This is what I was typing to post on here yesterday…
The forecast high for today was 25 degrees Celsius and although I don’t think we quite got that, it was within a couple of degrees or so. However, it has been cloudy all day with very warm winds from the south gusting over 70 kmh at times and visibility has been limited by a white haze, which I guess could be airborne dust and pollution. With the sky a sort-of milky white, there has been a weird quality to the atmosphere today.
The winds have actually been quite damaging. Having cleared my front lawn up after the winds of a couple of days ago, it’s now covered again with a lot of debris from the big old lime tree in front of my house, but the difference this time is that it includes some small branches in full leaf that have been snapped off by the winds. And the telephone wire to my neighbour’s house at the rear of mine that usually passes over my lawn at a height of about ten feet or so has come down to touching distance, so I guess the engineer will have to come along at some time to sort that out. Sadly, one of my next-door neighbour’s old cherry trees that stands on land that he owns on the other side of the road to his house has also been a casualty and has been blown over onto 400 volt power cables that are on poles along the side of the road and he is out cutting it up while I am typing this.
It’s becoming quite dark actually and with the winds still gusting pretty hard, I’ve just heard a few large drops of rain hitting my back door. So it looks as though we’re now probably in for a thunderstorm as the lights have been flashing every now and then for the past few minutes. Luckily, with the winds coming from the south, 56NE is sheltered by the trees behind it, so I should have nothing to worry about on that score. Even so, I won’t be sorry when this little bout of weather has passed through and blown itse
…and it was at that point that all the lights went out. A highly localised and quite violent little thunderstorm raged overhead for about half an hour with some very severe gusts of wind but the power was off for about two hours. When it came back on again, I found that my SFR Neufbox wouldn’t connect and that I’d therefore lost both my telephone and Internet connections. I tried re-booting the box several times without success, so I made a couple of calls on my mobile to tell a few friends and family that I’d be incommunicado for a while. I didn’t mind too much as I’ve had so many problems with SFR that I’ve given them notice of termination and will soon be switching to Orange with a new telephone number so was resigned to leaving things as they were. However, I had another go this morning and this time I got my green light back. So far, I’ve only got Internet, which has enabled me to finish this posting, but possibly the phone will come back on during the day as the diagnostics are saying that the line itself is not working. Anyway, given my experience of SFR, especially in recent months, I’ll believe that when I see it.
Before the power came back on again yesterday evening and while it was still light, I drove across to Galinat to check on 56NE. As the wind was from the south and 56NE was protected by the trees behind it, I was pleased but unsurprised that nothing much had moved. I also noticed on the way that whereas there were a few trees down and other signs of wind damage on the Plazac side of the valley, there were few signs of the storm on the Galinat side. I have to say that I would always prefer it to be that way all the while 56NE is tied-down outside.