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Weather at Lahad Datu.

Why Lahad Datu? Because I’m going to tell you something about working there. About the weather.
I spent several months each year working there. It is 5 degrees north of equator on the island of Borneo. Malaysia has 2 states- Sabah and Sarawak (East Malaysia) located here with principality of Brunei between.Weather was typically coastal and tropical. Basically day time air would heat, rise and be replaced by sea air which is cooler and heavier – relatively so. It’s called a sea breeze- an anabatic wind. By night the land would cool and then the air became heavier, sink, and flow out to sea. Thus the wind is a land breeze, a katabatic. Some may know it as onshore or offshore respectively.
When air heats and rises cumulus and cumulonimbus cloud would form- clouds that resemble big cauliflowers. These are thunderstorms of course and big ones too. They would remain stationary for two maybe three hours until they had rained themselves out. It could be raining on half of the airstrip only and the other half perfectly dry. Local houses were built without eves and with windows but no glass. Never a wet floor. Just no wind except land or sea breeze described above.
Why was this so. It’s called coriolis effect. At the equator, plus or minus 5 degrees there are no cyclones or hurricanes or typhoons which all are the same thing. Quite strange to most of us who are accustomed to high winds, sometimes extreme associated with these weather patterns because we live in higher latitudes.
Coriolis effect. When an skater is performing spins have you noticed that their rpm increases when they pull their arms in. Helicopter rotor rpm increases when the rotor dish cones up with g load. Both examples are when the radius (moment) is decreased. It’s intriguing. Open the link below and a simple explanation is given. Easy to follow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIyBpi7B-dE
The map is of Borneo and Lahad Datu is between Tawau and Sandican (in the north east), both of which are places were the death march occurred. Some 7000 Australian servicemen perished there towards the end of WW2.