FLOODS & FISH - A-Z Challenge 2015

We've had a FEW spots of rain over the past week but not nearly enough to cause FLOODS like we have had in the past.

They seem to happen when there is a particularly FULL MOON which pulls the tides high, and when this is combined with strong winds the sea throws huge waves over the inadequate sea defences.

When I went to shop in Las Galletas one morning the sea was actually roaring as I parked my car, and the waves must have rached six or seven metres in height.

Another time we couldn’t reach Las Galletas at all – rain on Mount Teide raced downhill and competely washed away the road behind the garage ...

... then flooded the rough ground before pouring across the coast road and the beach and out to sea in a brown waterfall.

This young man lost his shoes and I watched as he hopped from one rough stepping-stone rock to another to get back home  ...

... but this woman was determined to do her shopping. A small crowd watched her, and once she'd got safely through everyone removed their own FLIP-FLOPS and FOLLOWED her example!

It doesn't pay to ignore the power of water, though, and a FLASH FLOOD in the adjoining town took these vehicles by surprise.

The mother and baby in the white car were lucky that a bystander braved the torrent to rescue them.

FISH live in water, so here's a little FISHY POEM I wrote when my son was a boy.

BIGGS

John won a goldfish one day at the fair –

brought him home and christened him Biggs.                

the goldfish was free,

 but John’s Mum had to buy

him a bowl, and some gravel and things.

Biggs lived in John’s bedroom, but he didn’t like

the noise, and the smell of old socks,

so they dug him a pond,

 and used the spare soil

for a rockery with some big rocks.

In his pond Biggs began to feel lonely,

so Mum had to buy him some friends,

and fish-food and pond-weed –

 this free fish had started

expenditure that never ends!

That's all for today FOLKS!

Please leave a comment and thanks for visiting.

TENERIFE FLOODS

We don't have rivers in Tenerife - that brown flood you see is the run-off from the storm of 10th and 11th and 12th December, during which more rain fell than we have had in the last eight years combined!
While I was taking this photo I had to move to make way for a lorry tipping mud scraped from the twin road tunnels at Guaza.  http://www.islandconnections.eu/ showed the state of affairs there on Wednesday with this photo. That's the TF1 autopista on top of that wall beneath which are the twin tunnels. To exacerbate matters, half of the autopista was covered in landslides.

Tuesday and Wednesday we followed the advice to stay at home but by today - Thursday - we were stir-crazy, and the rain had stopped, so we set off to our local shopping village, Las Galletas.
The road was closed. So was the alternative route past the petrol station - and this is why.

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 Another run-off down another barranco that goes behind the banana plantations at Guaza had cut the back road to Silencio completely.
So I left the OH drinking coffee at the cafe and walked towards the village to find out why the road was closed. It wasn't difficult.

The raging river you see behind me in the previous photo had found the sea - via the seafront road, the promenade and the beach.

I'll leave you with a few more images of the power of water - and we in the south of Tenerife came off lightly compared with some.

This young man, having leapt from one mini-island to another, obviously decided that discretion was the better part of valour and legged it back home.