I was booked to go down to Adelaide this weekend, but everything conspired against me.  I was going on Thursday, which would have been a day early, so that I could visit  family in hospital. The Temperature soared to 42c and I decided to  put the trip off for a day.  Then I received a message that the meeting I was to attend  on Saturday had been cancelled, so it seemed to me that it would be cheaper to go down and back by coach if all I wanted to do was shopping. I booked the ticket.  At 2am  this morning (Friday) a thunderstorm struck the area and the dogs were going gaga. My taxi arrived at 5:40and I just paid the fare and sent him away.  I could not, in all conscience, go off to Adelaide and leave Herself, to look after two neurotic dogs in the middle of a thunderstorm.   At 6:16am sixteen minutes after the coach left, the storm passed and the thunder ceased., but the  storm front  is not cleared and there are still rumblings, so the dogs have not settled down and by the sound of things this could go on for a while yet. At the moment I am kind of floating on a sea of  coffee . Once things clear and the dogs are settled down, I might try and get some sleep.  It’s hardly surprising that people get sick easily in this area – an area where the temperature  can climb to 45c in a day and drop  twenty degrees overnight –  this week being a good example where it was 42c yesterday and  25c today – and a thunderstorm into the bargain.

It has just gone 9am and in an hour the coach will arrive in Adelaide. Here the storm has finally cleared and although it is still overcast, everything is fine. Herself is awake and suggested that I should have gone to Adelaide but I still think it would have been selfish and irresponsible had I done so. And I said before, we really don’t do floods here – just very big puddles and lots of water and even that only last for a little while because we have very large storm drains to cope with the  heavy rain that we get from time to time.  By 1:30 pm the  rain came down and there was  crashing and banging of thunder and another storm – louder and wetter –  and the dogs were really going gaga.  The little one  fled out of the house and into the pouring rain.  By the time I got to him we were both soaked, but he got into his house and I could not get him out. Finally did get him out and wrapped him in a blanket and sat with him in my arms until he calmed down.  We gave him a bath. – Yes he was wet, but the bath water was warm. This storm was interesting in that it did cause some damage mostly  due to falling trees.  The ground was wet from the rain we had the other day so this downpour , coupled with high wind, just ripped trees out of the ground along the main road.  and since most of the old buildings have a tin roof, we lost a few of them. Power outages caused by falling trees. I had a friend call me from Adelaide and they suggested that it was not a good day to be in the city.. We don’t really get the full-blown storms (thankfully) what we get is the rough edges – a sort of side-swipe. The older areas of the town get bigger puddles.