As everyone will probably know, the weather has changed a lot in recent years. More and more often you read and see stories about extreme weather. Floods, forest fires, tornadoes… you name it. Fortunately, we are still well off in Slovenia in that regard, because so far we have had relatively little trouble with these kinds of natural disasters. But of course, sometimes these things happen here as well.

One of the most common risks is earthquakes. Slovenia is located in an area where there are quite a few earthquakes. Fortunately, it is often only small shocks that are felt and these cause little or no damage.

I have felt two really good shakes myself in the past few years, and it’s just a really weird and scary phenomenon. One of the strongest earthquakes in Slovenia occurred on April 12, 1998, in the area around the Soča river. This earthquake had a magnitude of 5.6 and caused extensive damage to buildings and roads. Fortunately, there were no fatalities.

Hailstorms are a natural phenomenon that also occurs regularly and that particularly affects farmers. These storms are often very localized and often accompanied by strong gusts of wind. These showers naturally cause enormous damage to crops such as grapes and maize. It happened here last week. This time, especially in Žužemberk and Dvor, it was extreme. In some places, people were up to their calves in hailstones! Even snowplows had to be used here and there. Summer turned into winter for a little while……

We have also experienced the consequences of this storm in our village. Fortunately nothing serious. We’ve had a hailstorm here before, but this time it lasted longer, and it really went hard. Bine was upstairs repairing something, and Lexi, Ivy, and I were all three waiting in our bedroom, hoping that the roof windows would hold, and the cars would be sheltered enough, so they wouldn’t be damaged. Fortunately, that ended well. My vegetable garden however has suffered quite a bit. My pepper plants were full, and the cucumbers also did very well. After the storm, it was just a pathetic mess :(. We picked the peppers that were not very visibly damaged, cleaned, chopped, and froze them. They are still good to fry in a pasta sauce or something. Luckily, I had already pickled a lot of cucumbers and the tomatoes are fortunately covered by plastic, so they didn’t suffer from it :). I already have 9 jars of sauce from them, and there are definitely more to come! The onions also appeared not to have suffered much from the hail. We harvested them all and put them in a crate in the basement. We can enjoy them in the time to come :).

Unfortunately, a number of neighbors have suffered quite a bit of damage to their crops, and the vineyards, in particular, have been hit hard. They will certainly notice that come harvest time. Unfortunately, there is very little that can be done about it. Almost every year there is a serious hit somewhere and then there is a lot of damage locally. In addition to crops, there are also many car windows that are smashed, but also roof tiles of course. It remains something unpredictable, and we just hope that the trend of increasingly extreme weather does not continue because then I will really hold my breath!