Recent news that the good folks at the University of Arizona’s Institute for Resilience have extended their Southwest Monsoon Fantasy Forecast game for a third year got me thinking about how a local fantasy weather competition based on Top End weather might work. After all, Australia’s Top End has—arguably—some of the wildest weather in the world.
Arizonan players take their best shots at guesstimating the total amount of rainfall during the brief local monsoon season—which runs from July through September—submitting forecasts for the five major cities in the Southwest monsoon region – Tucson, Phoenix, Flagstaff, Albuquerque and El Paso.
Prizes for the winners—there’s no gambling associated with the Arizonan weather game—run to Amazon gift cards of modest values.
‘We wanted to make climate not a villain, but a hero’
Zack Guido, University of Arizona climate researcher and the fantasy game’s principal investigator, noted that one motivation for the game was to get people to re-frame their approach to the weather and climate: “People often talk about climate in gloomy, apocalyptic ways, and there are reasons for that. We wanted to make climate not a villain, but a hero,” Guido said.
Most of us living in Australia’s Top End—that sparsely populated swath of country from, say, Broome in the west to my hometown of Darwin in the Northern Territory and across to Cairns in the east—can appreciate this cautious regard for the weather gods and share a guarded affection for the heroic seasonal phenomenon usually referred to simply as the Wet.
Right now we’re in the so-called Dry season—midway through the annual influx of grey nomads, back-packers and assorted other stragglers who roll into town in search of somewhere-else-that-isn’t-cold-and-called-home, blue skies, cool days and the annual government-sponsored bread-and-circuses roster—think V8 Supercar races, cultural and art festivals, horse races and the travelling carny circuit. All that and more.
Most will have done a bolt back south at the first hint of high temperatures and humidity and be well shot of the place by the September equinox.
Build Up weather in the Top End is a real kick in the head
Build Up weather in the Top End—from say September through December—is a real kick in the head that inspires somewhat … errr … erratic … behaviour provoked by daily temperatures in the mid-to-high 30s accompanied by dripping-with-sweat-but-doing-nothing humidity. This season also brings a widespread derangement known as Mango Madness, best salved by copious and conspicuous consumption of combustible comestibles and alcohol.
But all bad things must pass and by the New Year the weather gods will hopefully have blessed us with the local monsoon heralding the onset of the Wet season. But … there’s always a but …
No-one reacts to each new Wet season as to that gone before or to follow. A Wet season can be a wet wet, a dry wet, an early wet, a late wet, a fucking great wet or a dud wet or any variation thereof. Your Wet is likely to be very different to mine.
The BoM rainfall page is on speed dial
Once the Wet kicks in all phones have the Bureau of Meteorology site rainfall page on speed dial. Whether rain is about—and where it is relative to my current or anticipated location, which way its going and how heavy it is—is vital information that can determine where I’m going to go, what I’m gonna do, how I’ll do it, when and with whom.
Wet season rain and storms can be the best date, appointment, commitment breaker ever: “Nah, sorry, I’m gonna have to pull the pin mate. Just checked the BoM site and there’s a big storm cell coming in across the harbour. Maybe Thursday … maybe never …”
Rinse. Repeat as needed.
My point here is, we are acute observers of the weather gods in the Top End and Australians are also very keen fantasy football followers—whether in online betting syndicates or locally-organised footy-tipping competitions. Most of us are well familiar with manipulating game, player, team and a myriad of otherwise meaningless statistics for money or just for kicks.
What next for a Top End fantasy weather competition?
I reckon a good start for a Top End-based fantasy weather competition would be to pick a selection of the different criteria the BoM uses in its seasonal weather statements, including: highest daily and seasonal rainfall; hottest/coldest day and night; wettest overall by location and day and strongest wind gust.
We’ll also need to identify at least one other variable—location/s—along with relevant competition rules. Of course the main challenges will be to make the competition relevant, accessible and hopefully, fun and informative.