Weather Eye

[Methuselah]

Thanks Highcliffe. I'll be thinking of Martin Keown every time it rains! :lol:

[highcliffe2]

April 3, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS weekend may be throbbing with the sound of lawnmowers in gardens across the country — but cutting lawns causes air pollution.

Research in Sweden suggests that an hour of using a petrol mower equals 100 miles of car pollution.

Worse, lawnmowers produce polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, some of which are blamed for causing cancers.

The level of these toxins could be cut drastically if lawnmower exhausts were fitted with catalytic converters, just like car exhausts.

Perhaps most surprising, the grass itself gives off harmful substances. The sweet smell of freshly cut grass consists of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including methane (a potent greenhouse gas), acetone (used in nail-polish remover), ethanol and acetaldehyde.

Within seconds of mowing grass, these substances erupt in an invisible cloud, and if cuttings are left on the ground they release ten times more VOCs than the cut plants on their own. Those substan-ces then react with nitrogen oxides in the air, and in sunshine they cook up ozone, which contributes to smog.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,8823,00.html

[highcliffe2]

April 5, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

ON THIS day 200 years ago, a series of explosions shook the sky over Glasgow. A trail of smoke was seen whizzing through the sky before crashing into a quarry on the outskirts of the city and workmen found a hole in the ground with a strange black rock at the bottom.

Scientists from the University of Glasgow interviewed witnesses, brought the rock back for examination, and finally declared it to be a meteorite — one of the first recognised rocks from space.

Before then it had been known that “stones” fell from the sky, but they were put down to strange showers from clouds or “thunderstones”, rocks that were supposed to be struck by lightning.

But the flying rocks were seen travelling at huge speeds, exploding in the air and falling over a wide area, and an extraordinary shower of more than 3,000 meteorites fell over France in 1803 in largely clear skies.

The rocks must have fallen from space, and the Glasgow incident fitted this new theory of meteorites. The 1804 meteorite is currently on exhibition at the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,8823,00.html

[highcliffe2]

April 6, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

A NEW way to clean the atmosphere of excessive carbon dioxide, CO2, will be tested this summer.

CO2 pollution is most often blamed for global warming. According to Chemistry & Industry magazine, a wind scrubber is being developed in America to clean excessive CO2 levels from the air.

Do not hold your breath waiting for the results, though. Other plans to rid the world of dangerous levels of CO2 all have serious flaws.

One idea was to seed oceans with tanker-loads of iron particles to fertilise phytoplankton. The extra iron would boost the planktons’ photosynthesis, soaking up lots of CO2, then the plankton would die and sink to the ocean bottom, carrying the carbon with them. But scientists have recently learnt that the extra iron also boosts marine animals which quickly eat the phytoplankton.

Greater hope is being pinned on growing new forests to soak up CO2. But, as the climate changes, many of these trees could die and their remains give off CO2.

There is probably no carbon quick-fix — except not making the pollution in the first place.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,8823,00.html

[highcliffe2]

April 7, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

O, HOW this spring of love resembleth/ The uncertain glory of an April day!

Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona

THE wicked chill blowing through Britain this week is a reminder that April can be a fickle month. Bitterly cold Arctic winds in April 1908 brought snow, hail and intense frosts across much of Bri-tain, and Easter was a whiteout in the eastern regions, with heavy snow and hailstorms.

A few days later, temperatures plunged to -12.8C (9.3F) at Garforth, Yorkshire, and on April 25 a blizzard tore through central and southern England. Hampshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire were hit hardest and snow piled more than 2ft high; Oxford recorded its heaviest snowfall of the 20th century. The snow was so thick that many greenhouses and telegraph lines collapsed under the weight.

Even the Channel Islands were hit by one of their heaviest snowfalls on record, with more than 1ft on Alderney. But temperatures soared on April 29 and the snow thawed rapidly: floods inundated Oxford, Maidenhead and many other places.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,8823,00.html

[highcliffe2]

April 8, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

NO SOONER had I written that April is, on average, the driest month of the year over much of Britain than the heavens opened up this week with some spectacular downpours of rain and hail.

But if it is any consolation, there have been far wetter Aprils than this.

It was only four years ago that we had the wettest April since 1756, and to add to the misery it was also thoroughly cold much of that month.

