Overcast and calm this morning. Becoming breezy with rain starting in the afternoon. Heavy rain this evening and temperatures up to 50F or so.
With overcast skies, the 8am start was dim.
I felt a little disoriented when I first started standing on the dock. It took me a few minutes to realize the dock was moving. The surge wasn’t obvious to me on the water (except where I could see it moving up the beach on the shore below Sugarloaf), but was sufficient to move the dock. I don’t remember being on watch with noticeable movement previously.
As I had noticed yesterday, birds seemed to begin arriving around the dock around sunrise (~8:30am). I mostly noticed them swimming in from elsewhere. It makes me wonder where they spend the night.
Overcast is just one word, but the actual clouds can vary quite a bit. In the first hour of watching, clouds varied from flat gray to maybe mammatus formations. At other times in the day it seemed like lenticular clouds might present below the main stratus layer.
I lost my observing sheet when an unexpectedly strong gust of wind blew it off the clipboard and into the water. I probably should have been more careful, as I’ve had issues with wind on previous occasions (I lost a pencil one time, but the paper landed back on the dock). It had been calm, and the minor puffs of wind didn’t seem to be an issue, until it wasn’t quite as minor and then was an issue.
We had an extended break while they spliced a second section of piling after driving the first. I was feeling hungry and tired, so went home to eat an get a quick nap.
The afternoon ended up being quite windy, with rain getting heavy towards the end of observing time. The birds were not so numerous in the cove after the weather turned.
I saw two or three flashes of lightning not long after we were done observing. They seemed to come from over/around Bear Mountain, and I was surprised not to hear any thunder.
My iNaturalist Observations for Today
