mike Meehan
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Posts posted by mike Meehan
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I disagree Village,
I'd like to see this program continue out of deference to Patrick Moore - he spent his life trying to educate us into the ways of astromony and I am sure he would wish it to continue and such a continence would be a monument to him.
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Sorry but I am not certain of the climate you have in France.
Thanks Habsish, we are in fact some 25 minutes from the Med and have a Mediterranean Climate which is basically hot dryish summers and mild winters - the rainfall is about the same as London, averaging about 50 mms per month but with more falling in the Autumn/Winter Spring period than the summer, when most of the rain is via convection.
The attached link gives a description of the weather through the year from a village Ouveillan which is about 5 miles from Capestang between Jan 1992 and Jan 2000, though in March 2010 we had quite a heavy snow storm and a spell last Feb, mostly below freezing when the ice got so thick on le Canal du Midi that the kids were able to play on it which seems to be a legacy of us going through a patch of slightly more extreme weather.
http://www.southfran...ther/index.html
Though Accuweather shows lower values:
http://www.accuweather.com/en/fr/capestang/139430/month/139430?monyr=12/01/2012
By scrolling backwards through the months you can get the actual readings for the past 2 years.
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Mike, from what I can see in the pictures it appears to be just the young growth that has been affected?? There are a few things which can cause these symptoms and you may have more than one thing doing the damage. The first pic looks as though a hungry Slug has had a go at the young leaf before it had unfurled. The other pics could be caused by a fungus problem or they may be the result of a late frost, possibly followed by fungal damage on the already weakened tips. They can suffer from leaf minor problems (tunnelling inside leaves by insect), it's a bugger to treat effectively, the simplest and most effective way is to remove the affected leaves and burn. For the other problems, try a double handed approach at the first sign of trouble next year - a general purpose insecticide (easiest in spray form) together with a Copper based fungicide which will come as sachets of powder to be mixed and drenched all over the plant with a watering can.
As for fruiting - all Citrus are hungry plants, they really benefit from year round application but the feed differs between summer/winter feed. I've had good results from this one but I expect they're all pretty similar http://www.shrubsdir...CFePHtAodEm8AFQ
Thanks Jethro,
I do know that last Feb they did have quite a sever frost down there and the kids were playing on the ice on le Canal du Midi - in fact it has been a somewhat strange year down there.
Dec - Mild and dry
Jan - Don't know
Feb - very cold - down to -9C.
March to April - pretty dry though with temperatures gradually recovering
May, June July - some wet spells
August - Quite hot, temps up to 40C
Sept Oct - mostly about average - if anything Oct was slightly cooler than the previous ones with temps mostly low to mid 20's but none hitting the 30C mark as it often does.
Since then temps have been on the cool side for that area.
At the same time it is quite usual to get a wide variation of temperature in that region - I must admit I did suspect slugs, though they could have sneaked in during the wettish late spring when we weren't around and disappeared during the dry hot August.
Haven't done too much feeding at the moment - was advised to let them get hungry as this encourages root growth which they will need in the dry periods to get down to the at water.
Will try to give you an update when we get over next May.
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Anybody expert on Olive, Lemon and Orange trees?In the past two years I have planted an olive tree, a lemon tree and a clemantine orange tree in my garden in France.The olive appears to be going great guns although there was no fruit on it this year, though there was last - both years we pruned it quite drastically but I understand olives like a good pruning.The lemon tree is a bit more problematic - when we bought it just over two years ago it had some fruit on it but we planted it next to a wall - a French friend advised us to move it, so we did last autumn - over the summer it developed brown patches on the leaves, which appeared to have been eaten away in parts - we could find any parasite on them, though the rear of some leaves did show thin meandering track marks - it did not produce any fruit this year.We planted the orange tree a year last autumn - it had fruit on when we bought it but has not produced any since - some of the leaves were curling.We have cut off what we believe to be the affected parts and will see what happens by next May when we return.
Sorry about the pic of the orange tree, that is the the one on the right but I lost part of it transferring.
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Well, I'm off to Morocco on Xmas Eve, going by this run. Snow moving out of Spain and into North Africa.... LOL!
Many a true word...........snow over the Atlas Mountains - certainly not an impossibility
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Don't forget folks that a lot of this precipitation is snow to start off with - it's just that it melts on the way down
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I would say that in a situation such as this it is never over until the fat lady sings - there is always a chance that the Scandi High could re-invigorate, block the Atlantic and maintain the easterlies but probably not on this occasion, though stranger things have happened.
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I usually look at my windows, not 100% accurate but usually you can see wet drops arriving as wet drops, though there is the heat of the house which can melt snow if it is just below freezing, wet snow you can normally see the the flake before it melts and with dry snow there is not normally any adherence to the glass - plus it saves going out in the cold to see the cloches.
