June2023
Weather diary page
Jun 2, Kanagawa: Quite a violent storm happening right now as the effects of what is now tropical storm Mawar interacts with a strong system coming in from the opposite direction. It's bringing lots of moisture up from the south. The JPN govt. has issued tornado warnings for our area. Japan hasn't been this much fun in a while! Sustained winds of 33 kt with gusts up to 52 according to Windy, which is nothing, but having grown up in tornado land, I can tell there's some potentially destructive weather happening.
Jun 4, NR: Nothing so dramatic here - in fact we've had a run of carbon-copy days - low 20's, dry, cold nights (3-4C). This spell has finally broken today with some light rain coming in from SE & rise in night time temps - expected to continue for a couple of days then return to prevailing pattern. Last Monday (6 days ago), i lost a chicken to a wedge-tailed eagle, about 30 mins after i'd let them out. Although ravens were sounding alarm, i didn't twig coz ravens are usually sounding alarm about something. Didn't hear other alarm calls from chooks or magpies etc. Wasn't until i went out to start work that i saw the eagle standing over the chook. They're massive when you see them up close - looked like a demon angel descended to reap a soul. Rushed over but chook was already dead. It was one of the newbies, which don't seem to be as wary of open spaces as the others. Eagle hung around in a tree for an hour afterwards. Other chooks were hiding under trees, but keeping silent. Managed to escort them back to shed for a lockdown. Ended up plucking chook & eating it, which sounds a bit gross, but alternative was burying it & it goes to waste. Eagle was back again the next day, but haven't seen it since. Chooks are extra wary of wandering out into open spaces now, which is good.
Jun 7, Kanagawa: Plum rains have started, highs mostly in mid to high 20's with nights cool enough for no fan.
Jun 8, NR: Saw a possible UFO two nights ago. Was watching a blinking white light in the southern sky, that i assumed was a plane, which seemed to be travelling in a straight trajectory, when suddenly it did an L-shaped (more like an arrow head) turn, blinked two more times, then disappeared. The path was not possible for a normal plane. Guess it could've been a drone.
Jun 15, NR: Another frost - down to 2.2C this morning. Same weather pattern - sunny days - cold nights. Got 'coming drought' written all over it. Lost a day's worth of eggs yesterday. Saw 11 in the boxes but didn't collect as it's winter so i didn't think the threat of pythons or goannas was a problem. Nesting straw was pulled out of boxes - which suggests goanna - but no eggs were broken, so whatever it was swallowed 11 eggs whole without spilling a drop - which is more like a python but surely its too cold for a python to be still operating. Lot of eagle activity - a few days ago i saw a sea-eagle (misnomer coz they live anywhere there's water) swoop down and take some kind of white bird (probably egret) then five minutes later 3 wedge-tailed eagles appeared - one cruised by the house at low altitude & 2 others circling between house & rock. Chooks are quite wary now so they huddled under a tree. Lotta predators to deal with when you're a chook.
Jun 19, NR: This is 'set n forget' weather - every day the same. Dry air being cold air at night, this would be the longest run of cold nights i've seen here. Maybe two weeks without topping 4C as the low. It's crazy to think we can bounce from drought of the century to flood of the century back to drought but that appears to be what's happening. The key will be spring - if the spring rains fail, then we're looking at severe fire conditions.
Jun 21, NR: Double big frost. Down to 1C last night & 2 the night before - both producing major frosts. Cold & dry is the headline from this winter. Dangerous fire season looming. Whatever is after the eggs was back again a couple of days ago. Although i'd pre-collected the eggs, i noticed the nesting straw had again been scraped out of the box. Seems to strike around 1-2pm - which would suggest goanna - as it's when they might come out to warm up in the sun.