Southern England bore the brunt of the rains, with three times its average April rainfall, the worst on Good Friday when “monsoon levels” drenched central, southern and eastern England, with almost 130mm (5in) north of Banbury.

Several rivers broke their banks and devastated Leamington, Stratford-upon-Avon, Northampton, Peterborough and Wisbech.

Flood warnings were woefully inadequate and six people were killed, thousands had to abandon their homes and the damage was around £1 billion.

A government inquiry was called to discover what went wrong — the second in two years, after Easter floods across the Midlands in 1998.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,8823,00.html

[highcliffe2]

April 9, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS holiday weekend will see the arrival of flocks of migrating birds on our shores. Last week the first willow warblers and nightingales flew in from south of the Sahara, arriving pretty much on time, and in the past few days we’ve seen the first sedge warblers.

In the next week these birds really pile in, along with swallows, house martins, cuckoos and many others. The migrants from Africa usually fly up through Morocco, cross the Mediterranean at Gibraltar and then sweep through Spain into France. Recent low pressure and rain along this route may have held up many birds, and the poor weather also hits flying insects, which swallows need to feed on as they fly.

These birds may wait for high pressure and calmer conditions, but if they hit miserable weather in England they will be forced to land here in large numbers.

The British Trust for Ornithology is keen for people across the UK to help to survey the arrival of migrating birds, and registration details, survey forms and up-to-date information on bird arrivals are available at http://www.bto.org/migwatch/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,8823,00.html

[highcliffe2]

April 10, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

IT LOOKS like this Easter’s holiday weather is going to be fairly nondescript: cloudy and rainy towards the North and somewhat calmer in the South as high pressure barges in from the Azores.

In the past, though, Easter has been savaged by cold, floods, thunderstorms, hail, tornados, gales and blizzards. It was this capricious weather which influenced a debate in the 1920s about setting a fixed date for Easter.

Alexander Buchan was a noted meteorologist who recorded the weather in Edinburgh for more than 50 years, and he found nine periods each year when the weather tended to be unusually cold or warm.

He did not claim that these spells were reliable enough to make weather forecasts, but his work helped to fuel a debate in Parliament in 1928 about fixing a date for Easter on the Sunday between April 9 and 15.

However, those dates fell in a Buchan cold spell and led to concerns about ruining any public holiday then. The Bill was in fact passed, but it cannot come into law until the World Council of Churches agrees to it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,8823,00.html

[Matty M]

Well we may be on the verge of a heatwave

with 20+ by mid-week bring it on

and then some late snow for late april

[highcliffe2]

April 12, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

BIRDS are switching sides across Britain: many migrating wetland birds now prefer the East Coast to the West, as our winters are growing milder.

Birds such as redshank, oystercatcher and curlew fly from Russia to Britain to spend a frost-free winter on mudflats along the West Coast, such as in Morecambe Bay and the Severn Estuary.

The East Coast in winter used to be too cold for them, but last week a conference in Scotland was told how East Coast winters have turned so mild over the past 15 years that the birds are arriving there in growing numbers, saving themselves the extra flight west.

This may have drastic consequences, believes David Stroud, an ornithologist with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee. “We’re anticipating that if this redistribution from West to East carries on we’ll lose the winter populations of these birds altogether because they may all stop in Denmark and the Baltic,” he says.

The birds also face problems in their Arctic summer breeding grounds, which are warming at a faster rate than the UK.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/section/0,,8823,00.html

[highcliffe2]

April 13, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

TORNADOS in Britain are usually weaker than their American cousins, but a very powerful storm created a tornado of awesome proportions in the Cotswolds last month.

Laura Gilchrist and Brendan Jones, both meteorologists, were stormchasing on March 21 when they saw a small, rapidly developing thunderstorm which resembled the violent supercells responsible for twisters in the American Midwest.

The sky was plunged into pitch darkness, thunder erupted and soon afterwards huge hailstones, some the size of 10p pieces, smothered the road. Not far away, a tornado ripped through the village of Filkins with a noise described as being like low-flying jets. Houses shook as the frenzied wind hurled debris through the air, trees were torn out of the ground or snapped like sticks and some homes were stripped of their roof tiles.

