Hit by nature in a bad way

Dear Bloggers,

It was a hot summer evening with dark thunderclouds hanging over the fields and my wife and kids looked happy when I finally showed up after work. I had to work the late shift and my youngest was sound asleep when out of nothing a thunderstorm came around and my oldest was sitting in front of the kitchen window watching raindrops plink the puddles when she heard a rumble outside followed by a loud bang. My youngest daughter was downstairs in a millisecond. From that moment the wind speeded up to hurricane strength and wiped out everything on its way.

 Things I met on my way

During the ride I phoned home that I could see this enormous thunderstorm coming at me and she told me that it just went over them and it was bad. As I drove closer towards my home the rain pounded on my windshield and the wipers had a hard job to do. The rain caused a kind of ground mist and made it hard to find the road and some trees had fallen over the road. A few kilometers from home all the trees had fallen over on houses and cars and also the phone connection failed to work. I got pretty worried when I saw all the blue flashing lights coming towards me. I took some effort to get around the fallen trees. 

All of a sudden there was a tree in the way

They all looked very happy when I walked in the front door. My wife knew right away it was me, though she could never say how. There were always cars idling in the street at night, boyfriends of neighborhood girls giving it one last shot, suburban kids after a night out in town. The storm crushed up the TV signal too much and the wind hauled too loud and made the windows tremble, the flashes kept them up at night.

 The world turned all off a sudden pitch black

the other campsite the day after

 

When the wind had eased down after half an hour, I talked to some of the neighbors and found out that on a campsite about 750 meters away that a little child was stuck in mobile home as a tree fell on top of the wagon. The child just came that day to have a bit of a holiday with her grandparents. The fire brigade had too saw themselves away towards the campsite to get the ambulance services down there. Some of the locals went over there with chainsaws and big tractor trying to lift up the tree and to rescue this child.    

They did what they could for her, although they could not reach her. She lost life before the ambulance was there, very sad.

horror on the campsite

 

But she was too badly injured that before they could get her out she had passed away. A sad story that shook up our little village as in my neighborhood there are a lot of young families with kids. We understand very well that this 7 year old girl has been fighting for her life but did not make it. An unbearable trauma for everyone that was involved.

We live in the houses behind the trees in the distance

This tree snapped like a match

 

The next morning when we had breakfast, I scrambled some eggs and bacon done crisp the way I knew they liked it. I put everything on the table made the girls some tea and for myself plenty of strong coffee. Sometimes we’d sing together, doo wop harmonies from when they were little girls or one of a half dozen Christmas songs, a morning serenade that would carry me through the whole day. Then we would leave in a swirl of laughter and going to a fun park as we had planned, pulling away with horns honking, long after the other dads had gone to work. When we left, just the song on the radio from Pearl Jam “Just Breathe” could bring me to tears.

 “All of this happened a bit more than a week ago” During our walks in the area we realize that we have been very lucky. As another campsite a few kilometers away was hit as well and a caravan was blown over and injured a couple. It looked like a warzone, the pictures will tell the rest of the story

On the next day while I did the dishes I studied a map, tracing the storms route with a yellow highlight pen.

No Damage at all

My neighborhood

Outside the rain had stopped and the sky was turning gray again. The car in the yard looked cold. Soon it started to rain again and yesterday it was a beautiful and sunny day again. A sad day and time to check out the damage only the tent of the neighbors was smashed by the wind and some of the trees were ripped up.

Mamy trees fell over

 

Lightning flashed outside the window and a loud crack of thunder shook the dishes in the cabinet. More thunder rolled right over top of them, breaking off somewhere to the west. Still none of us did cry. But this time all of us were awfully quiet. Lightning flashed as we made their way up the hallway. When we got to the kitchen the storm was just drifting off.

The Old Sailor,

Extreme winter weather

Dear Bloggers,

Snowstorm hits also North of Netherlands it all started yesterday, warnings on the local radio to stay indoors if you do not need to go out.
At this moment it finally stopped snowing and the wind is slowly calming down, severe weather conditions and busses stopped running.

