Storms

I read in the paper the other day the first 10 days of January this year were the warmest ever on record. The weather is still absurdly warm for this time of year.

The other thing that’s been happening here are wind storms. Of course everyone knows about Holland and it’s windmills, and let’s face it, it’s always windy here. This year we have had wind storms both in number and intensity that I don’t ever remember seeing before.

They measure wind here according to Wind Force, or the Beaufort scale. For me F5 means too much wind to work in the garden, and even F4 is a bit on the windy side. The scale is not linear, so as you get into higher numbers the wind gets stronger faster. F11 is starting to be hurricane strength. Already in the last 2 months we have had 2 storms that reached F9-10, and as I type this now a storm is brewing where the forecast is F10. They are expecting wind speeds of 130 kph. Germany and France are also expecting the same storm.

In Amsterdam I get less wind, because it’s a bit inland and the buildings block a lot of the wind.

In Fryslân, where the garden is, it’s on the north coast of the country and it gets much more wind. The past few storms have blown tiles off the roofs of nearby buildings. One night it blew the chimney cap off the house I was sleeping in and the same storm blew out all the windows in my friend’s caravan.

I gave up trying to stake my brussel sprout plants up a long time ago, and they are simply growing on their side. Amazingly there are still things growing in the garden, but at this rate I’m really wondering what will survive the winter.

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