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  #381  
Old 07-11-2012, 05:08 PM
cyclone
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Quote:
Originally Posted by johnsonlau View Post
The Davis Vantage Pro is in Mareeba? I found the humidity is as high as 100% at night time. Would it be foggy in the early morning?
the unit is a backup unit, please ignore humidtiy (faulty sensor) wind speed and direction (anemometer is at 1.5m and not 10m) i will add tape over the values tomorrow . main weather data is here http://www.gorgecreekorchards.com.au/


I have live weather here as well http://www.gorgecreekorchards.com.au/wx/flash.html it well say if it foggy or not also this graph has sky clarity http://www.gorgecreekorchards.com.au...ltimegraph.gif

Last edited by cyclone; 07-11-2012 at 05:37 PM.
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  #382  
Old 07-11-2012, 08:09 PM
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... and with all the road closures and stuff... it's starting to freak me out!

Hope I can get enough details before flying down from Kuala Lumpur on Sunday and Cairns on Monday.

This thread is surely a live saver!
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  #383  
Old 07-11-2012, 10:40 PM
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Phil Hart
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How early do you need to hit the road to travel inland?

Very interested to hear from those with that rare combination of local knowledge and eclipse experience.. How early do you think people need to leave Cairns/Port Douglas if they are planning to observe the eclipse from locations along the Mulligan Highway?

Assuming a typical forecast like the last few days, will the few sweet spots along the Mulligan Highway get occupied by people during the day on the Tuesday or will most people not move to these kind of locations till just the hours prior to eclipse?

Does that long straight stretch of the Mulligan Highway 25km west of Mt Carbine provide ample opportunity for parking off the road, so that you could turn up there after 5am and still expect to find a spot to safely pull off the road?

Is the Mulligan Highway likely to become congested in the couple of hours before the eclipse, or under the typical kind of weather pattern we've seen, will most people just take their chances where they are? ie.. do you expect thousands or just hundreds of people trying to travel along that road in the pre-dawn hours?

Appreciate thoughts on this one.. particularly from people like Mr Cuttle!

Phil
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  #384  
Old 07-11-2012, 10:46 PM
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JethroB76 (Jeff)
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Exact question I have been pondering over the last few days Phil - definitely interested in thoughts on just how much scope there is for parking off the road in this area
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  #385  
Old 08-11-2012, 12:23 AM
gary
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Originally Posted by philiphart View Post
Very interested to hear from those with that rare combination of local knowledge and eclipse experience.. How early do you think people need to leave Cairns/Port Douglas if they are planning to observe the eclipse from locations along the Mulligan Highway?
Hi Phil,

What you are really asking is how many people are likely to turn up for the
eclipse?

The answer is, nobody knows for sure.

But given every rental car is booked as is nearly all the accommodation,
one can imagine the numbers will be very sizable.

Being involved in amateur astronomy 24/7 and in talking to enthusiasts
and seeing posts here and elsewhere, we know the numbers will be considerable
for the amatuer demographic alone.

But anecdotally, it is the number of people I have chatted to who aren't
amateurs but who are going or they know someone who is. Talk to your barber,
your dentist, or work colleagues and they will often know about the eclipse
or in turn know someone who is going. I have stopped being surprised.

One big difference between this eclipse and say the 2002 South Australia
eclipse or the 1976 eclipse down the southern NSW coast is that this one
goes right through a city with a reasonable population.

in South Australia, some went to Ceduna on the coast. We were just north of
Woomera and in any case, it was a long drive for nearly everyone and there
was plenty of room to stand around when you are in the middle of nowhere.

Likewise in '76, it was easy to find a spot because it was a decent way from
Sydney (we chartered a Cessna out of Bankstown) but also in '76
the world was a different place. Cheap Dobs didn't exist. Nobody had cable TV
or the DIscovery Channel. To travel on a Jumbo jet was a luxury.
You had to be keen to go out of your way to come to an eclipse.

So come next Wednesday, Cairns has a local population of some 152,000
and a lot of those people will also be anxious to get a view of the eclipse.
So if it is cloudy in Cairns, you can imagine what large numbers of them
will do and that in itself tells you what you and I need to do too.

