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Weather diary page

Oct 3 Taidong: Spoke too soon about the dbjf. That wind gusting up on the night of Sep 30 turned out to be its arrival. Blew hard on Oct 1, a little less on the 2nd, but then today it went up a notch and roared all day and is continuing well into the night. Big gusts about 70kph. Dust storm in Taidong city. About as big as dbjg gets. Typhoon heading towards japan may be exacebating it.

Oct 4 Kaohsiung: It seems the worst of the summer heat is gone. The highs for the next week are 30 for Kaohsiung with lows of 25. Over recent years, I've made a mental note that the weather seems to make a distinct change towards Fall sometime between 10/15-10/31. We'll see if that holds true this year. By mid November in Kaohsiung, highs normally don't get out of the high 20's.

Oct 5 Taidong: Dbjf rocks on. Came in with a bang this year (like it usually does) and has continued unabated at full throttle. Tonight it's still howling at nearly 10pm. No rain but big temp drop has come with it, expecially in last couple of days. No fan, trackpants on in the evening, and extra quilt cover. typpn hitting east coast of japan at the moment and another behind it that is predicted to follow the same track. Dbjf combined with typhoons off east coast is creating some wild oceans. went to collect some driftwood and it's awe inspiring to be standing right on the edge of where all that power of the ocean collapses. Like standing in front of an oncoming locomotive knowing it was going to come to a stop just inches away from you. Anyway, found a large piece of niu dxang. Had to chainsaw it and then haul it 200 metres across shifting stones in fading light, which is bloody hard work, but it felt like a good aftenoon's effort as i drove back with it's sweet scent filling the car. Now it is starting rain - short bursts but fairly heavy - and with the wind still roaring, which is rare unless it's typhoon, which it isn't.

Oct 12 Taidong: Nothing really came of that rain mentioned and it's tried a couple more times but but less than 1mm. 10 staight days of roaring dbjf, including a couple of huge days. One where it was difficult to even walk in it. CWB had it gusting up to 11 on BS on lan yu. That's typhoon strength! There were gusts here that would have been over 80kph. Then finally, on the 11th, it stopped and was almost calm. Today was calm again - even had a gentle southerly in the morning. With a typhoon almost stationary out to the east, the waves were absolutely massive and coming in fairly clean once the wind stopped. Don't think i've seen waves breaking any further out. With wild seas for for nearly two weeks, there seems to be bits and pieces of interesting driftwood getting washed up - more so than there was immediately after the typhoon. Guess it was out there and now it's coming in. Still no sign of hornets - the odd smaller tiger head, that's about it. No fireflies either - that would probably be coz it hasn't rained since the typhoon, which is over three weeks ago now. Been some long dry spells this year.

Oct 12 Kaoshiung: Meanwhile in Kaohsiung it's been hotter than all get out. Today was a bit better with some breeze, but it still must have approached 32 without a cloud in the sky. Oct 15 is coming soon, so it had better start cooling down within the next couple of weeks or my entire world view will be disrupted. Reading about driftwood and hornets on the east coast makes me feel a pit in my tummy. Miss that place.

Oct 22 Taidong: 4 weeks and three days without rain. That must be some kind of record. However, there is decent build-up out to sea and also a light southerly yesterday - both of which are good signs of rain. The good news has been that after the first 10 days of oct the wind dropped right off and the weather has been perfect ever since. Lots of egrets on land since about 2-3 weeks ago. but still haven't seen yellow wagtail - and hardly any hornets.

Oct 22 Kaohsiung: Meanwhile, the last ten days in Kaohsiung have almost felt like summer when you're in the sun. The nights are cooling down, and it is clearly no longer summer, but I keep wondering when the edge is going to come off the midday heat. I wonder this exact same thing every summer I'm in Kaohsiung, and it ends up really cooling down around the end of October. On a happy note, the swimming pools right now are fantastic. No kiddies. The pool at Zhong Shan university the other day was brilliant. The visibility in the 50 meter pool was so clear that I'm guessing it was at least 150 meter visibility. With the beach next to it and hiking nearby, it's the only place to go on a sunny afternoon in Kaohsiung in these days.

Oct 23 Taidong: Well, it rained just about everywhere on the east coast except here, with most places getting 5-10mm. But still not a drop in XC. DBJF restarted yesterday, but not as intense as early oct.

Oct 30 Kaohsiung We're nearing the end of October, so temperatures should be going down in the next week or so, at least in Kaohsiung. Sure enough, next week we have a forecast low of 22, which will be the lowest temperature yet by at least two degrees. This week we've seen highs of 30 and lows of 24. The sun still packs a punch, but the air is growing noticeable cooler. We've had absolutely beautiful weather if it weren't for the increase in air pollution that happens every winter on the west coast. The air quality index is creeping up. You can check it at http://taqm.epa.gov.tw/taqm/en/default.aspx.

Oct 30 Taidong: Only two days left and very little chance of rain - that gives us a record low rainfall for a month of only 1mm in XC. Further exacerbating that, it didn't rain for the last 10 days of Sep either, so that's 5 weeks and 5 days without rain. Definitely a record in in my time in Taidong. Apart from that, it's been great weather. Not too hot, only a couple of days of moderate dbjf since the initial burst, and cool nights. Thorny tree near front gate of my house has just started to bloom - first time it has done that - beautiful pink flowers. Still no hornets. That native animal that was harrassing the chickens is proving to be a real problem. No luck trying to catch it and it has killed several chickens already. Seems to devour chickens where it catches them. Have only seen it once and i'm surprised i haven't heard the commotion when it attacks - must be doing it in the middle of the night. I'm now locking chickens up every night and setting cage trap. However, it's spooked the chooks to such a degree that half of them won't go into their pen at night and are roosting in trees closer to the house.

Looks to be a typhoon forming and it appears headed for north ppe. Another one behind it, so hopefully that will bring an end to the 'drought'.