21 November 2008

Batten down the hatches, the ants are worried

21 November 2008 | johnboy

Yesterday there was a normal sized ant mound in the driveway, this morning they’ve raised the ramparts significantly. This despite the clear blue skies we’re enjoying this morning.

The BOM forecast reckons 20% chance of late showers.

But the ants seem to think differently. I guess we’ll see.

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Granny12:15 am 24 Nov 08

This reminds me of the Weathersnike. All we need now is a piece of limp seaweed.

ant10:58 pm 23 Nov 08

There’s another series of systems arriving from mid-week, but they’re inland ones, and in recent years they haven’t brought the big rainfall totals. ECLs tend to be more spectacular with rainfall. Perhaps the ants think another ECL will form in tandem with the inland troughs?! I hope they’re right.

johnboy9:22 pm 23 Nov 08

The ant fortifications have risen to ever greater heights and stand proud. I’ll do another picture tomorrow morning.

rosebud7:40 pm 23 Nov 08

Ants 1: Ant Skeptics 0

SheepGroper5:17 pm 23 Nov 08

So – did the ant hill survive the rains, or was it washed away?

ant10:38 am 23 Nov 08

2 post nutbag: if anyone wants to see some “on the ground” photoes of the snow, head to
http://forum.weatherzone.com.au
and go to the Breaking Weather forum. You’ll see 2 topics running there for this system, and the last few pages of each have some pretty incredible pictures. They’ve had a LOT of snow around Bathurst, Orange, Oberon and in the Blue Mtns.

I wish this southerly would stop it, it’s worse than anything we got yesterday.

ant10:13 am 23 Nov 08

Well, the ants knew something. The cold snap was known-about, but this has now turned into an East Coast Low, which brings lots of moisture and it’s “bombing” right off our coast at the moment, which is what brought all that rain overnight. It’s rare for a cold snap to be also very wet, but this combo will do it.

Lots of snow up around the blue mountains, and the area beyond (lithgow etc). There’s highway closures up there. And it’s still coming… the low has moved slowly up the coast and is still going, there’s a new severe wind warning out for the SE half of the state, and I’m copping near-gale-force southerlies at the moment. More rain is just to the east and will move over us shortly. Um, make that “now”! It’s moving fast.

Spring weather is always a bit weird, but this event is set to break some records.

starry1:33 pm 22 Nov 08

Apparently light snow just past Murrenbateman.

ant10:33 pm 21 Nov 08

I don’t like ants in the garden either. As someone else said, they farm pests for their by-products. Out here, many trees are severely damaged by the ants farming scale, to feed of the nectar it produces. It wrecks the saplings though. I regard too many ants with concern and suspicion, and make up a mix of borax and fine sugar to get rid of them.

I don’t think we’ll get much rain out of this system, although it’s nudging up the southern Vic area right now and there is some decent rain falling down there. It’ll be windy as hell though, I’ve already got a strong southerly blowing up here.

This weather system is slated to become an eastern cut-off low, so that would prove me wrong, these often turn into very wet events. However, arctic events are seldom wet.

Vic Bitterman8:10 pm 21 Nov 08

That anthill is screaming for me to line up the rear wheel of my XR600 and drop the clutch.