A survey of the damage revealed the tornado’s path was almost three miles long, with winds estimated to have reached 115mph — a truly terrifying twister by British standards.

More details about the tornado are at http://www.eots.co.uk/storm.htm

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

April 14, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

“CUCKOO, bring your song here! Warrant, Act and Summons, please, For Spring to pass along here!” Rudyard Kipling’s Cuckoo Song celebrated Cuckoo Day on April 14, the traditional date when the first cuckoo appears in East Sussex.

Kipling had a particular fondness for the bird. Not far from his home at Batemans a cuckoo fair was held at Heathfield, which the locals called Heffle: “Old Woman’s let the Cuckoo out, At Heffle Cuckoo Fair — a!” The old woman was supposed to let a cuckoo out of her basket, a sign that spring had arrived.

But thanks to climate change in recent years, the cuckoo has arrived five days earlier than usual from Africa after its winter migration.

Also over the past 30 years, the cuckoo population has declined, by 20 per cent in farmland areas and by a staggering 60 per cent in woodlands.

The birds may be suffering from fluctuating food supplies caused by unpredictable weather in Britain or in its winter home in Africa. However, its decline could also be due to fewer host nests to lay its eggs in and loss of suitable habitat.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

April 15, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE truth is out: Swansea is the wettest city in Britain, averaging 1361mm (53in) of rainfall a year.

According to a recent survey, the other rainiest cities are, in order: Londonderry; Glasgow; Plymouth; Cardiff; Preston; Belfast; and Bristol.

Manchester’s wet reputation is a damp squib because it is only in ninth place, with a mere 855mm (34in) per year, just ahead of Exeter.

Even more extraordinary, Swansea’s rains are reckoned to cost the city’s residents £582.4 million in cancelled events and extra heating and drying bills.

Swansea’s wet weather comes from Atlantic depressions sweeping in from the South West. As that humid air spills over the hills of South Wales it cools, condenses and gushes with rain. Those Atlantic lows also make Swansea a windy city, with some of Britain’s fastest gusts recorded at nearby Mumbles.

But Swansea’s temperatures are mellow. The Atlantic winds tend to carry mild air, and the surrounding hills shut out cold northerly winds, so the city gets little snowfall. Its lowest recorded temperature was only -10.0C (14F), on January 26, 1945.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

April 16, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

WALES has an unenviable reputation when it comes to weather. In yesterday’s Weather Eye, I said that Swansea is the wettest city in Britain, on average. However, it is not the wettest place. That distinction goes to Crib Goch, a rocky ridge on the flank of Snowdon in North Wales.

According to recent Met Office statistics, Crib Goch collects 4,472.3mm (176in) of rain per year, more than enough to reach the ceiling of an averaged-sized room.

Crib Goch is a striking location: a rocky knife-edge with sheer cliffs on each side, 923m (3,028ft) above sea level, one of the most challenging summits to climb in Wales.

It is often draped in cloud and rain, thanks to Atlantic winds delivering a steady stream of very moist, mild air. That airflow is thrust up over the mountains, cooling and condensing the water vapour into droplets, rather like the way a cold mirror mists up in a warm bathroom.

With enough moisture pumped over the mountains, the water drops crash down in torrents of rain, as happened in February this year in record-breaking rainfalls over Snowdonia.

Link to Weather Eye source

[Hywel]

Crib Goch is amazing for weather, as is most of Snowdonia. I was climbing the ridge last september, and it was beutifully clear ( i got a good tan that day ) When i made it to the top i looked westward to Anglesey and the sea and found that i could no longer see them. About 5 min later on my decent the other side of Crib Goch i got hit by strong winds and driving rain, i had to cling to the rocks for about 10 minutes which were getting increasingly slippy. With a 300m drop either side of me and knowing the mountains reputation for being one of the biggest killers in Britian i was a bit scared. 10 minutes later the winds stopped and i continued on to Garnedd Ugain, the second highest mountain in Wales and England in beutiful sunshine. By the time i reached the summit of Snowdon it was pelting down with rain and Hail again. I got home a few hours later and found out it had been cold all day there, even though temps were up to 20c in the mountains when the sun was out... Ah the wonderful Welsh weather

[highcliffe2]

April 17, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

ENGLISH wines are enjoying some of their finest vintages after the glorious summers and autumns of the past two years.

