at ground surface in some parts, the springs in this case, instead of popping up all over as hydrostatic pressure from distant and higher elevations forces the aquifer water up through any available fissures to the surface.
In real life, it just doesn't happen that way.

And yes as I have posted a number of times past the springs are obviously fed from shallow aquifers but why they start running when they do a couple of weeks before the first of the winter rains arrive and this after ferociously dry springs, summers and into the dry autumns as has happened over the last decade around here and why they stop running a few weeks before the winter rains run out of puff in spring even after reasonable winter rains which should have recharged those shallow aquifers, has never been satisfactorily explained.

And they do it weeks before the winter rains start and they slow down and stop flowing a couple of weeks before the winter rains stop as I have unfortunately found out when I didn't believe the indications from the cessation of the spring flows that the winter rains were going to cut off early which they did and our crops suffered badly as a result.
Not that we could do much about the crops suffering except to stop any further inputs and therefore extra, non effective costs.

And there have been some highly qualified and very experienced old hands at this sort of field work over many, many years who have struggled to come up with an acceptable explanation for the timing and cause of spring flows and none of those explanations have been consistent with the real world behavior and timing of the spring flows.

So far nobody and there are many, many people in the rural areas who know of and have watched spring activity for decades as did their fathers and grand fathers, has come up with a completely satisfactory explanation to explain why springs flow when they do and why do they stop when they do.
And any explanation has to cover all the various circumstances and very wide range of terrain that springs are found in across not only Australia but in other parts of the world as well.



It is a bit like the question that is increasingly being asked now that we are seeing very low solar activity stretching possibly over the next few decades and this for the first time in many generations.
Why, as history indicates, does there seem to be much more global volcanic activity and possibly earthquake activity during these periods of sustained low solar activity?

Fri; 28 / 05 / 2010;
24 mm @ 27 kilometres north of Horsham.

First decent winter rain event for our patch and first decent rain event since April 7 thereabouts @ 25 mms and 11 mms April 20th.

My assessment of the spring flow status from the previous posts this last month or so.
I am NOT claiming anything from this but just decided to actually check to see just how close I was to getting it somewhere near right.
Not as good as I would like to have been but I guess we would all like to be infallible in any forecast but I think a lot better than chance or just plain guessing.
Springs certainly seemed to be consistent in the buildup to this first decent rain event for this area but my forecasts were somewhat mixed as the slow and stuttering build up had me fairly guessing as to what was happening at times.

Note also I said "this area".
I have the strong impression gained from the other poster's comments here on the spring flow timing in their area that there seems to be some sort of regional variation in spring flows that is again an association between spring flow timing and the anticipation of rain events in the regional locations of those particular springs

So draw your own conclusions as this is what I posted, warts and all!

3 / 03 / 2010. ; Bit of a false alarm although we got the above mentioned 25 mms April 7th, just over 4 weeks later?!


9 / 05 / 2010


14 / 05 / 2010


21 / 05 / 2010


27 / 05 / 2010, ; This one is a bit unfair as rain was forecast but it does indicate how the spring flow was building up prior to the rain event.

There had so many theories on this topic. From my own point of view, weather patterns had dramatically change over the years. The change is very evident on tropical countries than in the west. In southeast asia for instance, typhoons were stronger now than before and very unpredictable. Amount of rainfall had also increased over the years. From what I see, this is caused by the global warming of the atmosphere. I don't want to sound like a doomsdayer, but what really is happening to our planet is alarming and cause for concern. There may be no abrupt changes but the next generation certainly is affected by what we do today.