By Jacob Greber - Dec 23, 2011 12:08 PM GMT+0700
Bill Gates, the world’s second- richest person, can’t seem to buy a break in the weather during his month-long Australian holiday.
Gates and his family arrived last week in Sydney, Australia’s biggest city, where Bondi Beach attracts some 40,000 sunbathers on weekends this time of year. His arrival during the southern hemisphere’s summer has coincided with the area’s coolest December in more than half a century.
As schools break until late-January and residents flock to the coasts, the city’s typically temperate summer feels more like an extended, soggy spring. The billionaire co-founder of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) added his voice to a chorus of residents grumbling about the leaden skies, downpours and chilly evenings.
“Wish it was a tiny bit warmer,” Gates told the Sydney Morning Herald after he and his family moved into a Tuscan-style waterfront mansion last week.
The three-level home, costing A$25,000 ($25,425) a week in rent, boasts its own jetty, six bedrooms, a gym and cellar, according to local media reports.
The property is reportedly located in Vaucluse, a wealthy neighborhood in the city’s eastern suburbs which are also home to billionaire James Packer, News Corp. (NWSA) board member Lachlan Murdoch and Westfield Group (WDC) Chairman Frank Lowy.
Gates has maintained a low profile after an initial flurry of interviews with the Australian newspaper, the Herald and Australian Broadcasting Corp.
New Neighbors
Business owners at the local Vaucluse shopping strip told Bloomberg News today that neither he nor his family had been spotted picking up a newspaper or buying groceries. The media office for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, their namesake charity, said in an e-mail that he was not available for comment.
Gates, 56, chose Australia for his getaway because his family “thought it would be fun to come down and see some of the neat places around Australia,” he told the Herald.
If sunshine and warm weather was preferred, their timing hasn’t been great.
Sydney is on track for its mildest December since 1960, David Barlow, a Bureau of Meteorology spokesman, said in a telephone interview today.
The average maximum temperature at the bureau’s weather station, near the southern side of Sydney’s Harbour Bridge, was 22.3 degrees Celsius (72.1 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first 23 days of the month. That’s 2.9 degrees below the 150-year average and close to the 22.8 degrees recorded 51 years ago.
Wet Summer
The weather bureau blames the mild, wet weather on the persistence of a La Nina weather phenomenon across the tropical parts of the Pacific Ocean, which it forecasts will last through the remainder of Australia’s summer.
The so-called southern oscillation index, a measure of La Nina’s strength, has climbed to 21 from 13.8 in November, according to a bureau bulletin issued Dec. 21. Periods of La Nina are often associated with above-normal summer rainfall and colder daytime temperatures across eastern and northern parts of Australia, according to the bureau’s website.
“We’re in a weak La Nina event that’s been going since November and that’s brought above-average rainfall and you get the cloudy conditions that lower the maximum temperatures,” Barlow said.
Sydney recorded its wettest spring since 2004, with 257.4 millimeters (10.1 inches) of rain falling in the three months through Nov. 30. Sydney airport recorded an average 7 hours of sunshine a day in that time, less than the historical average of 7.4 hours.
At least the Gates family can look forward to a warmer Christmas Day in Sydney.
The weather bureau forecasts Dec. 25 will have a high of 26 degrees with “partly cloudy” skies. Boxing Day, a public holiday the following day, is expected to see 27 degrees before the arrival of an afternoon thunderstorm.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jacob Greber in Sydney at jgreber@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chitra Somayaji at csomayaji@bloomberg.net
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