Not a Fit Night Out For Man Nor Beast - Updated

Up to now, we've had an easy winter. We've had only one bad spell of weather, freezing rain and sleet (as luck had it, on the night Mattias was born). And unlike friends in the States and Canada, we've had no snow on the ground, save one little flurry in mid-January.


Saturday and Sunday were exceptions.

We had a windy weekend - a very windy weekend.
Saturday afternoon we had a hailstorm complete with thunder and lightening. We found the wind to be absolutely crazy both days. Rounding the corners between buildings, if we weren't careful the stroller would blow over. Jeff and Ella went out Saturday morning for a walk, but Ella refused to walk.

We didn't realize how bad it was for all until Jeff got to work and heard stories from others.

Europe labeled the windstorm "Emma." The worst hit Germany, Czech Republic and Austria. then moved to Eastern Europe. Reports says wind gusts were up to 190 km/h (118 mph) - "the strength of a Category 3 hurricane."
(Update: now learned 14 people killed due to related accidents)

In Germany
Check out this video of a Lufhansa flight trying to land at Munich on Saturday afternoon. As you can see from the video, the plane crabs badly coming in, then gets a bad gust at the worst time --- yes, that's the wing hitting the ground; yikes! They landed safely on a different runway at Munich.




In Czech Republic
A coworker shows me pictures he took Sunday afternoon of his cottage in the woods. Fallen trees everywhere. He tells me that a "popular activity for the previous regime" (Communists) was to plant large, single-species forests -- just spruce trees. While not a sound ecological approach, spruces grow the fastest = good for wood production. Unfortunately, spruces also have a shallow root system, so they fare badly in wind storms.

p.s. "Not a fit night out for man nor beast" was made popular from W.C. Fields in his classic but zany parody film "The Fatal Glass of Beer" You can view the whole movie here:

http://www.archive.org/details/fatal_glass_of_beer