Back at Mallacoota

The big story at Mallacoota at present is the high water level in the Inlet.  It was measured on the morning of 17 July at 1.42 m.  Still rising a little as the water flows down the Rivers.  At the measured level this event has raised the level by 80cm.  With a rough measure of size of the Inlet as 25 sq km each 4 cm is equivalent to 1,000,000 cubic metres of water.  A million cubic metres is 400 Olympic swimming pools so this even has, for the benefit of readers of News Corpse, resulted in an additional 8,000 Olympic pools getting added to the Inlet! 

The next few images come from our morning walk along Lakeside Drive (or as one resident said now renamed "Lake Drive").  This is the shared path at Stingray Point.

Close to Mullet Creek.

On the way to the Karbeethong ramp

It now takes a bit of knowledge to work out where to launch a boat!

The water level in the fringing vegetation is such that a Lyrebird had taken to the trees!

Later in the day we went for a stroll on Bastion Point.  There was a mighty Surf running.

Looking inland Develings Inlet is rising rapidly.  I suspect the shoreline is about 100 metres from where it used to be.

The low pressure system which has caused this roughness has dumped a lot of seaweed up the beach.  Surprisingly there is very little other marine life with it on this occasion.

The big surprise was seeing a European Goldfinch gleaning on the beach. This is only the 23rd eBird record of the species in the Mallacoota area.

Some unusual barnacles were attached to a length of plastic pipe that had washed up.

This jelly was intriguing as it didn't seem to be structured in the way of normal jellyfish and was an attractive golden colour.  Possibly an egg mass of some description? 

Hopefully this gives an idea of how narrow the barrier is at present, and how little height of sand is left.  A backhoe has apparently been ordered for Monday.

The dunes are getting inundated.

There were masses of these "things" washed up.  I thought the older, browner ones looked like muesli bars.  An alternative thought was condom!  With all the little spikes that would be interesting!

We haven't had a Pelican photo for a while.

I decided to go to Fisherman's Point to check for seabirds.  The swells were roaring in, but any seabirds were well out to sea: the few Gannets and Albatross I could ID were at least 1 km out.

The next image is not exactly crisp.  However the Gabo Lighthouse is 17 km away across a very rough sea so that is to be expected.  It says something about the state of the sea that the breakers are so clearly visible at this distance .

Coming back I thought this image from Betka Beach gave a nice comparison of the immature Pacific Gull and the Silver Gulls.

When back in town I always drive slowly along Betka road as a Peaceful Dove has been seen (and photographed) there.  Not by me it hasn't.  However is was good to see a comparison shot of female (left) and male (right) Common Bronzewings.

Some birdie records

On the 4th of July I toured a few sites with an objective of sea-watching.  (The sea watching was quite good with rough seas and strong wind bringing many Gannets, several Shy Albatross and one Black-browed Albatross within identification range.  There were a few other interesting sightings.  

The first was a socially-distanced ukelele class at Bastion Point!  Apart from anything else, they attracted 4 Grey Teal along the shore line!

My second target area was Fishermans Point West of Betka.  En route I swung by Boundary Rd - Nauta Terrace where Mr Emu had emerged from the trees.

Although not accompanied by chicks (as I had hoped) he wasn't lonely.  (The Emu is in the background on the LHS of this image.)

Passing by Betka Beach there were 6 Caspian Terns evident.  A fairly large group by local standards.

Here is a close-up (possibly better referred to as a zoomed image) of 3 of them.

On getting to Fisherman's Point I found the restoration of the viewing platform was well in hand. 

Mallacoota weather report June 2020

Overall an unexceptional month.

Rainfall

We were heading for a trivial amount until a very surprising amount on the 24th.  As it turned out we added 23 mm in that event and ended with 41.8 mm for the month.  This is 56% of median rainfall for July.  That is almost identical to 2019.

Doing a pro-rata estimate of the total for the year gives an estimate of 788 mm for the year.  The progress of the daily pro-rata estimates through 2020 is given in this chart.

Temperatures

My usual overall measure of the temperature is the anomaly given by the difference between the current average temperature for a site and period and the long term average for the same site.  Using the BoM site near the airport I get a value of 0.17^oC for this metric.  

I calculate the anomaly each day, on a month to date basis as we move through the month.  For July that shows a warm start to the month followed by a cold spell and a warm recovery to near average conditions.

A similar pattern is (fortunately) shown when looking at the daily data from my weather station.

There did appear to be quite wide ranges in the daily temperatures but neither the maximum range (13.8^oC ) nor the minimum range (5.3^oC ) were close to the extreme widths of range for July.

Minimum Temperatures

All three measures (2020, 2019 and long term average) of average monthly minimum temperature are closely grouped.

Looking at a time series of average minima for June shows quite wide variation and no significant trend.

Maximum temperatures

The average maximum for 2020 is a little above 2019 and a fair amount above the long term average.  I expect this to be an outcome of using my data for the last two years and BoM data for the earlier years.

However a time series shows great variation and no significant trend.  The 'plummet' in 2006 is interesting and may be investigated later.  (As it isn't reflected consistently in other months of that year I don't think it is an artefact of changed equipment or other site changes.)

Humidity

The average 0900 hrs reading for June 2020 is somewhat higher than both June 2019 (both from my WS) and both well above the historical average (to 2010) offered by BoM

In contrast the average 1500 hrs is well below the historic figure and very similar to 2019.

Wind

In essence the data show a rather calm month with an average daily run of 73 kilometres.  There were 12 days with a run <50 kms and only 6 days over 100.  With only 16 months of data for this variable it isn't possible to make furthe comment.

When the wind did blow it was mainly from the West to North sector of the compass.

Chip Track and Betka Beach

With the Betka River having broken the bar the level of water in the estuary had dropped sufficiently to be able to walk along the Chip Track - particularly the bridge near the picnic area - again.

The first image shows the route.  WE usually go along the beach first but I decided to go along the river first so that if the bridge was covered with grot we could go on to the road, rather than having to back-track to get across the dunes to the beach.

I had been told of many Pelicans gorging on the dead fish.  They were not there but a flock - estimated as 400 - of Silver Gulls were present.  (I apologise for the phone photos: I had my main camera with me but ran out of battery - and had left a flat spare in my bag!  It is hard to get good help.)

The Eel grass shows that water had been well over the track.

Still some weed on the beach near the Mouth.

The sea rushing in  ...

.. and up the estuary.

The gulls had been wandering about on the beach.

As well as the Silver Gulls, an Immature Pacific Gull was on the beach,  The phone doesn't do distant shots well, but this shows the relative sizes of the two gull species.

There were still a few dead fish on the beach.  I don't know what species they are and will consult iNaturalist.  Brad Krawczyk has identified this as Black Bream.

Definitely a toadfish.

No idea but Brad has given these as Mullet.!  About 30 cm long,

I think these are different species.

The waves have been quite active on the beach, to erode about 30 cm of sand, which is what I suspect opened the mouth.

Just a pretty skyscape.