Car windscreens are good as well and have the added advantage of being able to see the flakes in the headlights at night - it generally follows the same rules as above but at
-5C and below the snow does not normally stick the the windscreen when the car is in motion.
Another indication I use is to watch the surface of puddles - drops of water mixed in the precipitation will cause small splashes, though hail could do the same but snow does not make the same splashes, then there is the sensation as it hits your skin water feels wetter than snow.
I find this is good most of the time but there are occasions when you have to concentrate to discern the difference between drizzle and 'snizzle, both of which can occur at below freezing.
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After they made him they broke the mould - He was a star! - I always loved the Sky at Night - not only that he was quiet a good musician and cricket was his other love.
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And what about if I am in a stable altitude, without moving, but the pressure is changing? The changes are not enough for changing my altitude?
For example now in my region I think we have 990 hPA but 12 hours ago we had 995 hPa. So?
I'm not quite sure what you are getting at Kon. Pressure decreases with height because as you get higher there is less atmospere above you, so the weight becomes less and it is the weight of the atmosphere which causes the pressure but it is not a straightforward linear graph but exponential.
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I love blue skies and tend to get a little depressed if we go too long without sunshine - fair weather cu are ok and very nice to look at and the occasional storm adds interest.
We had a Bartlett high when I did my gliding course during the early part of 1959 - it was generally cold and I could have sworn that there were slivers of ice on the wing of one glider which had just landed - launches generally gained just short of 1000 feet and that day you could just skirt with the bottom of the cloud base - towards the end of the course it cleared up a bit and my instructor managed to find a thermal.
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Aircraft are fitted with aneroid altimeters which work on the pressure of the air which varies with height, however it is important that they are corrected during flight with the insertion of sea level pressure and this is known as the QNH. When a pilot is using this it is important also for him to know the height of the airfield where is is landing so he can make the necessary adjustment.
Another setting is known as the QFE and this is the setting at a particular airfield.
On the altimeter there is a little knob which is turned until the pressure given appears in the window - this is done manually.
What normally happens in practise is the pilot will get updates during his flight from air traffic control so he will be able to maintain an accurate height - this is very important because with the amount of traffic in the sky aircraft travelling in different directions have to maintain different flight levels to avoid chances of a collision in the air.
Nowadays most aircraft commercial aircaft also have altimeters which are based on reflecting a radar signal off the ground and this too can show the height of an aircaft but since it operates through electricity they is a chance of this failing whereas the old fashioned aneroid altimeter operates purely on air pressure and there is little that can go wrong with it, so these are always fitted as far as I am aware and a necessary backup.
The other method of finding one's height these days is through the use of a GPS (SatNav) - most of the time these are fairly accurate but there have been times when driving a car in coastal regions I have felt the need to have a periscope fitted because SatNav indicated I was driving below sea level!
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About a half hour ago I noticed that some of that white stuff was coming down, light to moderate but not settling, still falling as sleet, not so heavy, temp dropped from 2.5C to 2.2C, now rising a tad to 2.3C.
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I am no expert but I think it indicates that the conditions where they have come from are quite severe, for example in Scandinavia and northern Russia at the moment, so, especially if they can get a favourable wind, they head for 'greener' pastures where more food is available.
There may be a certain amount of truth in our winters being more severe because, if, as per my example, the Scandinavian/northern Russia winter is severe, there is always a chance of the cold overspilling to reach our area with the right synoptics.
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Peter Cockroft reminded me of the spell we had of foggy weather 50 years ago when it was a real pea souper of freezing fog. It was probably the last we ever had like that because shortly afterwards the Clean Air Act kicked in. At that time I was a scientific assistant at Heathrow and recall a temp of virtually a -5C for a few days.
December of 1962 was pretty cool with ice starting to form on the Thames - my mate Banny had a houseboat on the Thames near Richmond and there was ice on his walls ON THE INSIDE!
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By 'entropy', Mike, I mean this: http://www.scholarpe...article/Entropy
A general tendency, governed by purely thermodynamical inevitability, for everything to lose its order and organization; until, in the far distant future the entirety of space will become a homogeneous, undifferentiated, cold...whatever?
Thanks RP - I do note that entropy occurs in an isolated system though, so does this mean that if the universe were to be infinite we would no longer have a isolated system, therefore no entropy?
The other point I raised in post 14 is that the 'big bang' must have had a trigger to set it off, so if this were to be the case the trigger must have been in existence before the 'big bang'
Any comments?
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It took me a long while to be convinced of the' big bang' theory but now I am getting used to the idea but there must have been a trigger point to set this off in the first place and if this was the case then something must have existed pre big bang, or just as stars have life cycles might the same thing apply to universes?
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One question, Barb: what 'goal' do natural bodies 'work toward'? Apart from to increase the entropy, (i. e. disorder) in the Universe...
