Sunglasses and puddles! - A week to remember

I wish we could have decent rain here my cornewr of east sussex is so dry and remains warm. It must have been nice to show your visitor around. My daughters just come back from Cadiz.

Oh Chris isn`t that just typical of the weather,yes you needed the rain but not whilst your friend was visiting,never mind bet you both enjoyed your time together anyway. Its a bit of a mixed bag here,cold but dry last week,really lovely over last weekend then warmer this week again so lots of gardening getting done, to be honest we could do with some rain but only at night,lol Be nice to have Dave home again although you`ll probably have to share a bit more sofa, I`m sharing mine with Caspar, enjoy your trip next week and give Freddy a stroke from me..........

Enjoy your break away :o)

OOOh! Is that what's in store for us in the north??!! We were at the beach yesterday, lazing in the sun, strolling down the beach for the occasional knee-deep paddle (a bit too rough for swimming) and prodding around in the rock pools and caves. I don't fancy the sound of your ice-storms or heavy rain - especially as we have partner's parents coming here for a week on Monday. Then we're planning a short holiday of our own across to Bilbao, San Sebastian, possibly over the border into Biarritz, then a turn south through the Rioja region before heading home. Sorry you've got such strange weather, but you keep it for a while!

Well, with hubby back today he will (hopefully) bring back some decent weather ! I asked him not to take it, in the first place.
This morning we are back to standard (blue) sky, bright sunshine and cool (22c) this is more like what we expect in September/October.
Have a lovely break in your 'bit' of Spain I'm sure the weather will be great. :-)
Chris xx

Hey hey...like that...'asked him not to take it!'. You have had a mixture of weather there...glad it's settled down agian for you. Ours here is perfect for September ...as it often is.

'Himself' left you a share of the sun and ours is back too! We do have Thunderstorms forecast for Sunday, will have to wait and see.
Enjoy your Indian summer,:-)
Chris xx

Our "Indian summer" is still in full swing! It's turning out to be the loveliest of Septembers! :-)

I remember from when we lived in Spain that September was often a really warm month. But come October & we sometimes got what they called a "gota fría" , a sort of cold front that came down from the North & met up with the warmer, much more humid air coming up from the South. The two often collided over the centre of Spain & then we would get torrential rains & heavy thunderstorms often including several inches of hailstones.

I well remember on occasions running out onto the balcony to try to get my plants to a safer place before they were pulverized by the hail! One year we were having lunch at my parents-in-law's place & we had a tremendous thunderstorm, when we got back home we found all the Coleus on the dining room windowsill (external) had all been blown off & were smashed on the pavement below!

Nobody was hurt, though some neighbours did complain to the police & I received a visit from them, nothing came of it fortunately as they were satisfied with the precautions I normally took & it was a freak weather incident that caused them to fly off the windowsill. They were very big plants in pretty small plastic pots & would more likely to have drifted down. It would have been an impressive sight I imagine!

I should have made clear that we lived on the fifth floor of the block of flats we lived in. We lived there 11 years & that was the only serious incident we ever had.

At the same time I remember having seen lots of plants blown off windowsills during storms so I wasn't the only one! I often looked around the streets searching for "wind falls!" LOL!

I had a number of plants at home that I found that way! :-D

It is overcast today - yesterday we hit 37c though. Looks like the predicated Thunderstorm for tomorrow is likely. We have had 2 Gota Frias in the 6 years we have lived here and another is forecast for this year, due to the long hot summer. Last week I lost some decorative tiles which were hanging on the wall, because I didn't think to take them down (won't do that again) But other than that not too bad. The council is very busy locally clearing up flood damage, which was quite extensive after the 'torrents' I managed to get my Hibiscus under cover because they are in large pots, but my Bignonia climbers lost every flower! Mostly it is the winds (which come out of nowhere) that send us scurrying to 'batten down the hatches' :-)
Chris xx

My very first week in Cuenca, in October 1972, we had a Gota Fría & I soon found out what the "Giant's Causeway" was for! It was a storm drain & boy did it fill up quickly!!! As Cuenca is built on hills the "barrio" (neighbourhood) where I lived at the time was built up the side of one of these hills. There is very little soil on these hills so the bare rock just sheds the water & a cloudburst provides several inches of rainfall in a very, very short period of time.

Across the "Giant's Causeway" was a road & another hill. There was a wide stairway up this hill & it became a river within just a few short minutes! I will never forget that scene! I'd never been afraid of rain, coming as I do from Blighty, but that downpour frightened the life out of me!!!