Last edited by gary; 08-11-2012 at 09:00 AM.
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  #386  
Old 08-11-2012, 02:06 PM
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h0ughy (David)
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one thing to note is the mobile phone coverage - be aware that if you head west there will be no coverage - so there will be no chance to gloat or commiserate to your mates back interstate until you get back to your base
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Last edited by h0ughy; 09-11-2012 at 08:16 AM.
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  #387  
Old 08-11-2012, 06:59 PM
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Hi Glen,
how many people you think will be there?
I am very concerned that along the highway there will be no place to settle.
I am staying in Palm Cove, but all options are open now.
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  #388  
Old 08-11-2012, 11:43 PM
gary
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The estimated number of people coming into Cairns for the eclipse is
somewhere between 35,000 and 60,000.

Based on the number of beds and occupancy rates, estimates made last month by
The Courier-Mail were that there would be an influx of 50,000.

Four charter flights are coming in from Japan alone.

Cairns itself has a population of around 152,000. Many undoubtedly won't
miss the opportunity and will rise early before work to see the eclipse. Even if a small
fraction of the local population get mobile on the morning, it is a sizable number
of people in total.
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  #389  
Old 08-11-2012, 11:58 PM
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jjjnettie (Jeanette)
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Its going to be a memorable experience for sure.
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  #390  
Old 09-11-2012, 07:48 AM
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Here's a post I've added to the thread 'Watching the Weather in Cairns':

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...t=98139&page=3

Quote:
Some thoughts about the weather and the models looking ahead, bearing in mind that I am not a trained meteorologist and have almost zero experience of tropical weather - but I am having fun studying the weather!

A trough currently moving through central Queensland will weaken/decay as it moves further east, but will still have some effect on FNQ over the weekend. The moisture and instability associated with the trough means that the weather patterns over the weekend and into early next week will NOT be indicative of what we are likely to see on Wednesday morning. But they will make for a very anxious weekend for everybody arriving in the eclipse area!

So don't lose heart if Monday and even Tuesday morning are damp and cloudy. Having said that, even by Wednesday we may not be back to the best conditions we've seen some days over the last weeks, but there sure is room for hope.

With the trough having hopefully faded away, we should be back to a typical easterly pattern, which means a variable and unpredictable amount of morning cloud along the coast, offshore and over the ranges. Under these conditions, the trend improves inland but far from certain 60km inland which is about as far as you can easily get.

Low clouds in this environment (or anywhere) are chaotic and hard to predict. Even the night before the eclipse, the weather models simply cannot say anything sensible about whether Cairns or Port Douglas or somewhere else along the coast is likely to have more or less low cloud. If you plan to be mobile, ignore the models and watch the skies and the infrared satellite image and make your decisions on that. But you'll have to make your move so early given limited road capacity and road closures that even these will be of little predictive value.

What the models can and have indicated is that on the days with the prevailing easterly pattern, inland locations tend to do better. But exactly which ones, again the models are just guessing. ie. don't place any meaning on an indication in the model that north of the centreline is going to do better than a little south.

Just because the US model appears to show a diamond shaped patch of low cloud over Mt Carbine (which it often does), or one just offshore from Port Douglas, does not mean it actually knows something about these specific locations. These are just artifacts of the low resolution of the models. The width of the eclipse track is covered by just a few grid points in the model.. nowhere near enough to accurately predict the variation in low cloud cover.

Also remember that just about every free weather website on the web is presenting data from the same US GFS weather model. They do it with different colours and icons, but it's generally the same data (Skippy Sky is a great one-stop shop for astronomers wanting to see output from the GFS model). While I would rate the European model and forecasts from the Australian BoM as just slightly better than the US model, the value is in checking three different sources to see how much they differ.

So do checkout yr.no, and search for forecasts for Cairns, Port Douglas, Mt Carbine, Mt Mulligan, Mt Gibson etc). To my knowledge this is the only publicly accessible website providing forecasts from the European model. Hit the hour-by-hour link and then the detailed option for full cloud details. Then take an average of places in a similar environment.. eg look at forecasts for Cairns and Port Douglas to get an idea of the average forecast for the coast, but don't place any meaning on the specific differences between the two.

You can also check out synthetic satellite forecast images from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology ACCESS model, but these are quite hard to interpret if you're not familiar with them. Much simpler but just as meaningful is to look at the BoM text forecast for the region. 'Scattered showers' is worse than a forecast for only 'isolated showers'. 'Partly cloudy' is a pretty good forecast for this area and only rarely will you get 'mainly sunny'. The computer models may seem like they provide a beautiful amount of detail, but what they really 'know' is nothing more than what is captured by those broad forecast statements.

