| What a weird time it has been here of late in Australia. In the last 24hrs the Australia has experienced a massive dust storm, bushfires, 2 earthquakes, hail the size of cricket balls, a windstorm and a tornado. Not only that but just last week Australia ranked as world number one as worlds worst polluter per person. |  |
This September has broken new records. 3 days over 30C has been one of the more noticeable and the huge dust storm that swept over Sydney and most of the east coast was another.
Early this morning was greeted with a blood red sky and extremely limited visibility, around 300m. The effect was very eerie. As the day progressed it faded through orange and yellow leaving everything coated in a fine layer of dust. The dust was so thick that air pollution levels rose to 1500 times their normal levels. It was estimated that when it went over the Tasman Sea it deposited around 75,000 tonnes per hour into the water. The storm that carried the dust also brought with it hail stones as large as cricket balls that tore through towns to the south of Sydney, 150km/hr winds and a even recorded a tornado in South Australia.
A report by a British company says that Australians have over taken the Americans as the worlds worst polluters of carbon dioxide. (read new article here). It doesn’t really give our Prime Minister Kevin Rudd much of a foot to stand on climate change conference being held in Copenhagen of world leaders. Hopefully it will now mean that we shall lead the way in reforms as well especially as Mr Rudd has done nothing but drag his feet since he came to power despite all his pre-election promises.
Further south 2 small earthquakes have rocked the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. The quakes measured around 2.6 on the Richter scale and damage was minimal. Earthquakes of even this magnitude are rare in Australia.
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