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Mid June 1931 was very turbulent with severe thunderstorms breaking out over many parts bringing large hail, squally wind, torrential rain and local flooding. One such thunderstorm struck Birmingham bringing a tornado which cause a death and damage. The tornado first struck at about 2.20pm in the Sparkhill district of the city along a track varying from 200 to 800 yeards wide passing through Greet, Small Heath and Bordesley in a NEly direction. The track was about 12 miles long. Some eye witness accounts Neville Hall of Hall Green, Birmingham "Here in Bromyard Rd at about 3.50pm, the rain increased and at 4 o'clock was coming down in torrents. About 3 minutes later we heard a howl as wind makes and immediately the air as full of twigs, leaves and small branches. Four little girls coming home from Sunday school were blown flat and shot along the wet pavement like bits of paper. My motorcycle and sidecar standing in the gutter was turned upside down. All our garden fences were flattened." J.R.Sayers of Hall Green "About 4pm, a curious lull in the great black thunderstorm then raging caused me instinctively to run to the window facing north and I was just in time to see some 20ft high trees shudder and then all bow to the ground, one immediately in front of me breaking off at the root. Instantly the air appeared full of objects, great and small flying in a northerly direction, broken vegetation, tiles, masonry and my neighbour's garage roof included...I estimate that the duration of this great blast of air was 15 to 20 seconds." Charles Duval, Small Heath "I happened to be looking at the sky at the moment of the tornado's arrival here and saw a small black cloud travelling from the south at a terrific speed. I called my wife to see it and within a few seconds the wind arrived. The wind stopped my clock at 4.20pm, as with the first gust the front door blown open and it took three f us to close it." E. Dwyer, Small Heath "The whirlwind made its approach, it was similiar to the noise of six aeroplanes in the air together and was a great black cloud, rolling an twisting appearance." F. Smith of Sparkhill "The tornado appeared from a dense mass of grey clouds..all outlying clouds rushing to one spot. This mass of cloud suddenly began to rush across the sky and formulated a funnel which hung suspended from the mass and reached the housetops. At the same time all sorts of missliles flew upwards towards it. It rushed across faster than I have evere seen clouds move before."

Important Update 02/07 – 23:16 UTC - The people from El Hierro will have a bad night sleep mostly based on what to come next ? The latest series of earthquakes are even stronger than earlier today. The latest one being a very strong M4.4 at 19 km depth here (please be aware that these are preliminary data who can be changed after manual intervention). - We are arriving at Magnitudes were the international agencies like Geofon and USGS will capture the signal and report about it. - Based on our experience with earthquakes and the type of earthquakes El Hierro is suffering, we do not think that damage will be inflicted (not even slight damage) at less than M5. The biggest danger for El Hierro are the possible landslides due to the strong shocks. We would not be surprised that Pevolca will take safety measures for people living near the Sabinosa cliffs if the strong earthquakes do continue for a while. - It is a certainty now that this activity is far from over http://earthquake-re...ased-to-yellow/ http://hisz.rsoe.hu/...ndex&rid=257436 The renewed seismic activity process on the island of El Hierro since the 24th of June (2012) has now deformed the island by up to 6 centimetres horizontally and up to 7.5 centimetres vertically, according to data transferred by the IGN to the direction of Civil Protection Plan Volcanic Risk (Pevolca). http://www.canariesn...d-of-el-hierro/ http://www.canariesn...d-of-el-hierro/ http://www.avcan.org...s&a=mapa&mf=860 keeping eye on depths of these quakes down to 18-19km now http://www.02.ign.es/ign/head/volcaSenalesAnterioresDia.do?nombreFichero=CHIE_2012-07-02&ver=s&estacion=CHIE&Anio=2012&Mes=07&Dia=02&tipo=1

Greetings snow lovers... With all this rain that's been falling, it's easy to forget that there are still large quantities of snow present on the hills north of Hadrian's Wall! We've been keeping an eye on things, and the prognosis for snow looks pretty reasonable in 2012. June's figures for Scotland will, I'm sure, show a reasonable 'below average' return for mean temperature and sunshine hours. The last few days have seen a warming up above 3000 feet, but as with May the first three quarters of if were cold and overcast. There have been a handful of days this month where fresh snow has fallen. A recent picture of Braeriach's Garbh Choire Mor (the snowiest place in Britain) from 19th June shows how much snow is still present: Garbh Choire Mor, 19th June (Attila Kish) An isolated and difficult to reach mountain that I've never visited, and whose slopes have been known to hold snow 'til early September, Beinn Heasgarnich, I trudged up yesterday. I was rewarded with some reasonable sized snow-patches, the biggest of which was 46 metres wide and about 25 metres long. I suspect that the snow in the photograph below (Creag Mhor) is the most southerly now in Britain. If I were a betting man I would say that the Cuidhe Chrom on Ben More has vanished, albeit only recently. I couldn't see it yesterday, but the cloud did obscure my view. The rest of the pictures are here.