Storm Darragh

I was going to go to see Nick! But then storm Darragh appeared on the horizon, with an amber weather warning in tow. The trains already struggle to run in fine weather! No way you could get to England in an acceptable way with that kind of weather. And driving in a storm means risking flooding your car or ending up stuck behind a tree that had fallen over the road. I really hadn’t enjoyed driving through Storm Isha. So I decided to move my trip back. 

The day before I would travel, the weather warning turned red. Red! Really not travel weather. And when I was just calmly eating an orange that evening, I received the alert from the government. My phone made the most hideous noise. And a warning message appeared. Not really necessary; I had kept a close eye on the weather and already changed my plans. But now I know what the government does when there is such a weather alert out. And I was lucky; friends of mine were either trying to have a phone conversation or driving when that thing went off. Scares the shit out of you!

Serious forecast

I had made sure to take a vulnerable plant inside, close all my windows, and secure the bins even better than normal, to make sure nothing would start flying around. And then I went to bed and hoped for the best. The winds were forecast to be stronger at about 7 am.

When I woke up the next morning it was clearly windy, but nothing out of the ordinary. I was relieved! I had been a bit worried about storm damage.

As the wind didn't seem to be too bad I went to the shop before breakfast. I could go and get myself my Saturday newspaper. Or so I thought. And then the first storm damage became apparent: the supermarkets hadn't had their normal delivery of newspapers! Oh dear. I tried the other shop later in the day, and that was successful. And I admired the wildness of the river on the way.

No newspapers! 

What the village looked like

The river a bit upstream

I basically spent the whole day marking. It was rubbish weather and it needed doing. And it needed doing even more as on Monday evening I wanted to go and have dinner with friends. But I didn't feel like I could take the evening off without getting some of that marking out of the way beforehand. And I made good progress!

I did do a few loops of the parking lot, but I didn't do anything in the way of proper exercise. I didn't fancy going out on my bike in that weather, and that is the only type of exercise I currently have available to me! So it was basically a very dull day, but there was also something snug about staying indoors with the cat. 

Funnily enough, all was well here I was, but Nick had both a (long) power cut and no water. And his weather warning had only been amber or yellow. I jumped that gun! 

I suppose that was a very unspectacular report of my first red weather warning. That day without a named storm two days before had better stories! But as far as I am concerned any weather warning can turn out unspectacular. I'm not a big fan of storm damage! And I'll probably sooner or later will get some of that anyway…