This is getting boring! The high wind spooks Bertie - the mongrel - Vita is too deaf to notice. There’s a shutter banging somewhere and I can’t find it and the wind is just shrieking through the trellis at the end of the veranda. Not easy to sleep. I feel like we’ve been transported to a whole other part of France! Not the tranquil Lot-et-Garonne.
I think we need a new category - climate change and weather.
It was 20 degrees here in central Brittany yesterday. On the one hand it was lovely - but on the other, you can’t escape the spooky feeling that something’s wrong, that it shouldn’t be happening in the middle of February.
I was looking forward to the warmer temps for the weekend but I’ve literally not been outside other than to open / close the chickens and hang a load of towels on the line (they are still there!!). The wind is just awful! We didn’t move back to the Aude near our dear and old friends / social circle there and part of that decision was the ‘le marin’ wind! I LOVE it here as usually so still this is doing my head in! I’m cranky!
Thank god I sleep with ear plugs (man shape snores and I’m a light sleeper) so miss the worst overnight but even so some of it is getting through when it is this windy!
The zinc trough guttering on our house blows and crashes in the wind, last couple of nights have been pretty bad.
Had a few downed power lines in the area and the lights flickered a few times earlier tonight. The cat hates the wind and has spent the last 3 days grumping around the house telling us how unfair it all is.
According to the forecast, the winds should start tailing off now, just in time for a few days of Saharan sand…
The local sparrowhawk took shelter on the lee side of the house, outside my front door, for a few minutes this afternoon. Eventually saw me watching from the window and then only did a short, very low-level flit to land behind the camper. Almost a case of ‘even the birds are walking’ 
Winds, what winds, blue skies, cutting grass and 19C in 72 
Just the south then Colin 
We had Saharan sand dumped on our outside table and the car a fortnight ago and the whole sky looked a very strange and eerie yellow.
We had it then… and again this weekend… 
just glad the car was in the garage
Yellow sky again today with Moroccan sand…explains why so warm as presumably sirocco.
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We’re in the south bit of Manche and our cars were covered (lightly) in yellow this morning. Can’t possibly be the sand this far north, can it? 
Yes - it can even reach the UK - I remember it once when I was a kid in Cambridgeshire.
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That’s interesting, Geof - thank you. Didn’t reach you last night then?
After the winds we’ve had? You bet.
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I haven’t noticed anything - though we had a shower overnight (lovely day again now though).
It’s usually most noticeable on cars - unless they’re already as dirty as mine!
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I took mine for a service the other day and paid a few euros extra to have it washed… 
Selon les croyances populaires, le vent d’autan rendrait fou. C’est son caractère particulièrement irrégulier et turbulent qui le rend difficile à supporter. En quelques minutes, il peut passer de 20 km/h à plus de 90 km/h puis se calmer avant de repartir brusquement. It’s well-known in the south-west and often heralds rain.
istr reading that the soil in Bermuda was made up of Saharan dust but it could easily be urban myth (or failing memory) 
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