This is a barely worth mentioning long shot - it's currently over Vanuatu and this forecast image is for a week from now - but this could potentially end up not far from me if it keeps on the same path. It would be that word again, 'unprecedented', if it came this far south, but since 'unprecedented' is the 'new precedented' ....

While here we just have snow, followed by cold, then more snow.

So with your skill-set, which would enable you to work just about anywhere on the planet - why are you living in what looks like the movie set for a soviet-era re-education camp?

Well, it's only 4 months of really cold weather. The rest of the year is absolutely beautiful. Excellent summers. Mountains, ocean, clean, no traffic, cheap. Plus, the pay and benefits are really good, and after spending probably too long in the low paying Taiwan public university system, I need good pay and benefits for a while before I can retire. I get 2.5 months/year off also, which helps.

And, although I paint a pretty grim picture of the winters here, in fact they aren't nearly as cold as most 'cold' places such as the upper midwest of the US or most anywhere of this latitude. We just get a lot of snow. It's supposed to get up to 5C today and 8C tomorrow. We don't get any of that -15C nonsense.

Makes more sense like that!

Snow is something i've felt i could potentially enjoy - environment affects thought - a white landscape - it's kind of singularity - does that uncork a zenness in your thinking that you've noticed?

Btw, i wondered if this was the case, turns out it is, the cyclone that formed over Vanuatu and is now meandering south, is the same tropical depression that dumped the 1 in a 1000 year rains in north Queensland. It's got this unkillable thing going.

It is beautiful. There is a variety of winter conditions, events, and phenomena that are particularly beautiful. One is when it freezes during a fog. When that happens, everything gets coated in unbelievable crystal. I've seen it probably fewer than 10 times in my life, and that was growing up in a cold region.

There are other conditions when things are coated in clear ice, but that's not nearly as beautiful as everything coated in crystallized ice (I guess ice is a crystal, but you know what I mean, visible crystals).

But, yes, everything blanketed in white is also astounding. The thing I miss most is any sign of life. When we first got here, the biggest shock was not the cold or the snow, it was the absence of bugs, birds (well, in the quantity you have them in the tropics), and all the other critters we were used to.

Btw, i wondered if this was the case, turns out it is, the cyclone that formed over Vanuatu and is now meandering south, is the same tropical depression that dumped the 1 in a 1000 year rains in north Queensland. It's got this unkillable thing going.

And that's quite a lineup in the ICZ!

Hmm, latest forecast has changed 180 degrees - not going south east to NZ after all - now it's meant to stall in the position below - which is pretty close to where i am - then start heading back north - which means it could go anywhere. Very Nari-esque.

Apart from the two drownings in Townsville, another two backpackers died in rough surf yesterday kicked up by Cyclone Omar. People here keep telling me cyclones never come this far south - but the chart is suggesting otherwise

That's a helluva tail - if that started feeding into land then it would be an unmitigated flooding event. So far predicted to stay offshore, stall, then head north again - but it's a kind of a 'look what i can do!' insight at the very least - so far south - no reason except chance that it couldn't be a bit further to the west causing it's second one-in-a-thousand year flood - this time in a heavily populated area thought to be out of reach of cyclones - and over 1000km from where it first struck