Rain in Cyprus

I seem to have written a lot about the weather recently. But since it tends to be fairly extreme here - at least in the summer - and not necessarily predictable the rest of the year, we find it interesting. All the more so since we've started having water restrictions due to lack of rain - it's been the dryest winter I can remember - and of interest to Richard too, now he goes sailing most Saturdays.

We have three visitors in our guest flat this week. The weather has been perfect so far - about 25C and sunny during the daytime, cooler in the evenings. Today, however, was predicted to have grey skies and high winds. So they thought they would walk into the town (about a mile away) and do some shopping.

They never got out. Mid-morning the sky clouded over, and within about ten minutes it had started raining. Heavily enough that the roof over our stairs started leaking, as happens with rain in some directions.

It's rained off and on ever since. Tim had a piano lesson, and was caught in the rain on the way there. He pointed out that he's a Brit, so he doesn't mind rain. She said that English rain is just a bit grey, and drizzly, whereas the Mediterranean rain is hot-blooded, like Mediterranean people, so it POURS down. This is, of course, true. I don't think we'd ever seen rain like this until we moved to Cyprus.

Unfortunately photographs of rain don't really do it justice, but here's what it looked like out of my study window, anyway... just imagine pelting rain imposed on it.



I don't suppose that one day's rain will make more than a slight difference to the extreme water shortage around the island, but at least it's given all the plants a good watering, it's washed away some of the dust from the roof, and our car looks a great deal cleaner!