So, tonight I went for a walk to the garage at around 9pm. On return, the weather basically looked like the image above. Black sky with streaks of intermittent lightning and mild rain. This is still very very mild compared to the badass tropical thunderstorms I witnessed and was part of in Australia. Still, it shows that this international bad weather is worldwide now. My guess is that the residents of Cantebury have a gut instinct to get themselves out of there, due to the recent earthquake panic. These dreary rainy days, earthquakes, and general all round crap weather are such a life sucking pain. My personal take is that 10 years from now, most modern towns will be uninhabitable due to huge weather events ripping them apart. With non stop ultra high oil consumption tearing the atmosphere apart etc and the ozone layer cut in half, letting the sun bake the hell out of places like America. Put it this way, the weather mechanisms of old, are not fitting in with the lifestyle of the modern. In Australia, I personally witnessed brand new company cars being washed off the roads with rain (I recall seeing a salesman with a bucket, scooping water out of his new ute, for example.) Other than that, when the weather is good here, it's pretty fine. It's pointless cursing the darkness because nobody listens anyway. What I have learned though, and this is a fact. When the weather is crap at one side of the world - don't expect to jump on a plane and for it to be radically different at the other side of the world, because, from what i've seen, it's either on par, or even worse (and that's gospel). For example, when my normal dayjob came to a grinding halt in the UK due to flooding and severe snowstorms - I said, damn it, and went and worked in Australia... But... They had very severe flooding also that year - and when it wasn't flooding, it was incredibly sticky hot heat. Overall, it was pretty crap weather in my opinion. So, my theory is that if the weather is basically ok, or normal in one country, it will probably be reflected if you go abroad. Hard to believe, but seemingly true. This, took me a while to compute and rationalise. It would be easy to believe, or fool yourself into thinking that there is some way to escape natures ills - but in fact, it is impossible. Very puzzling indeed, I was sure in the back of my mind when working that the weather would be paradise elsewhere, but no sir. It will only be paradise, if your current location has relatively good climate in place ;) Don't believe me?! Put it to the test... So far, I have travelled to France, Spain, Yugoslavia, Norway, Finland, Australia, Portugal, New Zealand, United Arab Emirates, and probably more I can't even think of at this point in time. Every time, if you leave a location that has some extreme type weather thinking that the next destination will be radically different, prepare to be shocked. You may go from freezing weather to flooding, to drought etc. It's a hard call to gauge.