Rain, rain, go away...

Well, we're not missing the Pacific Northwest as much as we were, because apparently we've traded a nice Uruguay spring for typical western Washington weather. It rained so hard yesterday that both roads out to Ruta 5 were temporarily flooded. By late last night, the water had receded some that the rest of the guests were able to take the higher road in and make it for dinner. We lost power for a few hours late yesterday afternoon, because apparently in addition to the rain, thunder, and lightning, we also had a tornado sweep through.

We ventured out in the afternoon to survey the damage and attempt to see our study sites again. We were on our way back and met Juliana who was going to finish marking the rest of the study sites so the contractors would know where to place the fence corners. We followed her out, but weren't able to stay long because the road we took in was flooding and we wouldn't be able to get back to the house if we stayed much longer.

The pictures here don't really do the storm justice. During the badly flooded areas I didn't think to grab my camera; I thought keeping my eyes on the road and trying to get back to La Corona might be a better use of my concentration. This picture is of the main road (418) that leads out to Ruta 5. The higher road (414) was still passable at this point, but the water ended up quite a bit higher than this.

And this poor little guy just shows you how pitiful livestock can be in the storm. There's really no shelter, except for the plantations, for all the animals to go. We saw cows just laying down near the trees, and the sheep grazed near the fences like they weren't even aware there was a storm. Their attitude didn't keep them from looking completely miserable, though.

Apparently our rain dancing and hoping really worked, because it's let up today. We've installed another site this morning, and after we meet Juliana at La Corona to get our missing equipment and have another (hopefully) awesome lunch by Sonia, we'll head out and start vegetation sampling.