Good luck!

Phil
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  #391  
Old 09-11-2012, 08:15 AM
geoffsims (Geoff)
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Phil,

No specific knowledge, but two points:

1. Google Street View covers that highway, and

2. My gut feeling is that regardless of how many people are going to see the eclipse, only a small proportion will actively chase clear skies, particularly because in this case it pretty much means pulling an all-nighter on the 13th.

Geoff
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  #392  
Old 09-11-2012, 08:21 AM
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h0ughy (David)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by geoffsims View Post
Phil,

No specific knowledge, but two points:

1. Google Street View covers that highway, and

2. My gut feeling is that regardless of how many people are going to see the eclipse, only a small proportion will actively chase clear skies, particularly because in this case it pretty much means pulling an all-nighter on the 13th.

Geoff
might be more people than you think - if you travel the distance to get there then another 100km is chickenfeed - i think a lot will travel further
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  #393  
Old 09-11-2012, 08:59 AM
icytailmark (Mark)
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man i wish i could go never seen a solar eclipse
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  #394  
Old 09-11-2012, 05:13 PM
HarryD (Greg)
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Don't worry, I see you're in Sydney.
The 2028 eclipse in Sydney will be a beauty
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  #395  
Old 10-11-2012, 01:02 AM
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OzEclipse (Joe Cali)
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Mobile phone coverage

Quote:
Originally Posted by h0ughy View Post
one thing to note is the mobile phone coverage - be aware that if you head west there will be no coverage - so there will be no chance to gloat or commiserate to your mates back interstate until you get back to your base
Traveled along the Mulligan Hwy today to do so scouting for inland retreats for my group. The mobile phone coverage map for telstra is pretty well spot on.

Joe
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  #396  
Old 10-11-2012, 01:06 AM
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OzEclipse (Joe Cali)
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No space to settle?

Quote:
Originally Posted by bojan View Post
Hi Glen,
how many people you think will be there?
I am very concerned that along the highway there will be no place to settle.
I am staying in Palm Cove, but all options are open now.
Hi Bojan,

Plenty of space along the mulligan highway. Don't worry

Joe
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  #397  
Old 10-11-2012, 07:28 PM
gary
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I telephoned Andrew Murrell today who is driving up with his wife to Cairns from Sydney.

Andrew reported that yesterday, whilst near Rockhampton, there were roadworks
in progress and they had a contra flow arrangement in place.

Whilst stopped and awaiting their turn, a long queue of vehicles built up behind them.

Andrew got out of the car and bellowed, "Put up your hand if you are driving
to the eclipse!" and he raised his own hand. He reported that approximately half
the people in the long line of traffic raised their hands.

Meantime, there was a melt-down for some at the Sydney domestic terminal
this morning when both the Jetstar and Virgin Blue check-in systems crashed.
There were long delays at the check-in counters which backed-up the system,
including for incoming aircraft awaiting a spot at the gate. The system is online again.
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  #398  
Old 10-11-2012, 08:35 PM
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h0ughy (David)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gary View Post
I telephoned Andrew Murrell today who is driving up with his wife to Cairns from Sydney.

Andrew reported that yesterday, whilst near Rockhampton, there were roadworks
in progress and they had a contra flow arrangement in place.

Whilst stopped and awaiting their turn, a long queue of vehicles built up behind them.

Andrew got out of the car and bellowed, "Put up your hand if you are driving
to the eclipse!" and he raised his own hand. He reported that approximately half
the people in the long line of traffic raised their hands.

Meantime, there was a melt-down for some at the Sydney domestic terminal
this morning when both the Jetstar and Virgin Blue check-in systems crashed.
There were long delays at the check-in counters which backed-up the system,
including for incoming aircraft awaiting a spot at the gate. The system is online again.
with only a few hours left until i fly up there tomorrow, this was not good news. a slight amount of panic ensued
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  #399  
Old 10-11-2012, 09:00 PM
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iceman (Mike)
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I'm leaving Tuesday morning! No time for delays for me!
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  #400  
Old 10-11-2012, 09:05 PM
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Quote:
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I'm leaving Tuesday morning! No time for delays for me!
wow your cutting it fine
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