Mistral

As far as I can recall (and I checked), I've never blogged about the Mistral. The Mistral are crazy strong winds that hit southern France that can blow up at 100 kms per hour at times. Big, strong, hurricane gusts in tropical storm daily blowing makes for a funny day sometimes. The local tradition about the Mistral says that they blow in sets of 3, 6, or 9 days at a time. When I was here in 2009, they blew the entire month of March.

The Mistral are so strong that a gust of one once pushed me off the sidewalk into the cross walk, where I was almost hit by a car. There was one once that, if I'd not had a full grocery cart with me, might have blown me away.

Another local tradition about the Mistral says that it used to be if someone committed a crime during the Mistral, he could plea insanity, and the judge would usually let him off. They blow strong enough to make you a little nutty sometimes.

The blow strong enough that just being outside can be dangerous. Flower pots have blown off of balconies and killed people. This past summer, and awning broke less, flew through the air, and hit one of our tourists in the head, sending them to the emergency room. Mistrals are crazy, I tell you!

Well, I nearly was injured by one today...dare I be dramatic and say nearly killed by one? The Artist (who just arrived yesterday!) and I were walking along the sidewalk when we heard a really loud sound...neither of us can remember if it sounded like an explosion or a crash or what. But at that moment, huge amounts of shards of glass came falling on our heads from the sky. We dove under a covered doorway and turned our back to the street as the glass continued to fall.

Once it seemed safe to come back out, we looked around. We think the wind blew a door or window out somewhere in the building up above us...maybe a cross breeze? The glass blew as far as half a block, and into the street, where it damaged a car that was driving by. (They'd pulled over and were inspecting the roof of their car).

I was so shaken up that it took me a minute to fight back tears. The Artist and I stared at each other, making sure that we didn't have any glass shards on us. I'd see one about the size of my hand go right by my face...a half an inch difference and it would have pierced my scalp or chopped off my nose. We got hit by a bunch of the glass, but after inspection, we realized that we were okay.

Crazy Mistral. This was a video that Jelly Bean took of me at the beach during a Mistral in 2009. I could barely walk into the wind it was so strong.