Weather changes

Everyone I talk to here, in Albania, or in Italy, or in the States seems to always mention the weather these days since it displays unusual and unseasonal changes everywhere.

In Tirana we are enjoying a good spring with lots of sunshine, but some cousins and friends of mine in northern Italy are telling me they are tired of cold and pouring rain. Floods continue to affect several rivers there, and now even the snow has reappeared at elevations above 1,100 meters above sea level.

When I got up this morning and opened my blinds, the streets were wet and the sky looked ominous......

but a tiny blue patch in the sky got bigger within seconds......


I could not believe how quickly changes were taking place right under my eyes, and then I got thinking that in a tiny country like Albania, weather changes are more rapidly noticable due its size and geographical setting.

Endowed with 3 layers of majestic mountain ranges that encircle the country almost on 3 sides (N-W-S), only a small portion of the country is lowland, and follows the beautiful coastline that is bathed halfway by the Adriatic sea (in the north) and the Ionian Sea (in the south).

With this perspective, it's easy to understand why the clouds travel so quickly, the sun appears and disappears so rapidly, and even showers, sometimes, just last few minutes.

And this is what happened this morning. The above sequence took no more than 15 minutes, and then the sun brilliantly illuminated again the entire city!