Our weird weather
This week: Orchid flowers; Our weird weather; When the sun shines…;
This has been another dismal week of weather.
The bad weather didn’t come as a surprise. I could see last weekend that I wasn’t going to be doing much outside this week.
Whilst the western part of Europe has had some really nice spring weather, here in the Adriatic it has been more like February than April.
There has been an almost constant easterly wind this week, of varying strength. Just looking at Wednesday, the average strength was 15 knots (so about 30kph) with gusts of just under 30 knots, so 56kph.
The strong winds caused the cancellation of the Catamaran service to the island and even cancellation of the ferries. This meant that when I went to the supermarket on Thursday there were no fresh fruit and vegetables.
For me it highlighted just how fragile the island supply chain is, if the disruption can cause such a dearth of fresh produce.
But it is also really unusual for this time of year and has been a source of both concern and conversation amongst locals and visitors alike.
I had a conversation on Saturday about climate breakdown and how its effects are very unequal.
Whilst the temperature here in Dol this week has been around 17°C, in northern Europe, northern Germany especially, this week the temperature has been around 29°C, so a complete reversal.
The rain on Thursday was coming down in sheets. I took this photograph looking towards Hum and Vrbanj on Thursday afternoon from the relative shelter of my covered walkway. Hum is almost hidden behind a veil of rain.
It was not fit to do anything more than work inside.
I felt for local people because the Thursday before Easter is the night when the “Za križen” procession of the cross takes place.
This is one of the most important dates on the Island calendar with local people from each of the villages around Jelsa following the overnight procession. A procession from each village starts at the Church at 22:00 and then each procession follows the same prescribed route.
The procession stops at each of the other village churches and returns to the starting point after dawn, some eight hours later.
Fortunately the rain stopped around 20:00, but the day’s rainfall left a very difficult and treacherous hilly route. The cross bearer from each village is always barefoot, although they are allowed to wear socks.
Friday morning dawned cloudy but fine.
I’m pleased that the weather forecast for the next ten days looks a lot better than the the last ten days!
Orchid flowers
Against a wall, in light shade I have the only Orchid I have found (so far) growing within my curtledge.
There are orchids all over the green lanes and tracks around my home. However although I have been out looking, so far I’ve not seen any this year.
It is a little bit early. The end of April and early May in “normal” years is when I have have seen them in the past.
Last year an Orchidologist identified it for me as Calanthe discolor, which is not a native to Dalmatia, but neither is it invasive either.
As I was in the orchard this week, I saw the frist flower spike sticking up out of the surrounding greenery.
I pulled out out some annual weeds and also the Pellitory-of-the-Wall, Parietaria judaica, a herb which thrives and spreads everywhere.
There are more than half a dozen new shoots at the base of the orchid and each one should send up a flower spike in due course.
Our weird weather
I am still struggling to analyse the vast amount of data my weather station produces.
My preferred data analysis programme is Microsoft® Excel. This is at the top end of spreadsheet programmes, just beneath the professional level of spreadsheet software.
with more than 180,000 lines of data, it takes a lot of computing power to even import this amount of data.
This last week I realised that my “gut feeling” about 2025 being cooler and wetter was supported by things like having to use the water immersion heater, because there has been so little sunshine, my solar panels have only been producing slightly tepid water.
Usually I have installed the covers in mid March to reduce the solar power to the tubes and so prevent water inside the tank boiling.
I was up on the roof on Saturday morning installing both covers. Usually I install just one in march, reducing the surface area of the high efficiency solar tubes by a third, then add the second one in late April.
After a week of more rain, gale force winds, catamaran and even the large ferry’s sailings cancelled because of bad weather, when the sun came out today, I decided I had better put the covers on because we have gone from one extreme to another!
Also, I have yet to remove the cover around my polytunnel, because it has been so cool and windy outside, that the inside temperature has barely been above 20°C.
With a week of fine weather ahead, I think I need to remove the polythene over the shade netting now. Again, this is a month later than last year.
I took both solar covers off last September, also a month earlier than normal, because the water was not heating properly. So our weather is really “muxed ip”.
But this is all just circumstantial evidence. Human memory is highly fallible and I suspect that what I am looking for is in the data. But where?
After spending time building a spreadsheet to analyse the data, my first attempts at data import failed, so somewhat frustrated, I gave up.
This week I have gone back to the drawing board, thinking about the available data and how I can present it in a graphical format.
Some import and charting works well, for example the 11 day running average temperature.
Starting again with a clean (spread)sheet, it is about comparing and contrasting. One suggestion I received after asking on a statistical forum is to convert Watts/m² to energy, over daytime.
The formulae is W/m² × (5 min × 60 sec) = Joules/m². 1kWh = 3.6 million joules (energy). This is an internationally accepted measure of the sun’s power.
There were some other suggestions, but first I need to build the basic spreadsheet for the data……. This is another “work in progress” project.
When the sun shines…
The wet weather of the past two months combined with the mild temperatures and even occasional sunshine, has meant an explosion of green growth.
Everywhere I look, I have weeds and especially grasses. However, I am not alone.
A walk through the olive groves shows just how much green growth there has been. The tall grasses are approaching waist high and paths which were clearly visible last autum have been completely subsumed.
In a clearing I spotted some “Lords and Ladies” flowers, Arum maculatum. I have these all around my home but they are not quite in flower yet.
Also in my orchards the Wild Salsify are flowering.
These stunning flowers only open for a single day, so catching them when fully open is a matter of luck.
The Pecan and Pistachio nut trees I planted are all in flower at the moment.
Because the trees are still small, I would rather they put their energy into developing a strong structure, so as soon as the flowers have been pollinated, I will remove most of them.
The Pistachio flowers look as though they have been attacked by something. I’m sure they should not be going brown at the tips, but I need to ask an expert what is going on.
Other than that, the trees look very healthy.
Wildlife abounds around my orchards. I spotted this large and old Moorish Gecko, Tarentola mauritanica, sunning himself on a piece of fencing.
The fencing is 8 cm wide, which makes him around 12 cm to 14 cm from nose to tail. As soon as I got close, he scuttled away into the blackberry briars.
My olives are all coming into flower too. Once the flowers open, if we get rain then they will not pollinate so I am hoping for some fine, dry weather. NCG
