Full-on Weather

It's lovely here. I can't believe that it's still only just the beginning of March.  The sun is shining and it feels very much like an average English summers day. Well actually, that's not quite true. Maybe an average spring day, because it is a little overcast today. But it hasn't been. For the last few weeks it has been really quite warm and very sunny indeed for the time of year.  I'd almost forgotten what clouds looked like.

Look at me? Us English types just can't stop blathering on about the weather can we? The thing is though, it's the same case for the Portuguese at the minute. They can't stop talking about the weather either. "It's not usually like this" they'll say. In fact, right now Portugal is stricken with drought. It's very very dry and many areas are desperate for some rain. My child's school teacher was telling me a few days ago about her northern farmer friend and all about how much his cows are suffering because of the dry weather.

Faro Airport suffers from storm damage, Oct 2011

It's been like this for a while too though.  In fact the last time we had a decent rainfall was way back in October of last year. And boy, did we get a "decent" amount of rain back then.  The Portuguese weather never seems to do anything by halves!  In fact, the storms were so bad that our roof sprung a leak.  Not a bad leak though, fortunately.  Faro Airport also suffered some roof damage in the storms, as you can see. (More about this here.) When I heard about this I kind of felt a little guilty about all the moaning I'd been doing regards the torrential rain that had actually only been going on for a couple of weeks.

Anyway, back to now. The weather report for today was for rain, but it didn't. The weather report for yesterday also said rain, which it did, but only for about 5 minutes, during which time it absolutely threw it down.  Like I said, Portuguese weather never seems to do anything by halves.  A friend of mine, who lives across the other end of our little village was telling me, over a couple of beers, that we actually get more annual rainfall here that in Manchester (where he's from), but we get far fewer rainy days.  Now you don't need a degree in rocket science to work out that this means that when it rains here, it rains hard.  For me, this is a good thing, since I hate drizzle.  I do.  I really can't stand it.  I'd much prefer a complete downpour any day of the week.  Now, I've not lived here long, but I do hope that this trend in Portuguese rainy weather continues, especially considering that less rainy days also means more sunny days, which is most definitely a good thing!

So?  My take on the Portuguese weather?  "It's lovely here."