Let’s talk about the weather

There’s few things Melburnians talk about more than beverages or sport, but weather is certainly one of them! We suspect that’s because it can be changeable and seems hard to predict, but it doesn’t have to be so mysterious. It’s all about knowledge…

Hosted by VEG’s Jeremy and comprising four sessions across the year this free (yes free*!) series is designed to unleash your inner weather nerd. Occurring at significant points of the annual cycle, each session will cover global climate fundamentals along with current weather patterns and what to look for until the next session.

Occuring on a full moon Equinox eve, Session One was an enjoyable night forming the base for us to understand weather – beginning from a universal then global perspective, of course!

We covered a number of topics including:

• My (Jeremy’s) paradigm assumptions, which leak through the content delivery so it’s only fair they’re explicit upfront:
  • “Everything is in a state of flow”
  • “Nothing is disconnected” and
  • “Humans commonly describe our experience of ‘things’, rarely the ‘thing’ itself = relative perspective”
• We also heard about my Holistic intention for the course: to excite peeps about weather; to build connection with day-to-day experience; to foster stronger presence and celebration of the landscape we inhabit; to challenge myself to learn more and understand more deeply;

Which set the stage for the content itself, involving difficult dexterity tasks, mental agility, and a tolerance for (my) bad jokes. The details were that our climate (and weather) is:

• Driven by the suns’ energy, and how solar radiation interacts with our atmosphere and planet
• Variable largely due to Earths’ (annual) orbit of the sun, the (daily) rotation on our axis and the tilt on our axis
• Rotating with the earth and is inside the closest layer of our atmosphere

We then flowed into the wonderfully confusing Coriolis affect, which leads to Hadley (and the other two) cells, and thus then the beauty and complexity of synoptic charts and how to read them (the two short primer vids on “How To Do synoptic charts” online here and here). We rounded out the evening with the Southern Annual Mode, and some things to watch for and absorb (the key takeaways below) over the next 3 months till we meet again (@ Winter Solstice).

The course is supported by a dedicated forum for participants, along with some handy resources (see below) to accelerate the learnings.

To express your interest to join the course (full details below), please follow the links and we’ll connect you in.

So what’s it all about?

Hosted by VEG’s Jeremy and comprising four sessions across the year this free (yes free*!) series is designed to unleash your inner weather nerd. Occurring at significant points of the annual cycle, each session will cover global climate fundamentals along with current weather patterns and what to look for until the next session.

Bookings through this listing are for all four sessions, running 6pm-8pm @ the VEG warehouse on:

Thurs March 21st (nigh on Equinox)

Thurs June 20th (nigh on Winter solstice)

Thurs Sept 19th (nigh on Equinox)

Thurs Dec 19th (nigh on Summer solstice)

The intent for this course is that the discreet sessional learnings are coupled with self-guided work in between: basically, the more you delve into the content for yourself (with some support & amongst good company), the deeper your understanding is likely to be.

Between sessions, interesting weather highlights will be sporadically shared to participants, via some sort of social media/email group (format to be decided by the group).

Content will move from a global context, to the Australasian region, then the Victorian climate  and finally Melbourne-centric view of typical weather patterns. Along the way we’ll cover many topics:

• global weather generation and patterns (i.e. Hadley cells and the like)
• the difference between weather and climate
• ocean & land effects on weather generation, and how they differ
• El Niño & La Niña and their compatriots in Australia’s annual weather patterns
• exploring the 4-seasons-in-one-day commentary while considering how four seasons across the year doesn’t seem a very good fit
• how to read a synoptic chart (that’s one in action below)
• Melbournian idiosyncrasies like: a temperature drop from 40C to 25C in 10mins on a hot February day, and the rain-sunshine-hail-sunshine experience of a wintry July afternoon

We’ll also have learning resources to help train your weather-eyes day to day, so you can become even more weather savvy.

So, if you’re up for a informative, fun, weather-filled year then sign up and we promise you’ll never see weather the same way again… yes, you too can become That Person in your social circle who is always yabbering on about high and low pressure systems, cloud formation and the likelihood (or not) of a hot, dry summer next year!

FAQ’s:

*Do I have to do all 4 sessions? Nope, but it’ll really help as the learning trajectory is balanced across the year

*What if I miss one? ’tis ok – you’re part of the weather nerd community now… we’ll help you out; that said, this is designed as an accelerated self-guided learning format, so you’ll do best if you work to catch up

*Why is the series free? Well, because we can really; and basically it’s better for everyone if Jeremy talks with other weather nerds who might appreciate the nuances of weather more deeply than most

*I’m from far away, will it be available online? Ah sorry, not at this stage, but if that changes we’ll be sure to announce it

(some) Understanding Weather Resources

*disclaimer: I have no financial or any other affiliation with these apps or websites, I just like and use them

#handy tip: I have a Weather folder on my bookmarks toolbar with each of these (and more!) in there…

(i) Windy is an App (links on their website menu) and website which we’ll use to better understand the synoptic charts, patterns of weather flow and other fun weather stuff; And it’s free!

(ii) we couldn’t do any of this without the BOM (or Bureau of Meteorology), and we’ll use (at least) these pages: synoptic forecast & text based forecast & the METeye; The BOM App is also a must-have for any self respecting weatherybod… also free!

While we’re talking BOM, go right ahead and Like their Facebook page too, and, it’s worth watching this weeks’ update as it’ll help prime your questions, get your eye used to watching synoptics and discover that they’ve got some very excellent presenters on these days!

Another handy one, which incidentally helped get me started on all this weather business is WeatherZone, as a website, a free and a paid app. Feel free to grab it if you like, but I’d offer holding off paying for it just yet, as I reckon Windy (and the next one) cover all it does.

We’ll also use the visually stunning Earth website for watching weather pattern flows. (I have this as a live feed for my screensaver… not helpful for getting work done, but awesome for my eyes and soul! More on how to do that during the course).