The Irish are a people who dream about money but talk about the weather. It’s hard to know what Australians think about (sex and gambling I’d wager) but they hardly ever talk about the weather. And that is a great disappointment to me because I find it fascinating. High pressure fronts, wind direction and those fluffy clouds that look like candyfloss on hot summer days. It’s a wonderful mystery to me.
Since I arrived here, I’ve endured the hottest day ever in Victoria, the warmest night ever and storms of biblical proportions. Not to mention the mysterious ‘cool change’ which arrives like a gift from God on hot days and like most things religious goes unquestioned by the masses. I have yet to find a single Melbournian who can explain it.
This interest in matters meteorological lay dormant within me for many years. Geography was my best subject at school but not my favourite. I leaned towards the excitement of History and the romantic ability of English to overcome chronic shyness. A heart wrenching poem nervously passed to a girl on a school bus had more effect than a weather forecast, that’s for sure.
Then there were the dull years living in England and Ireland where weather was boring and predictable. Only two patterns were noticeable. Cloudy with sunny spells or sunny with cloudy spells. But Australia has reawakened my interest in the cosmos. Over here they have big weather, cyclones licking the Northern coasts, great thermal airstreams bubbling over the Central desert and the mighty Antarctic to the South, throwing freezing winds and rain across the Southern Ocean. It’s no wonder they can afford a dedicated weather channel that seems to constantly have breaking news of epic proportions. A cyclone in Darwin, floods in NSW, a heat wave in Adelaide, all breathlessly delivered by shiny hosts who look like they’d be in their element if a Tsunami wiped out the Eastern Seaboard.
So I spend part of my day now staring at clouds, like some 19th Century English poet, checking temperatures and wind directions and looking for predictions on the web as to when the glorious cool change will come.
Much of this is practical of course. I cycle to work, so I need to know whether to bring a rain jacket or sun crème and to mentally prepare myself for the conditions on the way home. Last week I cycled home in 43c heat, which is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. It was hotter than a stolen Ferrari and most of the City had taken the sensible precaution of staying home with blinds pulled and the air conditioning on full blast. I shared the road home with some mad dogs and the occasional Englishmen who found out they had rented a Colonial house with stately qualities which doesn’t include a cooling system. They quickly realised that the only air conditioning available to them is in their car. And so they spent the night of 43c heat, circling the City in their SUV’s.
When I got home I lay on the couch and watched the room spinning around me. That was fun until I felt the contents of my lunch revolving back to their entry point.
Wind has become a fascination for me. I cycle 8km northward towards the city each day and then 8km southward towards St Kilda in the evening. The wind on the other hand takes the opposite approach. With the regularity of sunrise, a warm northerly blows into my face as I trundle up St Kilda Road and then each afternoon it switches direction so that a fierce southerly coming from the Antarctic will stifle my progress on the way home. It’s enough to make you want to move to the opposite side of town.
Wind is also the aspect of weather that does get spoken about here. People know that a North wind means hot air, bush fire risk and occasionally red dust from the Central desert. Winds from the South bring cool air and sometimes, in this drought ridden corner of the world, rain.
Ireland is just about the windiest country in the world but despite the constant chatter about the weather, hardly anyone understands or discusses the wind. Rain dominates conversion, as though people think that after two millennia they can find a new and interesting way of talking about it. If Eskimos have 74 different words for snow, then Irish people can match this when it comes to rain. If someone comes back from lunch in Dublin and is asked what the weather is like, he can say something like “it’s a soft day but it’s only spitting” and everyone would know what they mean. Ask him what direction the wind is coming from though and you’ll get a blank stare. The only wind that gets regular discussion there is they smelly variety caused by drinking too much Guinness.
As for the cool change, you’ll find 453,000 references to it on Google but none of them seem to explain how it happens. When it comes, temperatures can drop by 20c in twenty minutes and sometimes you can actually feel it chasing you up the street. It’s as refreshing as a cool beer on a hot day and does more to improve the mood of Melbournians than all the prescription drugs taken by suburban housewives.
I’ve set myself the task of trying to understand it and will spend 2010 studying weather patterns and searching bookstores for suitable texts that are neither too technical nor overly simplistic, such as cloud pattern books aimed at the neurotically romantic. There has to be a better explanation out there than the standard one, which runs along the lines that the central desert is hot and the Antarctic is cold and they winds created by both fight a daily battle for supremacy over the skies of Melbourne.
I may even take a college course in meteorology. But that would cost money of course and as an Irishman, that’s what I’m secretly thinking about.
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