As it's been mentioned previously, there is approximately 220 days of rain per year in the beautiful country of Belgium. Some of those are givens, right? You wake up in the morning and it's raining, so it country. Others are like today.
It was so windy this morning that I could hear the few toys that weren't put away in the big black toy box blowing around on the patio. Normally, the toys are sheltered enough from the wind by the sun porch, so they don't blow around. Not this morning, the wind was so strong it blew the top off the sand box and sand buckets around the yard. My wind chimes were horizontal and the cow next door was standing at an angle. (poor Marie) The sky was grey, but that's nothing abnormal either. But, not rain, not even a mist. After taking my son to school and getting blown all over the tiny little country roads in my energy efficient, but not sturdy, Prius, I decided that I'd take a jog.
A friend told me on Friday that if I waited around to run outside for the days that didn't look like it would rain, I'd never run outside. So, I went. Windy as Rick Perry on the campaign trail, but not real look of rain. The sun even made a brief appearance and I made it home with no worry of rain.
The afternoon looked promising too. My son and I came home and played outside for awhile, close to the sun room so we didn't get blown away, but the sun was shining and all was well. Then, I went inside. I stopped to fold some clothes in my bedroom when I heard my son yelling for me. The wind had picked up even more and you could see the rain blowing across the fields. By the time I got downstairs to help put away toys, the drops were huge and stinging. Where did this come from?!? The sun was just shining, not completely blue skies, but SUN.
I lived for a semester in Florida. The weather was predictable. Every afternoon between 2pm and 5pm it was going to rain. It would be a brief, semi-heavy downpour and then the rain would be gone. That's it. It sure made selling the rain ponchos easy, but they'd only be needed for 10 minutes. Georgia was similar. All the humidity would build up in the afternoon, release on all us Earthlings, and disperse.
In Nebraska, Iowa and Texas, you could see a storm coming from miles away. Watch them build up on the horizon getting taller and taller, then finally get to you. Rain, wind, lightning, thunder, etc, so on and so forth. But you knew when it was going to rain.
Not so in Belgium. I truly have not figured it out. The only thing we have going for us is that we have some good views from where the rain always blows in from. It also doesn't help that the weather ALWAYS has rain in the forecast and I haven't found a good weather radar site yet. It's a good things that we don't have to worry (so I've been told) about tornadoes, because they'd be on us before I'd have a chance to pick up the tricycle and get inside.
****Let me update this posting. I exaggerated just a little, there are a few days where rain isn't in the forecast, like today. 64, windy and sunny is what the forecast said. Coming home this afternoon, the wind picked up, the clouds rolled in and it rained for over an hour. Not a hard rain, but enough to make the patio wet and the son grumpy.Then the clouds thinned out and the sun came out. Eh, what ya gonna do?
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