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Frozen ship's bell, from someone's super-nice photos (too bad about the crappy Flash album). Some fabulous shots in there - like this one. I think most of the tanker shots are called "Nordsjøen".
Taz, if you had but 10% of the rain we're getting here you'd be well pleased, believe me. And you're welcome to it. I'll try to blow some in your direction.
I hope it's just a screwy forecast... I mean I know it's going to be hot (very, very hot) 'til September, but 46C is just insane. All the internet weather stations give totally different reports, so we'll see.
Crazy weather, 46/115 is Death Valley hot. Meanwhile, San Jose is experiencing the mildest summer I can remember since living here and in the next thread up they're talking about Britain seeing insane amounts of rain.
I don't think you took my comment about Athens in August seriously, back when you were moving there, taz. And I hope for your sake, and the sake of everyone whose lives would be endangered in weather such as the forecast you've quoted, that the forecasters are indeed wrong. But really:
Power outages in Athens in the peak of summer used to be a daily occurrence, as everybody switched in massive amounts of airconditioning, at the same time as heat took its toll on transformers and other components of the power grid. Even the water pressure went down noticeably as people ran water trying to stay cool. So, even people who could afford it didn't really depend on air conditioning, and just de-camped for cooler climes, if they possibly could, for as much of July and August as possible. Could you get out of the city to a cooler locale for the next few weeks?
After next week my husband is going to be with a film crew shooting a film in the mountains, where they've been told to bring jackets for the evening... if it gets too bad here, I can just go there and eat delicious fresh water fish all day and drink mountain wine all night. :) Really? It's all, like, in the nature and stuff - I'd probably go batty.
I can't find it now, but I saw a site that had the average mean high and low temperatures for Athens over 30 years or so, and the average for July was something like 32C, which would be great. I can't remember what years exactly, but it was from the '60s to sometime in the '90s. Sure isn't like that now. Thanks a lot, global warming.
Also, all the people from Athens were big fat liars when they came to Thessaloniki and complained that it was hotter there. Damn Athenian liars.
Well, I'm not sure whether to be sorry for your or envious. I got up the other morning to go to work, went outside to my car to find it completely iced-over - not just the windscreen which happens now and then here, but the side windows and the whole body of the car were covered in a layer of ice. I went to get some water out of the hose to melt the ice, but the fucking hose was frozen solid! This is supposed to be a sub-tropical climate, damnit! The last week or so has seen the coldest temperatures in Australia for something like 100 years, with the temp at our place dropping well below zero overnight. I think we picked the wrong year to live in a tin shed :-)