God, that must have been horrific, especially as a kid.
I’m definitely with you on the not loving wind thing. Of all the extremes of weather, wind bothers me the most. I used to live up a mountain and when storms came, you knew it. You just tied everything down, shut the shutters everywhere, lit a fire and waited.
Wind usually came with biblical amounts of water too, Everything up mountains seems far more extreme. The next morning, you’d venture out with some trepidation to see which part of the mountain had moved. It never happened on our side, as it was solid rock, but the other side was mudstone and bits regularly slid.
The only major things we ever had after a particularly heavy storm, was that our road surface washed away, one part of a terrace wall collapsed and a car-sized boulder moved down one of our rivers to change its course a bit. On the upside, I now know how to do dry-stone walling and build roads. Not that I ever want to build an 8-foot high terrace wall again.
It is freaky, though, when the topography of a very familiar bit of land suddenly changes and babbling brooks become raging torrents overnight that can, and do, move mountain sides. Further round, part of the actual road over the same river washed away that night, cutting four houses off for a few days until a temporary bridge and later repairs could be made.
I almost forgot; we did have quite a dramatic direct lightening strike once as well. No fire, but my wife said she saw it shoot out of an electric socket in the wall. Frazzled a TV too. Our neighbours on the other side of the valley saw it hit the house. Must have done what was intended and gone straight down the lightening conductor.
Thankfully, where we live now is in the lee of a castle and it’s castle rock. I can see the trees bending above, in our top garden, when there are high winds, but down in the lower part, by the house, you can drop a feather outside when it’s happening. That fact, alone, makes me never want to move again!
Britain can be a bit rainy, but largely speaking, it is far less extreme than other parts and we don’t get snow the way some of you on that side of the pond do (apart from Scotland. They do). I don’t envy you that.
Here, in the last few days, it has felt positively spring-like – but about a month too early. Still not spring-warm, but milder than of late and the light has changed. All the birds are chirping around collecting bits to make nests. I am sure it’s false optimism on their part and we’ll get another hit again before winter is out.
Hope the cold snap there doesn’t last too long. Spring isn’t too far away now. Still, cold snaps are aways a good excuse for log fires and a decent bottle of something warming.
). It’s too windy for a ‘nice’ fire. The fireplace insert does control backdraft quite well, but it also sucks in cold air from the peripheral rooms. Shoulda paid to duct it to the outside, I guess, cuz this house is nowhere near air tight. At least the freight trains have stopped.
