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May2025Weather diary page May 7, Northern Rivers: So much for the dry cycle - it could still happen but autumn here appears to be impenetrable to any sustained dryness. Down south in Vic, they are having an extended summer which could likely set them up for a bad fire season later this year, but here it's rain virtually every day. Typically, there will be a week of rain, then a few dry days (if you're lucky), then another week of rain. Today is the one dry day sandwiched between a week of rain either side. I asked my neighbour if he'd ever seen a dry autumn, but he couldn't think of one. Temps have remained warm due to the humidity - normally i would have had the fire going at least once by this stage but it hasn't dropped below 13-14 at night so far & probably won't until we get some dry air. Best i can hope for is an early finish - the constant wet will recede sometime from June-Aug. Last year it went all the way through to Aug but it has ended in June in other years. Currently got 'the world's most boring bird' operating around the house. It's a mudlark. It spends at least half its day fighting with itself in the window reflection outside the living room. Surely it knows that it's not real, but it's totally addicted to the never-ending contest. Like a computer game for birds. The rest of its time is spent fighting with (much bigger) magpies, which is also not a serious fight. There are things in nature which are deadly dangerous (hawks etc), but there's a lot of play-fighting that goes on as well. May 12, NR: More fucking rain. With a full-dance card of rain for the next week. It's going to end up being at least a 3 week stretch of daily rain with only one dry day in the sequence. It's really quite incredible - David Attenborough would be impressed by how humans have adapted to live in such conditions. Trawled back through past posts for May & it's always the same - in fact it's like i'm plagiarizing myself every autumn. Gonna close down the access road this morning. Farmer Danny, who never does anything about the fences when its dry, suddenly seems to get the urge when it's saturated to tear up & down my access road, thereby damaging it. Managed to get some post stirrups concreted in last week during a 36hr window of dryness for the Rock-Creek campsite shed but can't see any progress on that project for at least a few weeks. May 15, NR: Peak bog-up. This is as bad as it gets. Was standing out the back & could feel myself slowly sinking on the spot - felt like if i stayed there for an hour i'd sink up to my neck - reminiscent of the quicksand on Daktari. On the bright side, i saw a male regent bower bird in my back yard. They are like the holy grail of bird-watching in Aus. The females, which i've seen before, are the most nondescript birds you can imagine - a kind of browny-grey - but the male has this striking yellow & black plumage. Looks like something out of a magical storybook when you see one - kinda like everything else is in black&white by comparison. Whereas the females gather in flocks of 10 or so, the males are solitary, usually stick to the forests & are rarely seen. Actually, i think i saw a flock of females a couple of days ago, so maybe the male came down to check them out. As a symptom of the rain, the night-time temps have stayed high. Never been this late in the year without having lit the fire, but haven't come to close to needing one so far. Min temps are still around 14 - normally you would expect some 7-8s at this time of year. May 23, NR: Have been conducting a Jungian experiment - with good success so far. From 7-8 days ago, i decided to stop looking at the weather forecast. Last time i checked, it was still 7-days of forecast rain when i formed the notion that maybe by constantly checking it, i was somehow manifesting it into continuous rain - causing a kind of negative synchronicity loop. Lo & behold, it's barely rained since. Some very light rain on the second day, & still overcast, but then it did fine up - & stay that way. It's quite remarkable coz we were coming off months of near daily rain with more forecast. Also strangely, the night time temps have remained pretty high. To get drier air, i'd been waiting for a temp drop, but we got it without that, though tonight it is significantly colder - guessing it will get down to 10-12. One chook recovered from Gastro, eventually, it took a full week Clucky Duck, sadly, didn't. She was pretty old though, 2nd last of the originals. Even with the extended dry run, the puddles out the back have only dried up in the last two days - which shows how full the water-table is. May 28, NR: It's now close to two weeks without rain since i stopped looking at the forecast. Yesterday it looked stormy all day - heard thunder mid-afternoon - i guess it was raining in the district somewhere, but didn't rain here. Also i could here the wind gusting through the pecan trees (200m away) at night - it was quite loud - wondered what the fuck it was - but it was dead calm on the porch. I thought it might be rain at first - you can hear it coming from there some times, sounds similar, but finally determined it was wind from the west. Waited for it to come to the house, but it didn't - not when i was standing there anyway. Did notice the flimsily installed insulation matt had blown down this morning - guess it was very narrow gust bands travelling through the valley in the night. 2-weeks no rain is quite weird for this time of year - actually any time here - but especially May. At some point with the camping, i'll have to look again i guess, but i'm in no rush right now while we're on a streak. Let things dry out a bit more. It's also nice flying-blind. Temp dropped under 10 last night (according to my thermometer) - which was a decent drop coz it wasn't cold when i went to bed. Got fire going tonight - though it's still not seriously cold. |