Primavera: Tempeste e Temporale

It has been a mild winter, so what should we expect from spring? Well, if you live in Caltebellotta, just north and up from Sciacca, I guess you can expect winter. While winter left there with four straight days of dark, threatening clouds, it seems that it took the first day of spring to finally bring them their annual snowfall. Of course, most of it was gone by the afternoon, lost in the spring rainstorms, hailstorms, and thunderstorms. So was any possibility of drying laundry in Sciacca.

When I got up, I looked outside and thought I was just one
kilometer from a beautiful day. I could look over the sea, and see blue skies and the sun turning the sea silver, with highlights from the wind driven white caps. Where I was, we started out under dark clouds, but soon they got darker. The thunder behind the house made me realize we were in for a temporale, and we had a good one, with lightning striking clearly from the sea to the tennis court to Ribera. The hail started shortly after that, and then, of course, the sun came out. The process repeated itself every thirty minutes throughout the day, until finally, just before nightfall, more blue sky existed than clouds, and slowly the stars and a sliver of the mooon shone as brightly as they could. An amazing day of weather.

Just before sunset, I looked out over the bay and saw a small group of sea gulls, playing in the spotty sunlight, flashes of silver turning and diving, then disappearing as they left the sunlight, only to reappear after a few moments, turning and diving again, then climbing, then disappearing. It was almost as if they knew what they were doing, and were dancing to their own strobe light in their own discotheque.

The national weather service says that 'it ain't over yet', and indeed, Thursday, as I write this, is supposed to be the worst day of the bunch. Well, this morning has been almost a repeat of yesterday. There is snow on mountains (again), and the sky is blue out at sea (again) and the thunder is rumbling behind the house (again) and it is starting to rain (again) just as the sun comes out (again). It certainly is not boring to live here, at least weather wise, at least right now, as spring is starting.