After a long period of warmth and high temperatures, we finally got some nice and cool weather. Although the forecasts issued a lot of warnings for our area and predicted huge amounts of rain we got a nice rain period with lots of northeast winds. When I saw that we’d have NE winds I knew the weather will be kind to us. 

We live in Northwestern Croatia or Central Croatia as it is called lately. Although we have a continental climate the area is highly influenced by the Alpine climate from the west and the Mediterranean climate in the south. Since our village is located in an area surrounded by 4 mountains we also get our own microclimate by the influence of these 4 mountains.

Our winters are harsh, with strong winds, and can be very cold. January temperatures can drop to -25°C(-13°F) and also due to the high mountains that block the warm air getting to we can get periods of 10-14 days of constant freezing fog. 

Summers on the other hand aren’t as influenced by the mountains as the winter is. We get lots of warmth from the African air currents. We get heatwaves that bring African sand with them so together with the heat we get lots of sand and hard to breathe air. During the summer the mountains act as a shield protecting us from bad storms. We don’t get as much thunder and hail as we would if we were located somewhere else. Hail is very rare here and we haven’t had a supercell storm in almost 20 years. 

We do get torrential rain from time to time(last was in May) but since we’re on a high hill they don’t do much damage, and the village has a good drainage system with clean inundation canals and flooding areas so we don’t have any problems with rain. Also, torrential rain only hits us when the storms come from the south (Rijeka and Gorski Kotar) and enter from the only side where there are no mountains so this kind of rain is rare. 

This is why I knew that with this cyclone we were safe because it was hitting us from the east and when the cyclone comes from the east the Sljeme mountain diverts the rain from us. 

We got only 50mm of rain which is a normal amount for us and we’re in the average amounts for July. The past two July were really rainy with 200mm in 2019 and 171mm in 2020. 

After the rain came the northeast winds which I absolutely love. Although some of the gusts were over 35m/s my garden almost didn’t feel it. 

North wind does lots of damage in the garden because of the fact that we’re the highest hill in the area and the garden is directly exposed to the north wind, but NE wind comes from the side where the forest is very dense and it protects the garden from the wind damage.