Winds
Signs in Athens already that July is passing into August: the meltemi is blowing, creating huge spirals of dust, drying out everyone's gardens, smashing everything it can reach through open windows but reducing the temperatures in the afternoon and evening. The Meltemi wind was known by the old Greeks as the Etesian northern winds, and results from a high pressure system laying over the Balkan/Hungary area and a relatively low pressure system over Turkey.
Although this katabatic wind can bring about harsh sailing conditions it also provides cooling, low humidity and good visibility. Furthermore, it can be characterized as one of the few Mediterranean winds that do not necessarily die out at the end of the day and can easily last more than three to six days. more
The most famous katabatic wind in Europe is the Mistral, which blows down the Rhône valley in southern France and out into the Mediterranean. It can become a very strong wind reaching speeds of 80 miles an hour as it funnels down over the Rhône delta and is generally at its strongest in winter and early spring, unlike the meltemi which blows in July and August.
When the Mistral blows, it sets most people on edge or gives them migraine, maybe due to lack of sleep, caused by the howling noise it makes gusting up to 120 km/h onto a provençal tiled roof. The dry cold air blows hard and evenly, leaving the sky clear and tinged in an unbelievably luminous blue colour unique to Provence, the air is brisk and the sunshine is harsh and blinding. In the summertime, a day of Mistral is enough to make the soup-warm Mediterranean drop to the serving temperature of vichyssoise more .
More colloquial is the Provençal name of 'le vent du fada', or "the idiot wind", so-called because the Mistral is believed to be more than capable of driving even the sanest weather scientist to gibbering insanity ...more. I'm sure. Given my own manic tendencies I was interested to see how the meltemi affected me, but it seems I'm immune. A little howling is a small price to pay to sleep with the shutters open and a steadily lowering temperature.
Goblins
The meltemi also howls at night making it difficult to sleep. It reminds me of winter nights in our Brecon home where suddenly outside the front door I heard goblins howling intermittently. I went all round the house looking for the source of the noise, which eventually I convinced myself was coming from the vibrations of a strip of metal draughtstripping newly installed round the door lock. I was never really convinced by this piece of detective work, prefering the goblin theory which the sound seemed to match rather than the unromantic science. But when we moved the door to another location in the house and the goblins moved too, I had to give it more credit.
I always like to imagine this is the sound that Pushkin means in his poem Demons, where returning from on a winter evening his sleigh is caught in a blizzard and the driver feels they are being led astray by demons howling in the wind.
Fires
At the same time, helicopters are to be seen overhead towing huge bags of sand or water to put out forest fires which inevitably start at this time of year. The Greek evening news was full of news of houses just outside Athens destroyed by fire.
Tornados
Actually we had put on BBC World News to hear about the tornado in Birmingham reported by the BBC which seemed to have ripped through the areas we used to live in. But this did not appear on the news, only the Greek forest fires.
Yet another case lately where it seems that the UK is not the safest place to live. But neither are the outskirts of Athens, or for that matter the outskirts of Vilnius where one summer there were forest fires for several days creating a smoggy atmosphere over the whole city.
