El Nino has been officially proclaimed to have begun in Australia, coinciding with the onset of a heatwave in the country’s south-eastern area that broke all past records that too for the month of September and resulted in the country’s first comprehensive fire ban in the past three years. The Bureau of Meteorology said that many sections of the continent were experiencing exceptional weather, the most notable of which was persistent heat. Temperatures in New South Wales (NSW) soared up to 16 degrees Celsius higher than the monthly norm in September, with Sydney reaching 34.4 degrees, which was only a few degrees shy of the all-time September record. There were 61 bushfires in New South Wales (NSW), 13 of which were not contained despite the fact that heavy winds were expected for the area, which led to an extremely high risk of catastrophic fire.
El Nio conditions almost always bring to droughts in Australia, and the World Meteorological Organization had previously forecasted that there was a 90% chance that El Nio conditions would emerge in the later half of 2023.
This week, the jet stream assumed command of the weather in the United Kingdom, ushering in a very autumnal feel with various weather systems providing heavy rainfall, high winds, and generally unsettled conditions. As a result of the severe rains that occurred on Wednesday, hundreds of households in Wales were left without electricity. Wales took the worst of this weather onslaught. A rain band connected to a low-pressure system that had formed from the leftovers of ex-Hurricane Lee was responsible for the torrential downpour that occurred.
Hurricane Nigel, which made landfall on the other side of the Atlantic as a Category 2 hurricane, is expected to make landfall in the United Kingdom this coming weekend. This will be the second ex-hurricane storm to make landfall in the UK this week. On Saturday, Nigel is forecast to make a northern turn and then transition into an extratropical cyclone before making landfall between the United Kingdom and Iceland. Although it is anticipated that this massive low-pressure system will have a significant influence on the weather in the western and north-western regions of the UK during the weekend, with heavy rain and blustery winds, there is still some uncertainty over the exact development of this system.
On Monday evening, an aurora, often known as the northern Lights when observed in the northern hemisphere, was seen across the eastern and north-eastern areas of England and Scotland. The aurora is a natural light show that happens in the sky above the Earth. It happens due to the interaction of charged particles from the sun, principally electrons and protons, with the magnetosphere of the Earth. This interaction causes molecules in the atmosphere, such as oxygen and nitrogen, to generate brilliant, multicolored light. These displays often take the form of shimmering curtains, arcs, or waves of light in a variety of colors, which includes green, pink, red, and purple, and they capture the attention of onlookers all over the world.
