BAMOS
Sept 2017
Figure 2. Mr John Moss, an old aged pensioner, sits amidst the ruins of his house in Naremburn. Image: The Town and
Country Journal, 4 April 1906.
These were some of the earliest images of damage produced by
an Australian tornado and indicate a possible rating of EF 3 on
the Enhanced Fujita Scale. It is likely that it was a similar strength
to the Brighton tornado that struck the bayside suburbs of
Melbourne some 12 years later, on 2nd February 1918. A low-pressure cell was located over southwest NSW and
rainfall reports indicated widespread totals across NSW from 9
am on the 26th to 9 am on the 27th of March. These included
335 points (85 mm) at Moruya, 265 points (67 mm) at Bowral,
and 155 points (39 mm) at Gundagai.
The meteorological situation This indicates that the thunderstorm activity on the eastern
flank of the low — Sydney in particular — was only part of a
significant rainfall event that affected much of NSW.
Despite the fact that Australia’s first “weather map” was printed
in The Sydney Morning Herald on 5 February 1877, the synoptic
chart was not a regular daily feature in New South Wales
newspapers across the next 30 years. Attempts to find the
synoptic chart of 27 March 1906 were unsuccessful in either The
Sydney Morning Herald or The Age from Melbourne, but copies
were found in two Adelaide newspapers: The Register and The
Advertiser, the former of which is reproduced here (Figure 3).
Comments by
Meteorologist
the
Acting
Government
The Acting Government Meteorologist Mr. Henry Ambrose
Hunt was consulted for an explanation and this was printed in
The Sydney Morning Herald article of 28 March:
“The tornado”, he remarked, “was due to local ascending
currents of air — a whirlwind on a violent scale. Tornadoes are
but occasionally experienced to the eastward of the mountains
and but rarely in the city. In the west, however, tornadoes are of
common occurrence. The reason for this is that the convectional
action is more intense to the west of the highlands than to the
eastward”.
Just a few months later, in November, Hunt would leave Sydney
for Melbourne as the Head of the newly formed Commonwealth
Meteorological Bureau.
Figure 3. The synoptic chart for 27 March 1906 as it
appeared in The Register, Adelaide the next day. Image:
The Register, 28 March 1906.
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