Whist winter is still several months away and it would be quite an exaggeration to call it cold the weather now is very different from that of just a couple of days ago.

Summer here is a long hot season and although it is a time of great pleasure by mid February everyone has had quite enough of being baked and is looking forward to some cooler days.

The first of these cool snaps usually arrives in late February. With this one being forecast for a few days now the change in the weather has become one of the main topics of conversation here abouts. Second only to the start of the new school year.

The change when it arrived was sudden. One day hot, sweaty and nearly 40 degrees and the next barely above 20 with the air now very dry.

As always the cold weather arrived from the south. A strong wind blowing off the South Atlantic, across the Argentine Pampas and then onwards to Paraguay by which time it had lost all it’s moisture. Weather fronts arriving in this way are why Paraguay may have winter frosts but it never snows.

Yesterday after displacing the mass of hot air that had been sitting over Paraguay for so long the winds bought thick grey clouds. This stopped the suns heat reaching the ground cooling it down still further.

The wind continues to blow today. Stronger and now with an almost icy feel to it. The clouds are now long gone and the sky is once more a brilliant shade of blue. Without the cloud cover though the heat of the land will radiate back into the sky as soon as the sun falls, dropping the temperature to the very low teens tonight.

Summer always ends this way and until it returns the days will be a little cooler and the nights much fresher. The heat will build from time to time over the next couple of months but only for a few days at a go, not like the relentless weeks of high summer.

For me this is a good time of year as I can at last spend hours at a time clearing the weeds that infest the garden every summer.

And in addition it is a time of lower electicity bills as at long last the fans and air condtioning units can be turned off. Much quieter at night without them thumping away.

Finally one more even bigger bonus of a drop in temperature and a strong wind. Fewer insects around so less mosquitos and other such things to trouble everybody.