Rain certainly gets dramatic in this country! Like you, Balcony, I'm already a rusty Brit, but the rain here is something else! And the speed at which it arrives and disappears! This region is called the Costa Verde (Green Coast) and it's not called that because it's dry!! When the rain arrives it soon makes waterfalls gushing down the sides of mountains and, a day or two later, sudden gushes appear through slits in the limestone where water has penetrated the rock, collected, then found a way out. After our hot dry Summer there was a sudden heavy downpour and now, about a week later, all the dry crunchy meadows are showing new green shoots again. Trouble is - it's also woken up the weed seeds in our garden so we're constantly on hoe alert!

I certainly agree with your comments above, Nariz, a sudden downpour can dump several inches of rain in a matter of minutes & it just runs off the hills gushing like waterfalls as you quite rightly describe it! It also takes all the soil with it & the river Jucar turns deep,chocolatey brown for a few days! The river Huecar never turn that colour but was almost always crystal clear, except after a really heavy storm when it would get a bit dirty & carry debris. As the Huecar enters the Jucar in Cuenca the contrast after a storm is tremendous,the Huecar forces its way into the Jucar & the clearer Huecar is visible for 50 metres or more before it mixes with the Jucar.

The weather here has been horrendous, 48 hours of Thunderstorms and torrential rain. We live at the top of a hill , but the flooding has been so bad we haven't left the house since Friday :-( Thank goodness for the freezer (and Iceland)
I did think about building an arc! but some local wag beat me to it - saying animals had been seen walking two by two down the rivers (streets) of San Miguel.
Now (at last) it seems to be subsiding, and we shall leave a bit later than planned for Andalucia tomorrow. The weather in Gor it unsettled and a lot cooler but they haven't had the extremes.
Must be climate change.
Chris xx

We've had a very pleasant week with some very nice warm sunshine. Unfortunately that's fast coming to an end! :-( Today it's cooler & more cloudy & tomorrow we can expect it to get even more cooler with light showers forecast for Friday. We have been told to expect a worsening of the weather over the weekend. It seems the lovely month of September is over for this year & the real autumn chill will be catching up with us as we move forward into October.

Hope you have a nice time in Andalucia!

Today 3 years ago I was in Cuenca for our youngest son's wedding. The 3 days I was there we had some really lovely HOT sunshine.

I don't know when I will be able to go back as I've been out of work for 7 months now & am no closer to getting a job than I was back then. :-(

Partner's parents are here for a week and we promised them a barbecue yesterday, which was a very pleasant sunny/cloudy day, so what did it do as soon as the ribs and vegetable kebabs hit the rack .... thundered ...LOUDLY!!! Luckily that was the sum of the drama but it had us in fear of more for an hour before we moved inside! I know it's coming, but we've had such a lovely summer that we don't want it to end. Fenclare, have a great time on your travels; Balcony, hope things look up for you soon on the job front.

Thanks guys, back from Andalucia. Our son seems to have bought half of Gor ! A ruined cortijo plus 70 acres of Almond trees. Weather there very much cooler than on the coast (wish I'd taken a sweatshirt) Some rain and Thunder, not enough to spoil things though. The scenery is truly spectacular, Guadix/ Baza are both nice towns but very basic compared with the coast.
Think I must be getting old, it was great to get back to our 'resort' type area. Even the driving was preferable to switchback road with 'no' edges. The road to Mark's cortijo is (I would say) impassible without a 4x4. Thought my fillings were being shaken out!
Anyway back to normality in brilliant sunshine, no rain for 3 days and 38c on the terrace. My friend 'cat sat' and watered my garden. We are in disgrace with the cats, needless to say!
Hope your weather is holding up Nariz. Balcony, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for you jobwise.
It's great to be back online - lots of blogs to read and piccys to look at !
Chris xx

Thank you, I may have some news on the job front by the weekend. Can't be any more specific than that at present.

Glad you enjoyed your holidays! What plans has your son for such a big piece of land? Is he going into the almond trade? 70 acres of trees are an awlful lot of trees!!! In the early spring they will be a truely magnificent sight to behold!!! You really must get yourself invited back for the flowering time.

Well Balcony, he actually plans to completely reform the cortijo and include 2/3 (?) letting apartments. The Almonds I think are normally harvested by a local collective group. As for all that land (it isn't all Almonds) the designer is suggesting that a reservoir may be regarded favourably by the local council rather than a well! As you may imagine no mains 'anything' electricity will be solar/wind powered, the water still up for detailed discussion.
A huge project :-)
The gota fria we suffered before we went to Gor was apparently the worst for 12 years - now that must be climate change!
Chris xx