Weather I haven't already posted about...

Over the last couple of years, we've had a lot of windy, rainy weather in France [which for various reasons I never got around to blogging about], and I found some photos when I was sorting through Picasa, so in no particular order:

Wind rips out trees in Vendeuvre:

We had some fantastic winds, and the chateau in Vendeuvre-sur-Seine seemed particularly targeted - a lot of trees were broken off 5-10' above ground [even a road sign was bent by a gust].

They chopped all the trees off at a similar height - I'm guessing so no more became casualties of future storms...

Hopefully, they are the sort of tree that pollards!

Huge-hail storm:

We had an immense hail storm one night - it woke me up through the industrial-strength ear plugs, and lasted what seemed like ages!

We we're leaving to come back to the UK about 2-3 hours later, and there was still a hail-drift to the side of the road.

Sadly, the light was so poor that I couldn't show how big the individual hailstones were.

Just glad I didn't have an open chimney [like in Brixton, before I had all the chimney caps put on], and have to rush round with a dustpan and brush collecting sooty debris before it stained the floor...

Done that a few times, and how I love chimney caps!

Water being drained from the lakes/Canal de la Restitution:

[Except I don't think it's called that...?]

The Seine flooded [and this close to the source, that's pretty impressive], and at Troyes filled lorry cabs the water was so high - so you can guess how much water fell out of the sky!

Last time we went to France [usually a time of brown verges, and very little growth] the grass had grown chest high in six weeks, and the garden looked fantastic, but it's all an indication of sustained/prolonged rainfall over the whole winter.

The (overflow-ditch-that-is-probably-NOT) the Canal de la Restitution [but I'm going to call it that till I can remember what it is called], has steadily dropped in level; I bet the people downstream on the Seine were glad that as much water as could be emptied into the lakes was funnelled away from the river.

They seem to be raising the banks, too?

Speaking of flooding...:

Villy-en-Trodes, before:

Villy-en-Trodes, after:

Can't wait to see what the weather's been doing in our absence this time.