this is the flooding in sydney around march. the city had its wettest three months of any year in records going back to the 1850s. in february, brisbane had its wettest three days on record and whilst, for australia as a whole, rainfall was below average in february and march, scientists say climate change is supercharging the atmosphere to produce more intense rain when it does fall and what seems extreme now will become more like normal in the future. it certainly is really disheartening to see my own country being on fire one year and then, within another two years, it s being flooded out. in saying that, we have always been a land of extremes. you know, there is a famous poem here that australia is a place of drought and flooding rains, and that is precisely what we have seen. so, we do tip this see saw fairly regularly, you know, maybe a couple of times in a decade, but the extremity of it, that is that i wouldn t say it s a surprise but that is the most concerning factor
and looking at how we measure wind speed. also on weather world as a chain of deadly cyclones hits madagascar, why climate change could put more of east africa in their path. and deluge down under parts of australia see more rain in three months than they normally do all year. i wouldn t say it was a surprise, but that s the most concerning factor that we ve gone from literally the south east of australia burning to literally the south east of australia flooding. the isle of wight, just a short ferry ride from the south coast of england, is famous for its sailing. but it wasn t seafaring weather in february when the island set a new record for england s strongest wind gust during a remarkable spell of stormy weather across the uk.
we had an interesting morning, it was fairly quiet, a bit foggy, and one of our local fishing vessels lost its motor and heard on the radio, listening on channel 16, that it needed a tow, and very gratefully the boat next to it actually managed to tow it back so that was good, it wasn t an incident that was turning nasty, that was very easy to do. and about an hour later, a plane flew really, really low over the watchtower, a member of the public had phoned in and thought they had seen a plane crash but in fact it had just banked very sharply and hit the cloud. so, there s always something here to keep you on your toes. annette, thank you for showing us around today, thank you to you and all the team at the nci, notjust here on the isle of wight, but in fact there are 57 stations, and counting. vital work that they carry out, so thank you to all the volunteers. and that is it for this time on weather world on the isle of wight.
daile zhang, who helped to verify these records says the mappers reveal more about the scale of lightning than traditional ground based detectors. there are optical sensors so you can think of it as, you know, a camera on your cell phone, but it detects, it covers a large domain, north and south america, and adjacent oceans. and it is also a high speed camera so it takes a snapshot from above the thunderstorm every two milliseconds, which give you 500 frames per second. and it continuously observes, you know, lightning activity, and it operates in a very narrow band of near infrared frequency, so whenever there is lightning in the cloud, the satellite sensor will see where it started and how it propagates in the cloud and where it ends. it is exciting that we have the technology to observe and appreciate the beauty of it.
on shift here? we had an interesting morning, it was fairly quiet, a bit foggy, and one of our local fishing vessels lost its motor and heard on the radio, listening on channel 16, that it needed a tow, and very gratefully the boat next to it actually managed to tow it back so that was good, it wasn t an incident that was turning nasty, that was very easy to do. and about an hour later, a plane flew really, really low over the watchtower, a member of the public had phoned in and thought they had seen a plane crash but in fact it had just banked very sharply and hit the cloud. so, there s always something here to keep you on your toes. annette, thank you for showing us around today, thank you to you and all the team at the nci, notjust here on the isle of wight, but in fact there are 57 stations, and counting. vital work that they carry out, so thank you to all the volunteers. and that is it for this time on weather world on the isle of wight. sarah, if you are doing a programme about w