Insane weather

While you guys in Oz are risking breaking thermometers with 41C in Melbourne, the rest of the world is having crazy weather too.

This morning we woke up to warnings of a Hurricane approaching Germany. This particular one is getting a lot of attention for various reasons, including wind speeds up to 200km/h, and the fact that the whole of the country will be hit by this thing.

Right now it is 8:15pm, and the eye of the storm is due to hit the north of Germany in a few hrs, but the winds outside are already insane. To give you a little idea, the train services are being stopped all over the country, and people were sent home from school and work around midday, as it was going to be too dangerous to drive home later. That was all good for them, but I was in Greifswald (north of Germany), and driving back to Berlin...TO CATCH A PLANE HOME!

Anyway, I got to the airport a few hours early, and managed to get onto an earlier flight (2hrs earlier) which was subsequently delayed by 1hr due to the winds in Frankfurt. Then the trip down to Frankfurt, as we were approaching Frankfurt, became really rough, with the plane rapidly dropping and rising, dipping left and right - and I even learned the meaning of "yaw", when the plane started behaving like a rear wheel drive V8 in the snow, with the arse end kicking out all over the place.

To the pilot's credit, he managed a pretty good landing, given that it was like he was wrestling an angry wild bear when trying to get the thing on the ground. Scary shit.

We also saw on the news that things are stupid in the USA too. They showed footage of a deer that was stuck in the middle of a frozen lake, and could not get of the lake under it's own power because the ice was so slippery. So, what was the solution? That's right - a news helicopter "blew" it off the ice! :)

What's goin' on?

Tschüß,
'Brush