Sun tipped to be a Y2K party-pooper
By JOHN ALEXIA
To the long list of support services that are unlikely to be putting in 100 per cent on New Year's Day, you can add the main guest at many millennium parties - the sun.
Barring unforeseen, apocalyptic circumstances that really would spoil everyone's day, the sun will rise at 5.47am. But, sadly, there is a strong chance Sydneysiders will not see it.
Computer analysis of weather readings taken at 6am (the nearest available time) on New Year's Day at Observatory Hill since 1955 suggest that considerably more than half the dawn sky will be covered in cloud.
"Sorry, but the odds are that people waiting on the beach won't see any rays of sunshine at dawn," a spokesman for the Bureau of Meteorology, Mr Steve Symonds, said.
The bureau's readings involve dividing the sky into eighths, or oktas. Since 1955, there have been only four zero oktas (no cloud cover) at sunrise on New Year's Day, but there have been 23 cases of six, seven or eight oktas (that is, completely overcast).
The average is 4.7 oktas, or significantly more than half the sky obscured by cloud.
For an actual weather forecast, Sydneysiders will have to wait another week. The bureau no longer provides a long-term forecast, only a four-day forecast with a three-day outlook.
One consolation for those complaining - wrongly, according to the bureau - about the unusually cold and wet start to summer is that the outlook for Christmas Day is fine and warm, with temperatures in the mid-20s.
The bureau is pulling in extra staff on New Year's Day - not to cope with "more weather", but in case of possible Y2K glitches.
However, while extremely unlikely, these glitches would occur not at midnight but 11am, Mr Symonds said.
'That's because we work on UTC (translated from the French as "universal co-ordinated time"), or what used to be called Greenwich Mean Time, which is 11 hours behind Sydney time."
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