Yellow Alert!

I think I jinxed it. The weather I mean. After my last post on Wednesday about the wind and rain, I heard yesterday afternoon that Portugal's meteorological institute had issued a Yellow Alert over the entire length and breadth of Portugal with strong winds and rain to be expected. I didn't quite believe it at the time, since yesterday morning was quite overcast and obviously threatening to rain, by lunchtime the clouds had started to drift away and the sun seemed to be making an appearance. The Portugal News was very clear about it though, forecasting rain from Thursday evening through on to midnight on Friday and (as the picture shows) continuing on into next week. The north would take the brunt of it but everyone should expect stormy weather.

Well, they didn't disappoint. I woke up this morning to thunder and lightning. Our kids were initially oblivious to it all, until prompted to look outside. Our daughter was in the bathroom when a particularly bright flash of lightning lit up the frosted window and she asked if we could count and work out how far away the storm was. There was an urgency about our house this morning, as we dug out raincoats and umbrellas, and talked about how we must leave for work and school a little earlier than we normally would do. And a good job that we did too! The roads were slippy from the rain washing a summer's worth of engine oil onto the surface. In places it was like ice and I could do nothing to stop the wheels from spinning a little on the entrance to one of the busier roundabouts near the motorway. Thankfully, and despite there being an obvious increase in the amount of traffic on the roads, people were tending to drive with great consideration for the conditions and a little more slowly and carefully than usual.

From the forecast it looks like that the end of summer, is as I suspected, here. If we're lucky we might just get one more little blast of left-over summer sunshine, but I doubt it. Even people I know in the Algarve and southern Spain are saying that summer is over and the rain has come. Besides, a little (slightly twisted) part of me wants the weather to get worse, just so that I can find out what colour alert comes after yellow!