For entropy could we say variations and don't the variations we have in nature push forward evolution?
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My little brain tells me that the ice ages were not caused just by one event but a number dovetailing to create the event, simliar to the recent of flooding of New York being a consequence of both high on shore winds associated with Sandy and a higher than normal high tide making landfall at the same time.
The world climate is controlled first of all by the energy from the sun which can vary especially when you consider that the Earth's orbit is somewhat eliptical meaning that at different periods of time, say the northern hemisphere is more favoured than at others. It is also suggested that through periods of time there are some fluctuations in the actual output of energy from the sun.
With continetal drift we have a gradual changing of the landmasses and here the Antarctic typifies the tendency to be colder than the Arctic because the former consists of a landmass whilst very much of the latter is sea.
In addition to the changes in landmass and energy received we also get changes in the ocean currents which can be further changed by variations of salinity.
On top of this greenhouse gases which do not just mean CO2 but include methane and water vapour also have an effect.
On the other hand water vapour is required to kick start an ice age because this will fall as snow in the hight latitudes and altitudes and without a significant layer of snow I doubt that an ice age as we know it would begin.
So we need moisture to make the snow especially during the winter and colder summers to slow the melt so the areas of snow and ice gradually increase - as they do they will reflect more energy away and become colder - as they become colder these areas will increase in size and this system will feed on itself causing glaciers in high latitude and high altitude regions to form and continue their expansion until they reach the warmer areas at sea level at lower latttitudes until eventually we end up with the limit of ice extending to St Johns Wood in London as it has done in the past.
CO2 is closely associated with the formation of ice ages and less of it means colder conditions and more warmer conditions but we are not totally sure of the mechanics governing this, though there is a suggestion of carbon hungry plant life gulping it out of the atmosphere thus causing cooling.
Volcanic action can also have an effect - a great deal of ash and sulpher dioxide pumped into the atmosphere can shield some of the sun's energy from reaching the surface causing cooling whilst at other times volcanoes can spew out a lot of carbon di-oxide leading to warming.
The interesting thing is that the last encroachment of ice finished pretty quickly about 12000 to 15000 years ago, which is a short time by geological standards, so there must be tipping points in both ice formation and melting.
So I would suggest to kick start, snow and lots of it in the winter coupled with minimal melting in the summer to allow the ice to build up in the first place, then after a time an equilibrium is reached where there are drier periods but the cold does not allow for very much warming and finally a warming period which melts the ice.
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Thinking about solar panels and going from the sublime to the ridiculous, is there a stage whereby the number of solar panels absorbing the energy from the sun could affect the amount of energy being absorbed by the atmosphere?
I would have thought that at today's usage the effect would be minimul, but say, if we were to cover 10% of earth's surface with solar panels, would this have an affect?
I am thinking along the lines of the principal that you can't have your cake and eat it and any energy taken by the solar panels would mean that much less for the atmosphere.
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The horse has now bolted.
Only three years ago a conference was held to discuss possiblity of New York being hit by a hurricane and swamped by a storm surge. A system of flood barriers was proposed to protect New York, much as the Thames Barrier defends London from a storm surge.
“We’re going to have to do something,†said the oceanographer Malcolm Bowman at Stony Brook University, New York. Because sea levels are rising particularly fast on the northeast coast of the US, the threat of a storm surge is increasing. New York’s emergency planners expressed interest in a flood barrier, but little more was done.
Maybe this will convince them now.
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Interesting analysis by Channel 4 weatherman Liam Dutton I've reposted here:
Interesting post - It just shows what can happen when you get a number of factors 'dovetailing'. I would expect that at ground level the 'ventura effect' could cause localised higher gusts as the wind passes through a series of largish buildings. The approaching 250mms of rain would not help either with it being unable to drain away into a surge tide. It was well forecasted and gave the authorities some time to get emergency procedures, such as evacuation, into operation.
It brings back memories of our 1953 'North Sea Sea Surge', which wasn't so well forecasted at all but this really shows the advance in technology and techniques over the years rather than anybody falling down on the job - London is now better protected than what it was with the Thames Barrier but the topography of New York Harbour does not lend itself a similar contruction. I expect the alternative they will consider would be higher sea walls which would be a considerable undertaking. Thank God they closed down the subway.
It also reminds me of the floods we had in the area of France a few years ago, where we are at the moment - here gale force SE winds forced a 'high tide' causing the water to back up into the Aude whilst torrential rain in the Corbiere area was trying to drain out, the result being that Cuxac d'Aude, about 5 miles south of us, was under 2 metres of water.
Now they are building extensive flood drainage channels.
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So that is how the biblical scourge of rivers running red arose.
Russian weather
in Weather Around The World
Posted
So 'snow' is 'snø' in Norwegian - a bit like 'ale' being 'øl'