@matigo There was a distinct lack of fresh air here on Monday: I made a special trip to buy a box of P2-rated respirator masks for the guys in the Men's Shed group. P2 rating can handle particles of 3 microns, which covers bushfire smoke.
There was a combination of heavy drizzle & smoke blown north across Bass Strait from bushfires in Tasmania.
// @whoisashygirl
The first large catamaran used for naval service was a wave-piercing design made by Incat in Tasmania & used by the Royal Australian Navy, commissioned as HMAS Jervis Bay.
During the two years of the ship's charter by the RAN, Jervis Bay made 107 trips between Darwin and Timor Leste, shipping 20,000 passengers, 430 vehicles and 5,600 tonnes of freight, becoming known as the "Dili Express". Running the catamaran was found to be more efficient than using air transport to move materiel to and from Timor Leste, with the higher sailing speed meaning she could turn around a payload faster than multiple C-130 Hercules flights for an equivalent load.
She was used between 1999 & 2001 as a naval transport vessel.
Such a vessel would have been ideal to transport evacuees from Mallacoota in Victoria’s east to Hastings on the Mornington Peninsula, a round trip of some 650 nautical miles. Jervis Bay’s average speed is 2.5 times the maximum speeds of MV Sycamore & HMAS Choules, which were used for the first stage of the sealift, transporting around 1,100 people. There are still 4,400 remaining who are scheduled to be evacuated by sea.
@variablepulserate The radar itself detects particles, it cannot determine the difference between smoke & water vapour. Serious fires will form their own localised weather, often with columns of smoke, etc 15 km high. This is when things get nasty, dry lightning is created, adding to the fire danger.
Filthy weather today, thunderstorms abound and rain approaches. Allegedly. The radar might be tracking smoke from a bushfire burning out of control in the northeastern suburbs. Reports of at least one home lost to that fire. Temperature is now around 30°C and falling, was 43° earlier. Gusty winds complicate matters.
@matigo Received your email, thanks. Account set up. There's iOS, desktop & Android apps, of which only the Android one works properly. I can't log in with any of the iOS apps I tried, get this error message: Access Forbidden CSRF check failed.
The Mac app is only a portal to the online version, so I'll kill that off & just use a webapp.
I suspect my brother & his family may be affected by this warning: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-29/people-told-to-leave-east-gippsland-as-bushfire-risk-rises/11831304
The affected area is around 230 km from here, to the east-northeast. My brother's in-laws have a holiday home not far from the affected area.