I'd be thinking more of the thunderstorms that do happen but that don't deliver rain.

They were a feature that made firebreaks an essential in some of the places we lived when I was little. Not that they were much good if you got the thunder and lightning, no rain, but a modest to worse wind. Tinderboxes seem to be forming all over the northern hemisphere sadly.

A cloudburst in one locale, is rain in one place only. It's not a lot of good for anyone else if it's all dropped all in one go (so to speak)

I was looking at windy.com a little while ago. Have you seeeeeeeeeeeen the temperature of the Mediterranean even in in the middle of the night?! I've been getting the site up for my other half to peruse most nights for the last fortnight, and that water has been getting hotter and hotter, every single day.

As I understand it, firebreaks serve two purposes.

Three where I was talking about. The one you missed was to provide an escape route, for both humans and wildlife.

Firstly, to serve as a gap tyo prevent a fire continuing on its path,

When conditions allow for that to work, yes. Definitely :) But often they don't, and then you really only have, one way out - at best.

and secondly, to allow fire fighters and their equipment access to areas of the fire.

Erm... almost quite but not. Where I was talking about it wasn't so much about accessing areas of a fire, as stopping it reaching the big beautiful house that the white man built (kind of a bit of a lot on other people's lands). It was expected of every male "tenant" that the white man tolerated remaining on "his land" to put their own lives at risk beating at the bush surrounding his house, often with extremely inadequate erm... equipment, unless you're counting the men themselves as equipment I suppose. There was no water. And as for the homes of those that did the fire-beating, well it fell to the sick, the elderly, the women and children to try and save them.

Thought for the day - If we have Mother nature, why do we have Father time and mankind?

Put like that they do seem a bit surplus to requirement don't they...?

;)

... I have never been there so it wouldn't be right for me to make any opinion.

I didn't know you had that criteria controlling your opinions...

Has it been recently deployed? ;)

Educational supplement No.37p.s. Every religion I know of has God as a male, there is never a mention of a Mrs God, despite apparent offspring. Hardly surprising the human race is male orientated.

The religions that stemmed from Abraham did their level best to exterminate and extinguish every female god they came across.

Until men finally worked out that we girlies didn't just grow babies on bounteous whim as and when our communion with the moon made us feel like it (but that they'd made the teeniest tiniest contribution possible to it) your ego's were pretty much manageable. Yes... and we know what a mess that turned into once they ran amok... ;)

edit: I felt like some italics

Wrong thread. Sorry.

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And why is it being allowed?

Under just what authority would you use to stop it? Brexit?

Anyway I'd rather have a Brexit that a 5 week shutdown. We're better off without Europe, you're still stuck with Trump.

Praise be to Allah! AM I reading that right or has a screw loosened?

If anyone's missing a usb stick it may have been found...

...inside a frozen slab of seal poo.

The scat, valuable for studying the health of leopard seals, had been stored in a freezer for a year before it was thawed out for analysis, the researchers said.

Edit: Bleh, wrong thread.

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