Tropical cyclone!

Well, clearly that amount of rain is not normal, which is a relief. Overnight we were hit by a tropical cyclone that also hit Malta - there is not much on the news about it yet but it looks as if it did a lot of damage along the east coast here.

It started off, as you know, with the rain. Then when I was in bed I could hear this faint whistling. Just faint enough to be annoying. I told myself it was just the wind. But the wind picked up and soon it was raining hard again and the wind was getting louder. Well it just went on and on throughout the night and at times the wind was extremely strong and loud, roaring between the flats in a way that reminded me of the storm of 1987.  It wasn't quite that loud but sometimes there were gusts that made me want to hide under the bedclothes.

A door was banging somewhere, quite violently, and quite frequently. There are a lot of doors onto balconies here and they're not all that strong looking. I got up more than once to check that our doors were all secure, padding around in the dark to check that the rain and wind was not coming in. I was glad to see our pigeon huddled up for protection, well under cover, at about 4.00am.

The wind and rain just kept on, and so I remembered to pull down my window covers (I have forgotten the word haha!) and just kept a small gap open so I could see out. There were some weird sounds coming from the street - things flying about probably and bits of things breaking off things. At one point there was the unmistakeable sound of breaking glass. And more door banging. And other weird noises.

Sometimes I think Catania is like an orchestra, everything seems to fit together somehow, but an orchestra playing one of those modern discordant pieces of music. It certainly felt like it last night. Dogs and neighbours were surprisingly quiet. But I still didn't get much sleep, if any. I got to the stage where my eyes were hurting, I wanted to sleep that much.

So this morning everything has passed and fallen quiet and I have yet to go out and see for myself what damage has been done. It is a good thing I have some sturdy boots to go out in. Our flat is intact, so that is good. Wow. A cyclone. I guess this is all part of the experience

Jo slept through the whole thing. Unbelievable.