Tragedy Strikes !

Well at last, the ‘Works of Fiction’ finally got a forecast somewhere near accurate for a change, and we were grateful for it, although they still managed to hedge their bets a little, but we forgave them for that on this occasion. When the first real deluge arrived late into the evening, that first night was a spectacular performance to behold. Before the heaviest of the rainfall arrived, the lightning display commenced and what a display it was, the night sky lit up for several seconds at a time, more than just brief flashes, shades of blue and white, and it repeated this lighting show performance every thirty seconds throughout the night, even through the partially open slats in the window shutters it lit up the bedroom. Like a well managed orchestral performance the percussion section, the thunder, joined the visual entertainment, initially starting with long but low rumbles, gradually building in its duration and volume, until it became just one massive crescendo of noise, the strength of the rain increased with such force and intensity, driven by the strong winds, so much so that the combined performance was almost deafening at some points, it slammed against the closed metal security shutters on the windows, the heavy palm tree leaves acted as the back-up musicians accompanying the display throughout the full concert performance, the large heavy raindrops leapt high into the air, bouncing off the roads, pavements and tiled window sills of our balcony like a brigade of Olympian trampolinists. This continued long into the first night, although by the early hours of the morning there were brief intermissions whilst this mixture of meteorological performers each caught their breath, permitting us to also snatch brief periods of sleep.

(Photographs courteousy of SUR Media)

The supporting acts took over the responsibility for the entertainment during the first part of the following day, although, with the lack of darkness from the blackout curtain of the previous night, the light shows were nowhere near as spectacular or impressive, so it was left to the turn of the thunder, and rain, to take front and centre stage. The road below our balcony window had become a flowing river of water, the water drains not able to cope with the speed and volume of the watery deluge, the river of water separated occasionally, much like a biblical event, only this time it wasn’t ’Moses’ but the cars that managed to part the water and navigate their way through it.

Unexpectedly, during the latter part of the first morning, after the initial storm, it was like we had gone deaf, the whole performance ceased in its entirety, no lightning, thunder, wind or rain, it became eerily still, there were some periods where the dark clouds opened and let through some brighter light which reflected upon a strange looking and extremely calm sea, the view across to the horizon were so clear that I could once again watch the line of freighters slowly ploughing their way back and forth, East to West and vice versa, whilst glimpses of whiter cloud and strips of blue sky became visible, this I guess is the complete opposite of the saying, ‘the calm before the storm’. We checked all of our ‘Works of Fiction’ forecasts again and, as we have become accustomed to, they now all showed variations in their forecasts. Our local one, which actually shows the weather for our specific town, rather than the other’s that show the general wider geographical area, appeared, from visual confirmation looking out of our window, to be the most accurate, reflecting this period of calm and dry weather. However, like the other’s, it forecast just a short respite and for the rain to return later that day so we just hunkered down again. It was a little frustrating, because we could have actually got out for a walk, as there was no more rain forthcoming during the rest of that day or evening, so for now, we do not know the effect this deluge has had on the lower coastal area, the Village, Marina or our local town 🙄

The ‘App’ on my iPad, that shows the water levels in the Embalces, disappointingly reflected very little change from the previous day’s level, although I knew that it does take a lot of rainfall to show any real increase and it can also take a couple of days before the additional run-off from the mountains makes any additional noticeable difference. We would still need a lot more rain over the coming days to make any real difference, the ‘Works of Fiction’ were all showing more on it’s way, but would it materialise was the big question 🤷‍♂️ We decided that if we awoke to dry weather the following morning we would look at the sky and possibly risk getting out for a walk.

It appeared, having perused the local morning paper the morning after that first storm, that it had not actually arrived until much later into the early hours further up the coastline, into Malaga City, but they had received even more than we had in our area, and as well as torrential rain they were also hit with golf ball sized hailstones 😲

It was 1am in the morning, and as was usual, Shazza had gone to bed much earlier, around 11pm, after staying up to watch what to turned out to be yet another miserable performance by the women’s England national football team. Once the TV had been switched off, and the table lamp in the living room turned off, I retreated to my sanctuary in the peace and quiet of the balcony, sat just with my own thought’s, on nothing in particular, but I find it a good time to have a sort through all of the million and one things that were in my head, and then have a brain dump of all the irrelevant stuff that had accumulated in it over the last twenty-four hours or so, which was probably around 80% and is probably why I felt a bit lightheaded when I stood up 😂 It was then that I heard the second ‘wave’ of wet stuff start to arrive, please note, this time the pun was actually intended 😉 The heavy rain was not accompanied by any other performers this time around, no lightning, thunder or strong winds, even the heavy palm leaves were at slumber. Shazza awoke as I tip-toed into the bedroom, “It has started again then” she said, in a semi-conscious tone, “Yup, I have inflated the Kayak just in case you fancy going out for a paddle tomorrow” I said, but she didn’t respond, she just pulled the duvet up, tightly around her shoulders and drifted back into her dreamland.

As the torrential rain threw itself relentlessly against the shutters, I tried but couldn’t sleep so, after around thirty-minutes of tossing and turning I gave up trying, got up and stood at the balcony windows just staring out into the blackness, the rain coming down in sheets and reflecting in the street lamps as it did so, I wondered just how much would be falling into the Embalce, would it be enough for the authorities to declare that the water restrictions could be removed, we still had not heard the results from their last meeting, perhaps they had postponed it, not making any decision until this current storm period was over.

The following morning I awoke as usual at 7:30am, it doesn’t seem to matter what time I go to bed, I always seem to awaken at the same time 🤷‍♂️ I could still hear the rain on the shutters and it still sounded very heavy. I made myself a coffee, Shazza hadn’t shuffled or grumbled when I got out of bed so I didn’t bother making her one just yet, she wouldn’t have appreciated it. As I looked out of the balcony windows it was difficult to establish what was the sky and what was the sea, the thick cloud of dark grey just merged into one, the rain was still relentless, wether it had stopped at any point during the early hours I didn’t know, but if it hadn’t, then I knew that by now that it would be creating havoc on many of the roads for the early morning traffic.

Whilst for some of us, this period of rain was quite a welcome and much needed event, spectacular even, but when I started to read the local papers that morning, it became evident that this had turned into a tragedy for many other’s, which didn’t just include those a little further up in our own Province, but also further North through several other Regions of Spain, as far up as Valencia.

On reading these tragic headlines and reports, I felt a pang of guilt about the sense of enjoyment that I had felt when viewing the spectacular visual effects that this storm had brought just a night earlier. We had seen similar sorts of aftermath after previous heavy downpours of rain, but not on this sort of scale, yes we had experienced floods in our own Marina and Town several year’s ago, and we had seen news reports from floods in other area’s over the following year’s since, cars being washed away, rivers breaking their banks, houses and business premises being flooded, but never before, after such a relatively short period of rainfall, had I read about so many deaths in just one day 😲

At times, nature can be such a wonderful thing to behold, in all of its forms, but sometimes it can also be devastating and cruel. One minute it does not supply enough water and so creates drought’s, that themselves can cause major fatalities around the globe, then it provides the much needed water, but in such large volumes in such short periods of time, that that also creates fatalities. Should we put the blame on nature itself for these weather extremes ? should we put the blame solely on the effects of Climate Change ? At what point do we actually start to acknowledge and put the blame on us Humans for being responsible for the creation of many such global events and subsequent tragedies 🤷‍♂️

Hasta Luego mi Amigos