Mersea Island

At the mouth of the Thames Estuary as our Edinburgh flight made a westward approach to the improbably short runway at City Airport.

The onward flight to Florence hit early and most unpleasant turbulence. The disposition of the jet stream fed by cold Arctic air coming out of Canada is whipping up fierce storms. We flew into a red alert in Emilia Romagna and an orange one in Tuscany. The high clouds at cruising altitude were malevolent the entire way but landing on Florence’s wind-vulnerable short runway was uneventful.