miércoles, 12 de septiembre de 2018

The Rain in Spain

Well, to begin with, there is not much rain in this part of central Spain.  Suffice it to say that our annual rainfall is not calculated in inches or in centimeters, but in millimeters.

Every now and then, however, we get one heck of a storm.  Hail and pelting rain by the bucketful are often accompanied by wicked winds.  We had one such storm just a few weeks ago.  The interesting thing is that our village got blasted, while villages a few miles away had not a drop of rain.  As the locals would say, "se nos cayó una nube", meaning "a cloud dropped on us".  The effect of these singular storms is magnified by the fact that our thick clay soil gets cooked under the summer sun, turning to terracotta and unable to absorb the water fast enough, most of which runs off.

Here is a video of flooding after that cloud came through.  You'll see topsoil floating about as well as a watermelon and a melon from neighbors' vegetable gardens that were washed away.  If you notice, there is a round grey street sign that is nearly covered.  Not all the water is going under the bridge; instead, it is going over.



This past Saturday, another nearby town was also hit hard, causing even greater damage.  Yet here, we had not a drop.



Time to clean out the culverts before the next storm hits.




2 comentarios:

  1. I feel your pain! Even though our soil contains a lot of sand, after months and months without any rain, ours washes into gutters when it comes down hard. We need soft, slow rain at the start of our season but Mother Nature isn't usually so accommodating. We've got a chance of rain from the remnants of a hurricane in the Pacific later this week but the chances keep dropping :(

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  2. Isn't it sad that we get excited when a hurricane comes our way because we might get a bit of rain?

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