Originally Posted by
LeanOfPeak
Not to nit pick, but the BOM data suggests 8.6mm between 8am and 10am if I'm reading it correctly.
Another sad day and my thoughts go to all those impacted.
Yeah, true, 4.3mm per hour isn't exactly heavy though BUT it also says 7.4mm recored at 0800, 9.0mm at 0830, 10.00mm at 0900 then 0.4mm at 0910, so assuming they were roughly on time at around 0900 there was not much around, highest rainfall was beteen 0910 where it recorded 0.4mm and 0929 where it recorded 3.8mm so 3.4mm in about 29mins suggests a relatively heavy shower passing through in that 19mins which is possibly where they were caught out, wind picked up a little too to a max gusts of 10kts at 0946 so not too breezy.
Of course this is all assuming that the station was accurate and not having any issues and that there wasn't even heavier rain localised in the vicinity of the crash. Temp, Dew Point and Rel Hum would suggest a lot of low cloud around then too which would have made it difficult possibly.
Honestly just found it surprising how little wind there was around after looking at the Radar images of the area swirling around. My first thought was "Why did they go there anyway with the weather described" so went to check BOM and found it wasn't so bad looking at the data there. Happy to be corrected by anyone who was actually in the area.