Weather Observations – 29/10/13

The weather has not changed much since September. It’s still been hot, dry and sunny – summer has come early this year. Flies have been multiplying like crazy and our house has been temporarily overrun by them.
Bush fires have been burning through most of my home state with a couple of big ones located about an hours drive from my house. The skies have been filled with smoke ever since my birthday week (17th Oct). Thankfully we haven’t been threatened by any bush fires; my thoughts go out to all those who have been or are.
The sun is hot and burns the skin very easily.

Many of the ducks have been producing ducklings (daww) and surprisingly a majority of the ducklings I saw in May have survived and are looking like gangly teenagers now.

The ocean has been bitterly cold for the last few months but about a week or two ago had clearly warmed up – could this be changing tides?
Whales have also been migrating up and down the coast for the last few months… I haven’t seen any.
Dead mutton birds have also been appearing on the sand at the beach due to their long migration home. I’ve found a couple of alive ones who were clearly too exhausted to move on (they allowed me to pick them up). In this instance it’s hard to know what to do. I felt sorry for the birds but wasn’t sure if saving them now would really do them any good – they’ll just die next migrating season won’t they? I moved them into a nice shady area where they could peacefully die. I felt like that was the right thing to do.

As usual the magpies chicks are leaving their nests and we’re seeing extremely territorial behaviour from them. I’ve not experienced a swooping this year but I think they’re used to me (I feed them sometimes).

Weather Observations: September

The weather has been really dry and sunny for the last 5 weeks. Lots of birds and bees.
Temperatures have been getting quite high and the fire season started a lot earlier this year.
The last week or two has been very sporadic with the wind picking up at around 3pm.
Daylight savings started last weekend (and now I’m all disorientated haha).

Weather Observations – 19/8/13

It’s been a wet spring – it hasn’t necessarily been raining but there’s been a lot of moisture in the air. The plants have been loving it. Majority of days have been sunny and quite warm late morning to early afternoon. Nights have been cold with fog and frost sometimes making an appearance.

About 2 weeks ago I saw a big group of Jellyfish in the river that I regularly cross to get into Sydney. I kept my eye out for them again last week and I couldn’t see any of them – was that their seasonal breeding time? Brian says he’s observed a similar group quite a few years back when he went for a holiday on the river during the summer months.

The birds have been pretty loud and fussy for the last 3 weeks as well. I’ve seen nests appearing in the tops of trees.

The wind has also picked up a bit on a few days – it’s a warm wind that seems to circle around (instead of coming from one location). This reminds me of a spring about 3 years ago when it was so windy that all the wattle trees had their yellow flowers blown off – they all sat in little yellow fluffy piles on the road.

The wattle is still out now though and hasn’t been effected by the wind much. Although it did only hang around for a day or two.

Weather Observations – 18/6/13

The first wattle tree bloomed about 2 weeks ago – wattle is my favourite flower so I picked up on it straight away. Ever since then more and more wattle trees have been popping up. I say ‘popping up’ because they tend to be very inconspicuous until their beautiful fluffy yellow flowers make their presence known. Their smell is amazing too.

The weather is hard to explain. It has been cold which is expected during winter (about 8-9°C during the night) but it has gradually gotten less and less rainy. After the floods in April there was a period of one week of rain one week of sun – which as then gradually changed into a day or two of rain before it gets sunny again for a good week or so.

It has been foggy and I’ve noticed the fog rising just before the sun sets on a windless day. Some days have been quite windy.

The Magpies seem to be ganging up again in their little packs. The Ravens are acting differently too – this could be because I’ve moved since this time last year. I noticed a group of them flying off to the north about 3 weeks ago. Since then I’ve noticed one or two stragglers heading the same way – now there seems to be only pairs left (Australian Raven Corvus coronoides).

 

Weather Observations – 21/5/13

A Mother duck and her ducklings.

It has taken a little longer than expected to get into the Winter mode. The warmer weather seems to have motivated some animals to reproduce – as far as I know I thought ducks only had ducklings during the Spring (so that they could raise their young whilst it was warm and there was more food around). During one of my runs I spotted a Mother duck with quite a few ducklings following her around.

