High summer in Chynów - storms, fruit and exercise.

This is a lovely photograph, taken around the corner from my działka, a few minutes after Saturday's sunset. Looking north from Chynów. Good to see local people exercising - quite a few cyclists, roller-bladers and Nordic walkers out at this time of day. 

Taken from the same place, at the same time - but with a totally different lens. Instead of a telephoto zoom at 300mm, a super-wide-angle zoom at 10mm. The red glow of the horizon a few minutes after sunset is all you get when zoomed in tight - but  rise above it, and then the sky gradually turns a deep blue. Nearly three weeks after the year's latest sunset, the day has lost just seven minutes in the evening; hardly noticeable - yet.

Friday's storm caught me briefly; there was trouble on the Radom line (it's still not right since the 28 June reopening); I jumped onto a Góra Kalwaria train that arrived at W-wa Jeziorki when a Radom train was due, which meant changing trains at Ustanówek (below). By the time I reached the shelter at the end of the platform, the downpour began - mercifully it turned into a regular rainfall by the time I emerged from the pedestrian tunnel in Chynów, and got home to the działka just slightly wet.

On Sunday the sun disappeared behind a bank of cloud on the north-western horizon, but a far more ominous one was heaving in from the south-east. Flashes of lightning occurring often; as I turned the corner, the downdraft from the rainstorm suddenly whipped up, tearing leaves off the trees. A good day's walking, 15,000 paces (compensating for a shortage of paces on the rainy Friday).

Taken from nearly the same point as the top photo, but looking the other way. I set off with the wrong camera; I had hoped to do some extreme zooms of the Warsaw skyline with my Nikon Coolpix P900. Sadly, the skyscrapers were hardly visible. When the storm approached, I was armed with the P900 (which does not do wide-angle well) and my phone. Neither is optimised for extracting subtlety from the heavens, nor capable of taking .NEF (RAW) files to work on in Photoshop for an accurate rendition of what I saw and felt. So - an approximation.

I got home from my walk about ten minutes before the heavens really opened. In the meanwhile, the sweet cherries that haven't been picked or eaten by the birds have rotted and fallen; the sour cherry season is getting into full swing, and I've been picking blackcurrants to make more nalewki. Current score - 11 jars of various size, enough for about three litres, once the secondary fermentation has been carried out. Plenty more to come - the classic wiśniówka next! It should also be a good year for blackberries, though the raspberries coming through are meagre and dry.

[Update 14 July - it's been like Groundhog Day this week; I wake up, open the roller blinds, the sun's shining in a cloudless sky. As the day goes on, the clouds build up to the east. As five o'clock comes along, the lid goes down on the laptop, I stroll out for blackcurrants. It's hot. I'm sweating as I pick the berries. To the east, the increasingly frequent claps of thunder from an ever-darker sky - to the west, the sun continues to shine, untroubled to cloud. A contest between east and west. Wind is blowing from the high-pressure area to the low-pressure area - a good sign, because it means the downdraft, caused by large volumes of water falling out of the clouds, is still a long way off. As I finish picking the blackcurrants, the wind starts to veer. The thunder and lightning become almost continuous; as I start climbing the gentle slope up towards my działka, there's no mistaking the downdraft. By seven, the storm reaches Jakubowizna. Lights on - it's dark outside. And yet sunset's nearly two hours away. Repeat the following day.]

Update 17 July - as I cross the tracks to pick blackcurrants, I'm passed by a group of six cyclists. Nice bikes, and cracking performance! No one whistling show-tunes here!

This time last year:
Summer wet and dry
[A pattern is emerging!]

This time three years ago:
Rainy summer Warsaw moods

This time six years ago:
Marathon stroll along the Vistula

This time seven years ago:
Complaining about the lack of a river crossing between Siekierki and Góra Kalwaria! 

This time eight years ago:
S2 update 

This time nine years ago:
Progress on S2 bypass - photos from the air

This time 11 years ago:
Up Śnieżnica

This time 14 years ago:
July continues glum (2007 - yet another rainy summer)

Stormy high summer

I'd started the weekend early in anticipation of a bit of motorbiking - the weather forecasts showed a hot dry day, so I took the train down to the działka to go for a spin. But by the time I arrived yesterday afternoon, it was clear the bike would be going nowhere. Massive clouds were gathering in the sky to the south and east. By five pm, four hours before sunset, the land was plunged into near-darkness. Lightning was followed by ever-louder and ever-nearer thunderclaps, and the wind - the down-draft that's a harbinger of the coming deluge, whipped through the trees, snapping twigs and small branches.

The rain fell with a vehemence. After ten minutes, the electricity cut out. Usually, power outages on the działka, of which I'm informed by my alarm app, last a minute or two. This one lasted over two hours. No light, no internet - but a full battery on my laptop let me get on with office work. The storm passed, the lights came back on. It was quarter to eight. Time for a walk. Sodden fields, broken branches, impassable footpaths.

These summer storms are literally unpredictable, as I wrote recently. Water vapour rises up from the wet soil, heated by a hot sun near its zenith, builds up quickly into towering clouds that hit cold air and suddenly condense back into rain. This cycle can happen two or three times on a hot, damp day. Advancing weather fronts can be modelled by supercomputers with a fair degree of accuracy, but thunderstorms are difficult to pin down.

