People around the world know of Cyprus as a holiday destination, picturing it with clear blue skies and endless sunshine. That's pretty much how it is - usually - from early May until around the end of September. Official sources used to mention 360 days of sunshine, which is a high percentage. We realise, now, that this refers not to the number of completely sunny days, but those on which the sun shines.
In our first couple of years here the rain was minimal, and short-lived. We saw some torrential downpours on occasion, but an hour later, as put so succinctly in the children's nursery rhyme, 'Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain'.
There were the occasional thunderstorms, even some hail. But we didn't see real devastation until the major storm in May 2007, which makes me sad even to think about it now. The Cyprus weather news site reports storms lashing the island at the end of 2008. In 2012 there was a horrific accident at the sea front, caused by a tornado.
Climate does change, and it seems that currently Cyprus winters are not just wet but, at times, very windy too. January and February seem to be the worst from this point of view. Just over a year ago I posted about a storm at the end of January. As recently as a month ago I posted about a storm this year.... and it wasn't an isolated one. We had quite a warm week at the end of January, which was very pleasant. A pity, some of us remarked, that it could not stay that way all year round.
As so often happens, it got colder again - and earlier this week there were yet more windy storms. I took my camera on my early morning walk with Sheila, and we decided to walk the airport direction in the hope of seeing the flamingoes a bit closer up. It wasn't long before we spotted this:
Shortly followed by this:
There were bollards marking the hole where the old tree was uprooted a month ago:
It wasn't warm but we walked briskly and reached the end of the trail only to find that the flamingoes were nowhere in sight. It's hard to show by a photograph how full the Salt Lake is, but for what it's worth, here's how it looked:
Still and calm as anything.
When we got back to our usual starting point, we decided to walk a bit further in the hope of seeing the flamingoes at the other side of the lake; we could hear them chattering loudly so knew they could not be far away.
Sure enough, there were hundreds of them - at their usual distance where the camera simply picks them up as pink blobs:
We paused for a moment. I breathed deeply in the cool fresh air. The view, which I so often take for granted, was awesome:
In our first couple of years here the rain was minimal, and short-lived. We saw some torrential downpours on occasion, but an hour later, as put so succinctly in the children's nursery rhyme, 'Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain'.
There were the occasional thunderstorms, even some hail. But we didn't see real devastation until the major storm in May 2007, which makes me sad even to think about it now. The Cyprus weather news site reports storms lashing the island at the end of 2008. In 2012 there was a horrific accident at the sea front, caused by a tornado.
Climate does change, and it seems that currently Cyprus winters are not just wet but, at times, very windy too. January and February seem to be the worst from this point of view. Just over a year ago I posted about a storm at the end of January. As recently as a month ago I posted about a storm this year.... and it wasn't an isolated one. We had quite a warm week at the end of January, which was very pleasant. A pity, some of us remarked, that it could not stay that way all year round.
As so often happens, it got colder again - and earlier this week there were yet more windy storms. I took my camera on my early morning walk with Sheila, and we decided to walk the airport direction in the hope of seeing the flamingoes a bit closer up. It wasn't long before we spotted this:
Shortly followed by this:
There were bollards marking the hole where the old tree was uprooted a month ago:
It wasn't warm but we walked briskly and reached the end of the trail only to find that the flamingoes were nowhere in sight. It's hard to show by a photograph how full the Salt Lake is, but for what it's worth, here's how it looked:
Still and calm as anything.
When we got back to our usual starting point, we decided to walk a bit further in the hope of seeing the flamingoes at the other side of the lake; we could hear them chattering loudly so knew they could not be far away.
Sure enough, there were hundreds of them - at their usual distance where the camera simply picks them up as pink blobs:
We paused for a moment. I breathed deeply in the cool fresh air. The view, which I so often take for granted, was awesome:
1 comment:
I greet you from a very cold place: -24 'feels like' -35 at the moment.
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