It has been sunny during the day but not very warm. The temperature tends to drop pretty quickly once the sun sets and stays low until it rises again. I haven’t seen much fog though.

We have been having on and off rain – it began after the April floods. It started as a week rain/sprinkle then a week of sun and since then we have been seeing sun more often (with maybe a day or two of rain every few weeks).

Weather Observations – April

For the last few years the first week in April rains non-stop with more rain on and off either side of that week. This year the rains (and the floods – always the floods) came around a little later than expected and didn’t last as long.
We were experiencing Summer-like warmth right up into late April.

I remember back in about September last year there being a lot more wattle than usual blooming. I believe that the longer the wattles bloom and how many actually bloom could be an indicator of how hot and how long the Summer will be.
Will have to observe this over the next few years to be able to test my theory.

I’ve also moved so haven’t been able to keep track of the animals as much as what I would like.

Weather Observations – 7/4/13

For a week or two leading up to April it was rainy and overcast – the beginning of winter. Before that though it still felt like summer; warm days and nights. Spending nearly every weekend at the beach or by the pool. It was very humid.
There is definitely a change here now though. The clocks were set back an hour yesterday and I guess we’ll see an immediate change in the amount of light we have in the afternoons. We also got out the winter sheets – put our electric blanket on and our sheep skin underlay. We’re getting ready for a cold winter.

Yesterday we made ourselves a garden. We planted carrot, broccoli, cos lettuce and baby spinach seedlings. Along with our spring onions and basil plants that were getting too big for their pots. I also trimmed up the lemon balm which got badly burnt during summer (NTS: keep it in the shade during the warmer months!) and replanted our mint seedlings which have been struggling to stay alive for months (it seems).

1/3/13 – Weather Observations

It’s been on and off lately – raining, sunny, hot, cold, humid. The last week was hot, humid and sunny but this week is rainy (still reasonably humid). Since the end of January the weather has been like this – the local dam is at it’s highest in 16 years. The rain has been quite constant and reasonably heavy.

I’ve noticed quite a few galah’s (the white ones in particular but I’ve also spotted some pink ones) making themselves seen. They’ve been eating berries off a tree next to our balcony and every night just before the sun sets a big flock of them fly over the lake – they are pretty loud so you can hear them coming! I’ve been for a drive and seen them all gathered in a couple of trees near the opening of the river. There have also been a lot of bugs and as a result of that; spiders. The Magpie family has become a bit of a gang. I’ve seen them stealing dog food and they’ve been intimidating me for food – I can’t say no to birds. I’ve let them know that was the last time though as we’re moving soon and I’m not sure how the new people will deal with 5 huge magpies landing on their balcony while they eat dinner.

Our corn doesn’t seem to be coping with the rain – thankfully we harvested a majority of the ears before the rain showed up. The tops of the plants seem to be a little mouldy and the leaves have gone brown. I’m not sure what is going on with the beetroot; I have a feeling we should be harvesting that soon but I don’t know what it’s meant to look like (maybe they’re baby beets?)

PS. Sorry for the lack of photo. My computer has spat the dummy and I can’t access any of them.

30/1/13 – Weather observations

Today we harvested our corn – they’re so sweet! We waited until the ‘hair’ was a black colour (but I think we could have waiting a little longer for a couple of them). Definitely a success.

For the last day or so it’s been storming – we had rain for a couple of days before that but then it turned into more wind and scary looking clouds than actual rain.
Today the clouds cleared and we’re back to being sunny again.

27/1/13 – Weather Observation

It rained all day – literally I was woken up just before dawn and it was already raining. It wasn’t a drizzle or downpour but it was raining steadily. Generally this is an unusual thing for the 27th of January – my sisters birthday is on the 25th and we pretty much always had a pool party because it was so hot. It’s been a nice change though since Sydney has had the most days over 40C in 100 years this summer.
Haven’t heard much from any birds or other animals today. The corn is about ready to harvest, the peas are dead from heat and the beetroot has big leaves but not so big roots.