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overcast

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Everything posted by overcast

  1. WYorksWeather Yes , I think that's a fair assessment. I'm certainly not against electric vehicles, I just wanted point out that given our current balance of electricity generation, the day-to-day running of EVs is not emission free - as many owners would have you believe. Just goes to show the scale of change needed to get there - fossil -free base-load, grid capacity and connectivity etc. etc.
  2. On a cloudy calm winter morning the vehicle is charged from the grid. On such days most generated power is using fossil fuel to a steam turbine. On top of that you have grid losses , substation losses, charger losses and battery losses. Finally with the heavy batteries , the Polstar weighs almost twice my little A1 petrol car - so suggest it is a close call. Of course averaged over the long-term, the electric vehicle will 'win' - until you need to replace the battery pack ...
  3. My neighbour charges his electric car from solar panels on his roof (when the sun shines) and is a 'net exporter' to the grid in the summer. All very nice if you have a large roof and 70k to spend on cars, panels and extra battery storage. But he won't accept my (admittedly rough) calculation that his electric Polstar net emissions per mile exceeds my small petrol car on a cloudy calm day when he charges from the grid. There are so many losses to consider from a gas fired power station to energy stored in his car batteries, I still think I'm correct. But I still feel a 'twinge' of envy and guilt as he drives off on a warm sunny morning
  4. Thank you Michael for the many years of watching your marvellous forecasts on television and here on Netweather. My abiding memory will be of December 1981 and January '82. If memory serves I believe you required some additional magnetic discs to go down to the extremely low minimum temperatures you were predicting. I almost fainted when you placed a '-20' over our area. Best wishes Neil (overcast)
  5. Two storms - first mid sixties and again late 60's - growing up in a village 10 miles West of Leicester. The memorable event from the first was that my Granddad had me watch it from his front porch with the door open. "It's just a storm - nothing to worry about lad". Then of course there was an astonishingly loud bang and half the chimney stack from just across the road came crashing down into the street. I was transfixed until he grabbed my jumper and pulled me back into the house. Gran was not amused! Now move on a few years to 68 or 69. I watched this storm approach from the East. It was a good display but it didn't seem out of the ordinary - until it hit. The rain came on very suddenly but was soon replaced by a tremendous roaring sound. This was hail so intense that it rolled off the roof and made a complete white curtain that obscured anything beyond. Every plant in the garden was shredded and hailstones formed drifts across the road. People coming into the village hours later were amazed to find it freezing cold and shrouded in mist when just a couple of miles away the sun was out and it was pleasantly warm. There is an archive report in the Leicester Mercury - it appears that all the hail was reserved for just one drop - the centre of our village.
  6. Summer 1969 - a small village in Leicestershire - about 10 cms hail dropped on a small area in just a few minutes. Visibility zero and every plant shredded - sounded like a train passing on the roof. Some old pics in the Leicester Mercury I believe. A mile down the road and very little. Weird fog in the village (Newbold Verdon) for hours afterwards and hail in drifts down the main street.
  7. That little green blob on the radar is sticking to Coalville in Leics. Dad always used to say that 'the top of Ashby road is the coldest, snowiest place in the county' - and he lived there in 1947!
  8. A very cold spell is recorded by Gilbert White in his nature journal covering late February into March 1786. February that year started pretty average with some gales mid-month and it was not until the 21st that an East wind is mentioned. After 4 days of bitter conditions he notes that "ploughs are stopped by the frost" and "men cannot dig in the hop-gardens". A heavy snowfall arrives on the 27th and is described as about 7 inches deep - falling without drifting and lodged on the trees so it appears "very grotesque and picturesque". What happened next is the real surprise for our 'modern expectations'. The east wind gets up again and it becomes even colder so that the lying snow is now drifted "over hedges and gates". The first signs of any thawing are not seen until 10th March and even by 22nd March the lanes have "much snow still lying". Given this is Hampshire and not very far from the South coast it just goes to show how potent a late Winter spell could be back then.
  9. I was trying to come up with a (polite) word to sum up these last several 'winters'... I settled on 'Arnia' - the land of perpetual Autumn. In Arnia the evil Queen ensures that any snow is limited to the highest hills or at best a few flakes that are never allowed to settle. Also in Arnia, as I noticed today, the leaves are still fluttering around in February as if were still November. Will Aslan ever come to rescue us?
  10. Truly remarkable day here in Herts for March 24th. Temp peaking at about -0.7C and a penetrating wind. Went out to clean snow off the cars (it wont be thawing tonight!) and needed to come back in after 10mins to warm through. My goodness its chilly!
  11. I was just turning 7. My unheated bedroom faced East in a rural Leics village. The ice gradually built up on the window from my frozen breath - I remember thawing a little patch with my hand so that I could gauge if any more snow had fallen overnight. Getting dressed was a real ordeal and done at breakneck speed. Walking to school I was unable to resist jumping into the powdery drifts - not so good when it later thawed in the class room! We made huge slides in the playground that remained frozen and were gradually extended each day. Also vividly remember my grandfather using an iron bar to prise some turnips from his rock-hard garden. Oh yes and as mentioned before, the frozen cream poking out of milk bottles with the little silver cap still sitting on top. Final memory is of a temporary thaw and a big pond forming from several burst pipes in a row of houses opposite. Soon the cold returned and this became our 'skating' rink. Local school never closed as far as I remember and even then parents and grandparents were telling me how this was "nothing compared to '47 - your grandad and the other coal miners had to dig a way through to next village". Now that is a picture to imagine!
  12. Reading the diary of Gilbert White, he describes January 14th as "Rugged, Siberian Weather. The narrow lanes are full of snow ... I was obliged to be much abroad this day and scarce ever saw its fellow". For a man who lived thought the winter of 1739-40 that sounds like an an intense easterly spell. He lived in Hampshire about 20 miles from the coast in the village of Selborne and kept one of the best weather diaries of the 18th century. I'm sure the experts on here will be familiar with his work. So my question is what would be the equivalent of Jan 14th 1776 in your life-time? P.S. I haven't looked up the CET for that day or the month of Jan 1776 but I'm sure it was pretty chilly.
  13. Here goes, 1) Jan 63 NW Leics: Watching Grandad lift turnips from frozen ground with an iron bar, his water butt frozen solid, ice poking out like a giant stopper. 2) Jun 76 Midlands: Cycling to Cornwall, temp 33C, countryside already brown, tyres too hot to touch 3) Dec 81 Scotland : Late evening walk at -20C , frost on snow catches the moon 4) Oct 87 W Herts: Woken at 5am by that wind, small branches rushing past bedroom window, roads covered by debris and and twigs 5) Jan 90 Bucks: Great gust causes factory skylight to fall in, glass splinters explode like a bomb, garden ravaged by gales 6) Feb 78 Bristol: First reunion at university, huge snowball fight with old mates and mad party out in the blizzard 7) Aug 03 W Herts : Temp 35C, dust devil in garden! Feb 69 NW Leics: The 'perfect bizzard' , trapped at school , powder snow blows through door locks and drifts inside corridor 9) Summer 69 NW Leics: Local hailstorm devastates village, tremendous roar while falling, drifts of hail lasting 2 days, weird mist rising 10) Dec 09 Herts : Last 5 miles home on A41 takes 5 hours, cars slithering down hill in 4 wheel skid at 3mph Oh but then there is ... Plus many more I've heard second hand from parents and grandparents (you can guess when they refer to!) Overcast
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