Weather

Mostly, last week was quite hot.  It was sunny, unusually humid and in the mid to high 30s.

Thursday night was uncomfortably warm and humid, with thunder rumbling gently around us.

Sam hates thunder!!  Rupert ignores thunder but also didn't sleep well. For the first time since he arrived he insisted on sleeping outside of his crate.  We think he may simply have been too hot. So Sam, Rupert and Lindsey slept in the lounge room, which has the advantage of having air conditioning.

I was awake on and off all night.  Hot, bothered and restless.

Jim, as far as I could tell, slept soundly.

By Friday, the temperature had dropped from the mid to high 30s on Thursday to single figures in Ballarat when Lindsey and I left for work.

And the rain came.

It rained quite hard for a lot of our trip to Reservoir.  There were several very, very heavy showers in Reservoir over the course of the day.

There was a severe weather warning for rain across the whole state of Victoria. Many outside events were cancelled. Caravan parks near rivers were evacuated. Some houses were evacuated.  We were not worried about being flooded, given that the house is halfway up a hill. The only concern that we might have had would be rainwater gushing down the rock face immediately behind the house and washing us away.  Fortunately, that didn't happen.  We did, however, get almost the December average for rainfall in the first 3 days of the month. Other places got considerably more rain than that. There was quite a degree of flooding, particularly in the north and east of the state, but also in Melbourne.  I have a State Emergency Service app on my phone which gives me emergency alerts for the areas that include both East Melbourne and Mount Helen. I was getting so many flood and building damage alerts for the East Melbourne area on Saturday that sometimes it sounded as though my phone was ringing!

And some places, as is the way when the Weather Dogs come out to play, got almost no rain at all and wondered what all the fuss was about!

And through all of the weather, life went on.

Ant came back from Melbourne with Ian on Friday evening and, despite the weather, they and Jim assembled the various barbecues that Ian had recently bought.  The rain held off just enough for the assembling and for Ian to prepare a fishy platter, mostly cooked on the barbecue.

Saturday the weather around us wasn't actually too bad. Ian, Jim and Ant spent the day filling up a trailer and moving a lot of the stuff in the garage to a storage place. Lindsey and I went to the Bridge Mall Market and out to the shops at Delacombe. Ant headed back to Melbourne on the  train mid-afternoon. And then the rain returned.

Yesterday, Jim and I went in Lindsey's nice four wheel drive down to Mount Martha. It was evident that some of the freeways had been flooded on Friday and Saturday. The West Gate freeway in places was covered in mud and there was obvious water damage.  Roads were wet even though it hadn't recently been raining.  And there was still patchy flooding along the way.  We went with Stella and Tony across to Flinders for lunch in the pub there.  There was a lot of mud on the sides of the roads, and there were trees and branches down.  The peninsula had clearly had some wild weather.

But not while we were there.  We had intended to eat in the restaurant at the pub but that, apparently, closed a couple of years ago. So we ate in the bistro, which I have to say was excellent.  It's been renovated since I was last there. The service was excellent; friendly and efficient.  And the food was lovely. Jim and I had barramundi with mushrooms in a red wine sauce and asparagus.  Stella and Tony had duck leg with various vegetables. And we shared a couple of bowls of chips on the side. Delicious.

Then Jim drove us back to Stella and Tony's place, and then drove us home. He volunteered!  We had decided that one would drive the outward leg and the other the homeward leg and he Voluntarily Offered to be the Designated Driver.  Which meant that I could have wine with my lunch and he did not.

It's still very overcast today, and the temperature is cool. But I think the worst of the weather has passed by. It's not actually raining today. But we might not plant the zucchini, cucumber and melon seedlings out today. I think they would not enjoy the abrupt transition from the relative warmth of the greenhouse to the chilly conditions in the garden.

Sunday lunch in the pub in Flinders

Outside kitchen and Great Dane feeding station:

All we need now is a fridge - and I think Ian has one in mind 😀