During this period, significant weather events included a cold snap that brought September’s lowest minimum temperature to date of 8ºC recorded on the night of 10th September at Bellambi weather station. In Sydney, the same day also saw the lowest maximum temperature of 14.8ºC and highest rainfall of 4.4mm recorded so far for the month. In the CBD, workers and tourists wrapped themselves in scarfs, coats and woollens like any other old winter day.

This cold snap has the weather fiends on the Weatherzone forum buzzing, discussing feverishly in acrynoms about the predicted weather models on the 00z GFS, possible significant snow fall for the CT’s and NT’s, the origin of the ‘tropical infeed for this (mainly precip. event)’ and whether BoM’s handling of the event warrants merits, all over 13 ‘pages’ of posts. PeterDuke (Weather Freak) of Central tablelands maintained that, ‘spring does not start until the Equinox and just as well the trees are waiting for that date.’

We are able to view the full face of the moon at 19:27 EST on 12 September 2011. Meanwhile, it’s the Mid-Autumn Fesetival 中秋節 in Hong Kong, where this archetypal harvest festival on the Lunar calendar celebrates familial togetherness with the appreciation of the full moon. Nocturnal activities are made more convenient by the following public holiday 中秋節翌日. Gift-giving is still a common practice on this occassion. My mother  received mooncake gift-cards from the in-laws and finding the idea of wastage unbearable she unwillingly brought these gifts home only to face another challenge of being unable to eat them as both her and my father are diabetic. My grandfather obligingly ate some before declaring that they are far too indigestible.  She managed to convince my 7th Aunt to take the remaining before receiving another gift-card from my 4th Aunt.

Driven by sales competition, Hong Kong mooncakes merchants continue to innovate the form of this bearly edible cake to appeal to the modern tasters’ palates and pique the curiosities of the fickle public with new fangled breeds. Mooncakes can come in lard-free pastry with a choice of 0 to 2 yolks, available as individual cakes of the traditional size, a box of 4, or mini-mooncakes. There are vegatarian, low calories, and fat-free options. A variety of fillings is also on offer including red or white  lotus seed pastes, red bean paste, coconut, mung bean paste, assorted nuts, custard, and even ice-cream. The most popular recent novelty is the ‘ice-skin’ mooncakes that must to be refridgerated until consumption.

On this same day, at Port Kembla, a low tide of 0.25 m was predicted at 02:01 EST, and one of 0.37 metres at 14:00 EST. A high tide of 1.39 metres was predicted at 08:04 EST, and one of 1.53 metres at 20:13 EST