More rain moving in

Another big wet-weather system is moving into the northwestern parts of France this morning. I just watched the weather forecast presented by Patrice Drevet on France 2 television's Télématin morning show.

Patrice shows us a front moving off the Atlantic and
over Brittany this morning. It looks wild and wet.
Saint-Aignan is in the hazy band more toward the interior.

Those 70 and 90 numbers are wind speeds. Those are kilometers, and 70 kph = 40 to 45 mph, while 90 kph is about 55 mph. It will be windy and wet in Brittany this morning — but it often is. It's too bad for all the Parisians (and others) who went to Brittany for their August vacations this so-called summer. And tomorrow, August 15, is a national holiday.

Wednesday's forecast is for rain and showers
over two-thirds of the country.

By tomorrow, the main area of rain will have moved through Saint-Aignan and will be sitting over Bordeaux, the Massif Central, Burgundy, and Champagne. But we'll still have showers and 40 mph winds here in the Loire Valley. So we expect a very rainy, windy evening and night, and that should continue into tomorrow morning.

Thursday looks like a blustery, damp day
nearly everywhere in France.

Voilà — that takes care of the greater part of this holiday week. I think Walt is going to try to mow the grass today, before the rain starts. I weeded a big section of the vegetable garden yesterday morning, hoping that by giving the bell pepper and eggplant plants some breathing room, they might start to produce some fruit. But the damp chilly rain coming in won't help them be more productive, that's for sure.

Puffy clouds in the afternoon, 13 August 2007

Yesterday was a nice day, and that made for about three in a row. It seems that's about as many as we can expect this summer. The woman named Jeanine that we had lunch with at the neighbors' house yesterday said she felt sure that September and October are going to be warm and sunny. She based that on the warm and sunny April we had. That's the local wisdom, I guess — warm in April, warm in September.

Of course, some people make fun of such old folk sayings. One parody of such predictions is: Beau temps en novembre, Noël en décembre. With that one, you can't really go wrong.

Early morning clouds, 14 August 2007,
show the change in the weather.

You can see that the weather has changed when you look at the two cloudscapes above. Yesterday's puffy clouds have given way to higher, hazier looking bands of clouds. That's the storm front coming in, pushing the warmer, nicer weather off the the southeast.

Callie in her bat-out-of-hell pose

Callie was kind of wild on her walk this morning. I think it's because I made her wait about an hour longer than she wanted before we went out. I slept in — I didn't get up until 7:30. I tried to take some pictures of her running like a maniac through the vineyard, but my camera wasn't fast enough.

Callie rolling in the tall grass

Just to show me she's still the boss, Callie ran ahead of me, found a puddle in a tractor rut, and dived in, splashing mud and brown water all over. Then she found some tall grass and rolled around in it just to make sure she got as messy as possible. That'll teach me to make her wait an hour longer than she'd like before going out for the morning walk. I had to give her a shower when we got home.