Below: after the deluge, a wet walk. Because my Loake walking boots are locked down in London, I'm wearing my winter boots - suede and fur-lined, ideal for sub-zero and snow; not so clever when puddle-hopping on a humid summer's evening. 

The orchards are waterlogged. I hope this wet spell - following on from a snow-free winter and dry spring - will not harm the apples. The cherries are around a week and half late this year, and smaller than last year's beauties. 

Wake up this morning to the sound of intense rain. Coffee, wash, breakfast - check weather forecast. Intense thunderstorms with off-the-scale downpours predicted for around eight, nine pm. It's now around 11am, the rain has stopped, the sun is out - into the garage, start up the bike, head off  to the BP station at Grobice to top up the tank, and I'm on my way. My intention is to get to Warka, cross the Pilica river and drift south a while...

Below: between Widok and Piekut. Lovely stretch of road - hardly any traffic, bucolic scenes... but look out to the left - the clouds are building up...

I get to the crossroads past Krężel and decide to turn back. Below: I'm back in Chynów - any minute now... and sure enough, the heavens open. I'm close enough to base to make a run for it; bike back in garage, into the house - and hail. The lawn outside turns white - whiter than at any time over the winter. Two hours of intense rain, thunder, lighting and hail.

At least this time there was no power cut; I have lunch and await the storm's passing... It passes. 

The clouds have emptied, the sun's back. Water vapour rises visibly from the sodden earth at first; time for a walk. It's wetter than ever. Footpaths become impossible to cross without getting my feet wet. Fallen branches suggest that agriculture has taken a belting. This, dear reader, is the climatic new normal. Extraordinary weather events become commonplace. Farmers will have to invest in drought- and flood prevention measures. Food will become more expensive.

Hoping for a settled spell of dry weather before this summer's through. But there's still walking to be done; this evening another stroll to see how badly the soaking affected the other side of the tracks...

Below: this is ulica Działkowa in Chynów; wet all the way up. I could hear many petrol-powered pumping engines in the neighbouring orchards, sucking up water and piping it into fields next door or out onto the street. The damage has been done.

More is to come; on my way back home to the działka, I could see more clouds to the east. The sun was setting, the light has come off the houses and fields but continues to brighten the cloud-tops.

Anyone know of a real-time weather radar covering Poland that I can use to check where the thunderclouds are right now (rather than a forecast from a few hours ago that's invariably wrong in these conditions)?

This time two years ago:

The opening of the Raffles/Europejski hotel, Warsaw

This time five years ago:
The ballad of Heniek and Ziutek

This time six years ago:
Yorkshire's yellow bicycles

This time 11 years ago:
Horse-drawn in the Tatras

This time 12 years ago:
Rain, wind and fire

This time 13 years ago:
The Road beckons

The ups and downs of the onset of spring

At long last spring. The temperature soared to 16.6C this afternoon - T-shirt weather almost - and then fell back to 12.8C as the first storm cloud of the season made its presence felt over Warsaw and heavy rain poured down on our wet fields. Below: dark clouds gather; across town it's raining already; thunder is rumbling incessantly - unusual weather for mid-April.

Watching and waiting for spring to gather strength is like watching over a sickly infant and willing it to get healthier; spring has been late coming this winter, and jokes like 'it'll soon be warm enough to walk in flip-flops over the snow' have rung true!

Vestigial snow in the garden, the last we'll see until late autumn, I hope. It's five and half months since the first snow of this (long) winter fell (27 October 2012); is is indeed possible for Warsaw 'to have snow for half the year'. Possible, but  unlikely. This winter was longer and snowier than usual, though not a particularly cold one. I'm waiting for Student SGH to post his annual winter almanac on Politics, Economy, Society - (see winter timelines for last winter and the winter before that.)

UPDATE: Student SGH has just posted his detailed day-by-day account of this long and strange winter, invaluable documentation in an age where weather takes on a political dimension - this is how it was in 2012-2013 in Warsaw.

This time last year:
Pigeon infestation by Dworzec Centralny

This time three years ago:
Fertile grounds for conspiracy theorists

This time five years ago:
Magnolia in bloom, Ealing

Jeziorki's Storm of Storms

I could see it coming - a whopper of a storm. The previous night's storm was mainly electrical; much thunder and lightning, not much rain. As the clouds deepened and darkened, I put the tripod out onto the balcony at the front of the house to catch the storm as it happened.

Below: the storm (nawałnica - 'squall' or 'cloudburst') at its maximum intensity. The Yaris's alarm has been set off by the thunder as it passed overhead. Lightning flash - BOOM! Thunder followed before I could count to one. The wind was ferocious. I have never seen such volumes of water coming down from the heavens, nor accompanied by such winds. Note the water level - up to the top of the Yaris's rear tyre, entirely flooding the front garden.

Below: the storm has passed. It lasted less than two hours. The drive and front garden are under five inches (13 cm) of water. The ground in any case was pretty much waterlogged as a result of May's abnormally high rainfalls following the winter's abnormally high snowfalls.

Soon after the above photo was taken, the lights went out and would remain out for the next 36 hours. The Corpus Christi storm of 2010 will go down in folk memory of Jeziorki's inhabitants, as we shall see from the next post.