Up in the North of Ireland we have had more frost in the last 5 days than in the whole of last winter. It will help with the leather jackets, aphids and slugs, midges and ticks (serious here - I picked up Lyme disease from a tick 10 years back). Best of all, maybe the fruit trees will flower better next spring - all good. Tonight it seems colder because the wind has picked up, but it's probably warming up a bit.
Drove back to Dordogne from edge of Burgundy today, from son's. As soon as I got to the motorway at Vierzon there was torrential rain and strong winds. We were doing about 50mph a lot of the time. Rained all the way to Limoges, 2 hours. Whole journey was 5 1/2 hours.
Last edited: 21 November 2016 21:25:42
Dordogne and Norfolk. Clay in Dordogne, sandy in Norfolk.
Awful, heavy rain here in South Wales. My pond has over-flowed and the grass looks quite boggy - but when there are some whose homes are flooded or damaged - I can't grumble.
Hi Busy-Lizzie, that sounded quite a journey. I usually love travelling in the wind and rain (as long as the vehicle is water tight and can be trusted not to break down). I get a better sense real distance and of the endeavour of travelling. That sounds rather too much for me though. Did you get chance for breaks on the way? I imagine it was quite harrowing. Motorways are very tiring and have a strangely isolating atmosphere in storms.
At least the motorway guarantees that you won't end up like people in horror films, where they have to stop and go and get help at the nearest castle, because a tree has fallen across the road, or a bridge has been swept away.
Redditch, still raining. Got soaked at 2.30pm walking one of my dogs, then I had to wait for hubby to walk the older dog, then I took the younger dog before I could change my clothes.
Hi Logan, Pets and weather! They can be surprisingly demanding in bad weather. I have all but two of the cats in because the worst of the wind and rain has reached us in the past hour. I won't go out looking for them because they are the two who most enjoy catching mice and rats in the barns - and the barns are where all the rodents will be heading right now.
Who gets dried first in your house, the dogs or the humans? I suspect the dogs are dried first.
Drove from Tiverton, Devon, to Minehead, West Somerset this morning. Roads a bit flooded in places but passable. Returned this afternoon - just in time, it would seem, since a friend reports that at one time all roads in and out of Minehead were closed, the village of Carhampton was flooded, and it sounds like chaos. Here, the River Exe, already swollen, has risen about a metre in two hours. And still it rains (though less heavily, thank goodness!)
We don't get flooding on the mountain (obviously) but the behrn sometimes floods, and the two estuary towns expect to have bits washed away most years.
What can happen here is that water moves in such quantity that walls and bits of the cliff-side road get washed away. The walls and roads that go are usually those built recently. You can only use dry stone walls to successfully hold back a mountain load of water - they just let the water through, whereas it just builds and builds behind mortar walls, until it undermines or simply pushes them down. The cliff-side roads usually go if the Sloe, Gorse and Hawthorn bushes have been rooted out. Modern road building methods tend not only to take the root defences away, but then add impenetrable walls and wider, flatter roads that don't gully water away because the ditches are sacrificed in favour of the widest possible vehicle space, for faster vehicle speeds, and probably for the scenic views. I have finished my small rant now. Sorry for that folks.
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Up in the North of Ireland we have had more frost in the last 5 days than in the whole of last winter. It will help with the leather jackets, aphids and slugs, midges and ticks (serious here - I picked up Lyme disease from a tick 10 years back). Best of all, maybe the fruit trees will flower better next spring - all good. Tonight it seems colder because the wind has picked up, but it's probably warming up a bit.
Last edited: 21 November 2016 18:23:28
Drove back to Dordogne from edge of Burgundy today, from son's. As soon as I got to the motorway at Vierzon there was torrential rain and strong winds. We were doing about 50mph a lot of the time. Rained all the way to Limoges, 2 hours. Whole journey was 5 1/2 hours.
Last edited: 21 November 2016 21:25:42
Awful, heavy rain here in South Wales. My pond has over-flowed and the grass looks quite boggy - but when there are some whose homes are flooded or damaged - I can't grumble.
Hi Busy-Lizzie, that sounded quite a journey. I usually love travelling in the wind and rain (as long as the vehicle is water tight and can be trusted not to break down). I get a better sense real distance and of the endeavour of travelling. That sounds rather too much for me though. Did you get chance for breaks on the way? I imagine it was quite harrowing. Motorways are very tiring and have a strangely isolating atmosphere in storms.
At least the motorway guarantees that you won't end up like people in horror films, where they have to stop and go and get help at the nearest castle, because a tree has fallen across the road, or a bridge has been swept away.
Redditch, still raining. Got soaked at 2.30pm walking one of my dogs, then I had to wait for hubby to walk the older dog, then I took the younger dog before I could change my clothes.
Hi Logan, Pets and weather! They can be surprisingly demanding in bad weather. I have all but two of the cats in because the worst of the wind and rain has reached us in the past hour. I won't go out looking for them because they are the two who most enjoy catching mice and rats in the barns - and the barns are where all the rodents will be heading right now.
Who gets dried first in your house, the dogs or the humans? I suspect the dogs are dried first.
Drove from Tiverton, Devon, to Minehead, West Somerset this morning. Roads a bit flooded in places but passable. Returned this afternoon - just in time, it would seem, since a friend reports that at one time all roads in and out of Minehead were closed, the village of Carhampton was flooded, and it sounds like chaos. Here, the River Exe, already swollen, has risen about a metre in two hours. And still it rains (though less heavily, thank goodness!)
Last edited: 21 November 2016 22:28:46
We don't get flooding on the mountain (obviously) but the behrn sometimes floods, and the two estuary towns expect to have bits washed away most years.
What can happen here is that water moves in such quantity that walls and bits of the cliff-side road get washed away. The walls and roads that go are usually those built recently. You can only use dry stone walls to successfully hold back a mountain load of water - they just let the water through, whereas it just builds and builds behind mortar walls, until it undermines or simply pushes them down. The cliff-side roads usually go if the Sloe, Gorse and Hawthorn bushes have been rooted out. Modern road building methods tend not only to take the root defences away, but then add impenetrable walls and wider, flatter roads that don't gully water away because the ditches are sacrificed in favour of the widest possible vehicle space, for faster vehicle speeds, and probably for the scenic views.
I have finished my small rant now. Sorry for that folks.
Redditch,still raining.
Overcast but the rain has stopped , will have a look at stream at side of garden shortly , suspect it will be running high and fast