Rolling thunder woke me up this morning. Then a flash of lightning. It was only 5 a.m. but I had to get up and see what was happening. According to the Météociel web site, most of the storm and lightning strikes were to the south of us, between Valençay and Châteauroux (45 minutes away). It's raining here but the lightning and thunder seem to be finished for the time being.
What a difference between this morning and the morning we had day before yesterday! At 8 a.m. Thursday Callie started barking like crazy and it wasn't obvious what was upsetting her. It turned out that she had heard the whoosh of the burner on a hot-air balloon approaching from the east. Then we started hearing it. Walt stepped out on the front deck and yelled back that had spotted a balloon... no, three balloons... no, four... in the sky, headed our way.
There turned out to be a dozen montgolfières, and they were flying so low that they nearly scraped the treetops and our chimneys. We hoped they wouldn't hit the electric wires in the hamlet. Mostly all I could do was take photos of the individual balloons — they were too close for me to be able to get many long perspective shots.
If I'd had time to get my longest-zoom camera I could have gotten better shots of the people in the baskets suspended under the balloons, but there was not time. Check back tomorrow for images of the 10 other balloons that flew over on Friday morning.
In this last image, it looks like the man in the balloon is looking right at me as I take the photo. I should have waved.
I wonder if these numbers are random or if there were at least 23 of them?u
ReplyDeleteMaybe not random. I understand that there were 25 balloons in all.
DeleteIt was probably a how far can you get on tankful competition......
ReplyDeletehence the low flying... trying not to use up gas lifting to strange and giddy heights....
it is distance you are after.
I once was in chase vehicle on one of these events....
the ballon we were following developed a slight tear along a seam and was forced to land early to avoid further damage to the envelope....
I think the winner managed around seventy miles as the balloon is blown...
We had a spectacular awakening at around 5:15am....wonderful sheet lightning....and Touraine du Sud had its own personal red blob on the radar....that is 80 to 250mm per hour....we got 21mm in the "fizzical" gauge...the electronic couldn't cope at that speed....it recorded 17mm. Wet.....
Just by the way, Walt went up to SuperU this morning. He reports that fuel purchases at the station there are limited to 20 liters today.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rain, the vineyard is as wet as I've ever seen it. Streams of water are flowing along the road and down into the ravine on the north side. That little watercourse is more often dry than not, but right now it sounds like a waterfall. We had 11 mm (slightly less than half an inch) in the pluviomètre this morning. That brings us to more than an inch (26 mm) over the past three days.
BTW again, 20 liters is 5¼ U.S. gallons.
DeleteI get vertigo just looking at these photos.
ReplyDeleteHow exciting!
ReplyDeleteWonderful photos :)
ReplyDeleteIt looks like there is a dog in the basket in the fourth photo, or are my eyes playing tricks on me? Not a fan of heights, so this would not be high up on my list.
ReplyDeleteThe man looking down on you in the last photo looks like Michael Moore, the director lol...
I see 2 dogs in a basket . You would never see me in a basket unless it is sitting on the ground lol
DeleteI googled, it is Michael Moore :)
DeleteIn the fourth photo, I think I do see one dog with two humans in the nacelle. At first I thought the man on the left, whose wearing a farmer's cap, was a dog... That other man, in the sixth photo, does look like Michael Moore the director, but it couldn't be him, could it? There is a balloonist with the same name who lives in Michigan...
DeleteLove seeing these beautiful photos! It makes me miss my old KY home where we'd see lots of balloons around Derby day and our dogs would go nuts too. The first photo is so fine...
ReplyDelete: ^ )
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