@johobbit: Ugh, wagga. I hope rain increases, for the general good of nature, but especially for those bushfires!

Unfortunately, not, when this is supposed to be an El Niño summer. And when it is so dry there are already too many bushfires around, one only a few kilometres away. I hope the El Niño effect doesn't last as long as the other one did between 2017 & 2020, when we had a nasty drought. 

It is good to see that the weather in the North is behaving as it should. 

Yikes, that ^ sounds rough.

Here, we are well into our beautiful Autumn, with daytime temperatures being in the mid-higher single digits; nighttime temps are a few degrees below freezing (for me, absolutely perfect walking weather!). Most of the leaves have fallen, but some are still hanging on. Every night, pretty much, is a good frost - so invigorating. And the night sky sparkles like nothing else this time of year. We have not had rain for a few days; our next chance is this Friday. Outdoor Christmas decorations will be starting to go up soon around the village and in town!

We have about a half acre, so we appreciate our riding lawnmower, especially at this time of year, when we mulch those thousands of leaves and just leave them on the grass for nourishment. We have fifteen maple trees on our property, so you can imagine both the beauty and the tremendous amount of fallen leaves!  

That sounds very pretty, Jo!

Any leaves remaining here will likely succumb to strong winds today and Thursday, but those same winds are from the south and blowing in very warm (for November) air. At 2pm local time, it's an amazing 63F/17C, while the average high right now is 43F/6C. Normally, as (US) Thanksgiving approaches, we worry about big snowstorms or really cold weather, and that could still happen since it's over a week out. But the 7-day forecast is only for temps to cool to around average, which will seem chilly compared to what we have now.

The weather Down Under, is heating up, but is still relatively mild. 27 C today or thereabouts. Lovely overnight showers help a bit, perhaps, though the clouds aren't enough to have proper storms. An onslaught on our increasingly messy front lawn last Sunday has helped keep the Council Rangers away. I really like the idea of a riding lawnmower, but our decidedly smaller front lawn is on a slope going down to the street, so we have to stick with an ordinary lawnmower, that is to say, at times when we are all sound enough of wind & limb to manage.  

@johobbit: we appreciate our riding lawnmower,

Mulching autumn leaves is a sensible idea, but our local council rubbish collection runs to separate weekly organic green bins for kitchen scraps & garden waste which they say can be reused to keep this particular city look nicer. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to run to businesses as well as private properties. We have recycling (yellow) bins as well as red bins for general waste.

Despite people's gardens having trees that have come from just about everywhere else in the world, the normal native vegetation here doesn't normally shed leaves in autumn. Eucalypts, however, do shed bark, especially in the wild & are also highly combustible, as part of their life cycle. I hear that there are eucalypts growing elsewhere in places like California, maybe even in Canada, which might be a reason why there seem to be more wildfires in North America of recent years. 

Over in the Christmas thread, I mentioned (on November 25) that we hadn't had snow yet this month, and that it would be the first November on record without snow should the month end that way. Sure enough, that night we got enough snow to just cover the ground - but it has already melted.

If it's too warm Down Under, stop by our area to cool off! It's a brisk 17F/-8C, with a wind chill around -4F/-20C. The sun is shining brightly but that's deceptive this time of year.

While our ground is bare again, areas hundreds of miles to the south of here (like southern Iowa and eastern Kansas) received a lot of snow over the weekend. I'm sure our turn will come soon enough. 😉

@Stargazer: If it's too warm Down Under, stop by our area to cool off! It's a brisk 17F/-8C, with a wind chill around -4F/-20C. The sun is shining brightly but that's deceptive this time of year

That is colder than the freezer sections of older, last century, supermarkets! Ouch! 🥶 -4C is about as cold as it gets in the subtropical climate of coastal NSW, though it has desert conditions, over the mountains, & the further west one goes. Though we had a warm & dry October, November has had more unsettled weather, with some rain, & even flooding, in some environs, around here. It is as if El Niño took a short rain check, though much of it, earlier was merely threatening clouds, drizzle or a short storm or two. We'll find out when Summer officially starts on Friday. That would be winter where you are. 

Now I can gladly state we have had our first major snow event. On Tuesday, Nov. 28th, squalls were off and on all morning, turning to steady, absolutely gorgeous falling snow in the afternoon/early evening. The forecast was for flurries the following day, but instead it snowed most of the 29th before noon. We ended up receiving 10" of the white stuff. It really looked magical outside, particularly with all the Christmas lights up now.

However, many were not prepared, having not yet changed their summer tires into their winter treads ... including us! That is a job for this weekend, to be sure. The roads were very slick, although the plow/sanding crews were out with regularity.

Sadly, two days later, the temperature rose to 6°C / nearly 43F, then yesterday, rain—an abundant amount—fell, wiping away all the beautiful snow. Ah well, no doubt it will be here again in the not-too-distant future.  

The next week or so will be daytime temps hovering just above 0C, with nighttimes a bit below freezing. Some more rain today and tomorrow, with possible flurries, depending on which way the temperature leans.  