It is still winter and it reminds me of my childhood, the weatherforecast is predicting a snowstorm.
When I was a young bloke in 1979 we had similair kind of weather only difference was that it had been raining the day before and this iced up the roads, on top of that it started snowing and the wind was gusting which resulted in snowdunes with a height of more then three metres.

KNMI initially expected that the inconvenience to the south would be limited, but gradually the sky was closing, while the hard east wind was very unpleasant. In the far south the rainfall started around noon as rain. A few hours later, the first major rainfall in the river area, but as rain and occasional snow flakes. The average temperature was 1 to 2 degrees celcius. But slowly it turned into glazed frost.

In the early evening light snow began to fall (barely in the Southern Netherlands), subject to the windshield. Around midnight the snow line slowly pulled the precipitation zone northward. The wind caused already some snow drift.
In the North of the Netherlands it started snowing from 04h, followed by some freezing rain and glazed frost
The ice lasted all day in the north. Initially this was remaining to ice zone north of the Top of Noord-Holland to Meppel. The rainfall amounts were not small. The northern front moved southward in the evening with snow and increasing winds from a storm to East North East. The big snow storm started.
14-15 February 1979: the polarbear is on the loose.

The snow area spread to the south. The wind increased in the north as far said to stormy with highs severe storm. In the meantime raged north unprecedented heavy snow storms. The oven on the snow and ice fields could find no foothold, except behind trees, farms, in villages, etc.

When there was daylight again, it revealed the seriousness of the situation. Even then it had to snow dunes formed to 1.5 meters, so many ways (even motorways) were blocked. Many people could no longer reach their jobs, why not buses, cars were snowing in. Schools closed. It is impossible to get a good picture of it? That day was staying out a painful issue. Vision was ranging from 50 to 5 meter and was sometimes cut by the sharp snow drifting


snow was really drifting and blowing snow in your face and that at a temperature of -5 degrees and a wind at stormforce at least . Blizzard is a barbaric word, which does not seem excessive.

The snow dunes were locally blown to incredible heights. Especially in Northern-Friesland and Groningen were heights of 4 to 6 meters pretty normal. Many villages became isolated totally and some alone standing farms had snow blown up until the roof. All highways in the north were closed, there was even a ban to drive.

In some places, there was an emergency: telephone lines were damaged and power lines broke through the heavy ice load and severe storms. Crisis centers were established in local bars. Snow removal had hardly any meaning.

Soldiers came to help to re-open roads and villages from isolation to get new deliveries into the local shop. Among the people ruled by the common struggle against the white enemy a great togetherness, except in the local grocery store, where many crowded to get some food to misplaced fears of scarcity. The small bakery on the corner, who was always to expensive if they compared it to the big supermarkets in the city, the baker was suddenly anybodys friend. The local grocers kept a hard regime as we had been three days isolated from the rest of the world. Regular customers had some priveleges.

Some houses were that far snowed in that they came out with only the chimney above the giant dunes of snow.

Some hard facts of the snow storm in northern Netherlands:
Duration: 90 hours snow drift
Precipitation: estimated 15 to 30 mm
Snow Dune Height: 3-6 meter
Average temp.: -5 -6 Degrees Celsius
Windgusts: 100 km / h

At this moment large parts of Europe suffer from the winter weather. In parts of Great Britain public life is quiet because the roads are impassable. Many schools are closed.

In Southern France is the city of Arles due to the snow without power, also in a part of Holland there was a power failure for several hours. Heavy trucks may not drive because of the iced and slippery highways.

The Czech border has been closed to freight traffic because the roads are too slippery.

Germany expects a lot of problems this weekend due to drifting snow in the Northern part several people have been stuck in their cars on the highway as they snowed in due to a traffic jam caused by truck that slipped of the road. Gymnasiums are closed as a precaution because they might collapse due to the weight of the snow.

German households are also advised to have food, medicine and drinking water in stock for the snow storm that would come that is what the BBC reports.

The Germans also expect heavy snowfall today that could lead to local outages and public transportation will seriously disrupt.

The National weatherstation just tells that the weather alarm will not be changed and people in the North are advised to stay indoors, as outside temperatures are fierce and roads are being difficult to drive on. Busses have started up again although there is a lot of disruption due to the icy road conditions.

The Old Sailor,