In this episode of Aussie English I show you guys how to use the rain radar section of the Bureau of Meteorology’s website in order to check the local weather wherever you are in Australia.

Using The Rain Radar

G’day guys. Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. Today I want to talk to you about the Bureau of Meteorology website, and this is a really really good website that you guys can use to get an idea of what the weather is like where it is that you’re staying in Australia whether it’s in Melbourne, whether it’s in Brisbane, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin. Whether you’re on the road and you’re going to little towns in between these larger cities. It doesn’t matter. You can use this website to have a look at the weather. So, it’s not just the weather forecast, which you can obviously get from this website as well, but the main point of this episode today was to show you how the rain radar works.

So, I was actually sitting on my couch, and I’d spent today, this is Sunday, and I’d spent today chilling out, just hanging out at home, relaxing. I went out to the shops earlier to get some groceries and it was a beautiful day. [it was] absolutely amazing. [it was] sunny, [it was] really nice. I went out in a t-shirt. I got home, I decided to make lunch and no sooner had I sat down on the couch to watch a documentary than it started to piss down rain. So, it started to rain incredibly heavily, and that gave me the idea “I should make this episode for you guys” because if I had left, you know, at that time, five minutes before the rain had fallen then I would’ve gotten incredibly wet on the way to the shops or on the way back from the shops.

So, this is one of these websites that if the weather’s being really temperamental or you’re worried it’s going to rain or you want to see when it’s going to rain this is a really good website that you can use just to get an idea of where things are at. So, www.bom.gov.au . Type that in. Hit enter. What you see on the homepage is obviously certain warnings if there are any that are coming up for your state. So, if you’ve got things that you’re worried about like bushfires if you’re traveling then any of the warnings for those sorts of events, wind, cyclones if you’re in the north of Australia or in the west of Australia you can check it out here at the top. Obviously, it’s got the weather forecast here at the bottom for you too. And, on the side here the stuff that I’m interested in telling you about today is under Rain Radar. So, that button right at the top there. So, we’ll click that, Rain Radars. So, what it gives you is a map of Australia, and all of these little symbols on here are different cities or different towns that you can click on that each have their own radar map. So, the radar map is used to effectively check out where the rain is in the city or the town that you’re at [in*]. So, if we go to Melbourne for example. Click on Melbourne. You can see that Melbourne here is pretty much dead-centre, it’s right in the middle here. Port Phillip bay is this… is just below the centre and then you’ve obviously got Bass Straight or at least all of the ocean there, the Southern Ocean, below. So, Melbourne’s in the middle. All of the colour on here, so all of the white through blue, green, yellow, red, and I don’t think there’ll be any black on there, is rain that’s currently falling. So, down the bottom you can see the Rain Rate, so the amount of rain that’s falling, and it goes from white, which is incredibly light rain, all the way through to black, which is incredibly heavy rain. And so, you kind of get this heat map of the rain that’s currently falling on the radar that you’re looking at. And you can change the size of the radar. So, if you’re interested in looking at a zoomed-in 64km diameter radar of Melbourne, you can see Melbourne in the middle here, you can do that. So, it gives you a bit more finer-grain resolution. If you want to have a look at a larger diameter of Melbourne, Victoria, the entirety of Australia, you can click larger diameter radars. So, 256kms here, you can see obviously most of Victoria. The 512km composite, that’s all of Victoria some of South Australia, Tasmania and New South Wales up here. And then you can just click National. And so, that will give you the entire map of Australia. So, you can get an idea of where the rain is coming from, obviously, because these radars are really good in that they give you several 6-minute interval photos, effectively, of the rain. And so, you can see which way it’s moving, and you can get an idea of how quickly the rain’s coming, and the length of how much rain is going to fall [width of the rain cloud].

So, obviously, the rain’s currently stopped where I am. I started making this episode when it was just finishing. So, you can see this band here on the screen has just passed this little icon here in the middle, Melbourne, and that’s why the rain’s stopped. If I was going to go for a walk now or say I was a tourist and I wanted to go out and see some tourist attractions around Melbourne, [if] I wanted to go to the zoo, I might use this website in order to see whether or not I need to take a raincoat or an umbrella, or worry about more rain. So, I look outside and I can see the rain’s stopped, but I want to know is there going to be more rain. And if I was looking at the image in front of me here currently I would see this band that’s coming across and I would probably think that there is a pretty high chance that I’m going to need an umbrella or a rain jacket of some kind later today. So, this is the main reason I would use this website, and I use it at home, I use it at work, I can use it on my phone if I’m out and about. It’s just any time that I’m about to go outside, if I’m worried that it’s going to rain or I want to know if there’s rain coming or has the rain that’s just fallen passed for the rest of the day? Do I need an umbrella? Do I need a jacket? I can use this website and it’s brilliant.

So, I guess that’s all there is to it guys. It’s just a really really good website if you’re worried about the rain and you want to see whether it’s coming, whether it’s finished for the day, [to] get an idea of how much rain is coming. So, definitely check out www.bom.gov.au , and yeah, I’ll chat to you in the next episode guys. All the best!