There's something about the first big snowfall of the season, isn't there @jo?  Especially when it comes near Christmas. Rain this time of year is pretty unusual for us Northerners.

We're awaiting that first big snow event, and it's not in the long-range forecast (there's a chance of about an inch tomorrow but that's it). Yesterday was incredibly pleasant for December, with a high temperature of 51F/10C, just short of the record. Stargazing without a coat was fun last night.

Today is overcast but the record high (10C) remains in reach.

Lovely to hear that in the North you are actually getting snow, & that even a mildly white Christmas is not just something to dream about. On the polar opposite of the planet, we are told that in the hottest summer heatwave for four years, today, temperatures will soar to 44C (110F). Up north, Cyclone Jasper can't wait much longer to bear down on Queensland, South Australia is doubling its December rainfall, which may cause flooding around Adelaide, it is stormy in Darwin, whilst Perth is also experiencing extreme fire danger. Balmy Melbourne will have more reasonable temperatures of 25C. Courtenay & Coracle, enjoying snowy UK, I hear, can rejoice.  

@waggawerewolf27 It hasn't quite snowed where I am in Cheshire, but up until a few days ago there was so much frost and ice about that it almost looked like it had snowed. And there really WAS snow in the Lake District, where I was planning to go for a couple of days just for a break, earlier this week, and I ended up cancelling that, simply because the roads were so badly affected that there were huge hold-ups, cars getting abandoned, and so on. As usual, it was actually a ridiculously small amount of snow compared to parts of the world that get it every winter, but because snow in most parts of the UK is so erratic, we're never properly prepared for it when it comes, and so it disrupts everything!

Oh dear! And the Lakes District is so beautiful to visit. Or it was, in 1997, when I was there. I kept looking for the small island where the Swallows & Amazons might have camped, when the map in the books that I read described Lake Windermere to a nicety. Or was the map actually Lake Coniston? I'm not really sure. There was a lovely Arthur Ransome Museum on the lake shore where a motorboat was set up for Nancy & Peggy's Uncle Jim's Swallows & Amazon birthday party. Over the road there was a Beatrice Potter Museum as well. And I don't remember feeling cold there, at all. 

I have to admit that reading British headlines, that comparing them with the amount of snow you are reporting here, conjures up visions of The Day after Tomorrow, with UK obliterated by snow in a new Ice Age, whilst over the pond, in a snowed-under landscape, New York's Library was the only worthwhile place to stay, where they burned all the tax books to keep warm.  Today's Warren Brown cartoon in the Daily Telegraph, shows Sydney landmarks melting in an oven on high.  

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

 I kept looking for the small island where the Swallows & Amazons might have camped, when the map in the books that I read described Lake Windermere to a nicety. Or was the map actually Lake Coniston? I'm not really sure.

It's actually a combination of Windermere and Coniston Water — Arthur Ransome was familiar with both lakes and combined elements of the two for his S&A stories. I've only ever read the first one, but my mum (back in Australia) has been a major fan since she was little and she has the whole series (and most recently re-read them all during lockdown)!   

Our amazingly warm December continues. It actually rained the other night! That's normally unheard of in these parts in mid-December, when the average high is 27F/-3C and the average low is 15F/-9C. Temperatures below 0F/-17C are much more likely this time of year.

Last year we'd had quite a bit of snow by now, but this season has been dry. There is a chance of snow tonight - barely enough to accumulate - and after an average-temperature day tomorrow we're right back into the heat. The long range forecast calls for a possible record high temperature of 46F/8C on Christmas Eve - so any white Christmas hopes here are slim indeed.

@Courtenay: It's actually a combination of Windermere and Coniston Water — Arthur Ransome was familiar with both lakes and combined elements of the two for his S&A stories. I've only ever read the first one, but my mum (back in Australia) has been a major fan since she was little and she has the whole series (and most recently re-read them all during lockdown)!

I've read many of the books, through the local library, or when I later worked in a public library, myself. I fell in love with Swallows & Amazons when the mother of the four "Swallows" said she'd gone sailing in Sydney Harbour, which I thought as a child was awesome. Apart from Seven Little Australians, classical books like The Magic Pudding, or the Billabong books, so few of the stories I read as a child even mentioned Australia at all. It was really great to visit the lakeside museum at Bowness-on-Windermere, aka "Rio". I wonder if it is still there, when it was 26 years or more since I went to it. 

At the moment, it is fine weather but not really all that hot, down here, We are said to get rain for Christmas Day, which I hope comes true. The last thing that is needed on Christmas Day is the sort of torrid 40C type of heatwave that leads to bushfires etc. How is the weather treating you, in UK? 

@stargazer:  so any white Christmas hopes here are slim indeed.

Merry Christmas to all, & I hope that you, stargazer, have a very Merry Christmas, nevertheless.

I'm on the south coast of England, and we're having 12 degrees or so every day. Pretty good for winter.