Now the greatest accolade has been paid to our vineyards: three champagne houses from France are considering setting up home in the Kent and Sussex countryside.

Climate change is helping to drive the French over here. The blistering heatwave last summer was so intense in Epernay, the centre of the French champagne growing region, that their grapes went into overdrive: the heat made the fruit too sweet as the acid turned into sugar.

If this warming trend carries on, the champagne producers are worried that their industry faces serious problems in the future.

But while France grows too hot, rising temperatures in southeast England are becoming ideal for growing grapes. In fact, our climate is far better suited to producing dry, sparkling wines because our grapes tend to hang on to some of their acidity by the end of the growing season.

Together with the chalk hills of Kent and Sussex, English fizz has never had it so good.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

April 19, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

A READER wrote in with a fascinating account of a white bow seen in a night sky several years ago. “The night was clear, quite cloudless and a brilliant Moon,” she wrote. “I noticed this white arc of rainbow against the sky.”

But a rainbow would have been impossible because there was no rain falling. Chances are it was a lunar halo, usually seen as a soft white ring around the Moon.

Lunar haloes are created by bright moonlight shining through a high, thin cloud of ice crystals. As the moonlight passes through the crystals it is bent into a circle of white light.

It seems colourless because moonlight is so weak that the human eye sees it only as off-white.

The arc in this particular incident was some way from the Moon, and could have been a rarer halo formed at a tangent to the Moon.

Lunar haloes can predict the weather: “Ring around the Moon means rain soon.”

The ice crystals that form a halo are carried in cirrus clouds, and these often sweep in ahead of weather fronts bringing rain.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

April 20, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS week’s weather looks like being a shocker. Deep low pressures to the west of Britain will pump in waves of heavy rain on the back of some strong winds. This is not a week for barbecues.

One reason is the position of the jet stream, a band of strong winds about 10km (6 miles) high.

As the northern hemisphere warms up in April, the position of the jet stream can wobble around quite dramatically, letting cold air slip down from the north, or warm air surge up from the sub-tropics.

For us, that often translates into sudden flips between cool showery North Westerlies, or warm dry Southerlies.

But one benefit of the rains this week could be a last chance to recharge underground water supplies before summer.

Trees will be in full leaf from now on and losing enormous amounts of water through their canopies, while the warm sunshine is increasingly evaporating water from the ground.

It is to be hoped that the extra boost to water reserves will help us to get through any droughts later in the year.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

April 21, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE bizarre football match between submariners held at the North Pole (The Times, April 20) highlighted a desperate message: the Arctic ice is melting.

Perennial sea ice should survive all-year round, but in the Arctic it is vanishing at about 9 per cent each decade.

The reason for the melting ice is crystal clear — the Arctic is growing warmer, and far faster than anything we are experiencing in Britain.

Of course, the Arctic is so remote it is easy to forget about it, but we need its ice.

Both the Arctic and Antarctic are the air-conditioners of the world, cooling the atmosphere by bouncing the Sun’s rays off large sheets of ice into space.

Without that ice, the Earth could overheat at a ferocious pace.

Arctic warming could also change the world’s atmosphere.

As Arctic areas warm up, their permanently frozen soils are defrosting.

That could release vast amounts of carbon dioxide and methane trapped in the ground, sending greenhouse warming into serious overdrive and the climate haywire.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

April 22, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS month marks the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Kohima, when British and Indian forces repelled a Japanese invasion of India.

On April 5, 1944, a force of 15,000 Japanese soldiers attacked the garrison of 3,500 at Kohima, on the hilly frontier with Burma.

The Allies were surrounded and pinned down to such a small area that fighting raged across the district commissioner’s tennis court in fierce hand-to-hand combat.

The defenders could be resupplied only from the air, but pre-monsoon rains made flying treacherous. Yet the garrison held out for two weeks in appalling conditions until fresh troops arrived, and repelled the enemy.

Further south at Imphal, the Japanese besieged the Allies in an even larger battle. Again, supplies could be provided only by air, which became extremely dangerous when the monsoon finally broke in May.

The torrential rains also swamped roads and choked off Japanese supplies, and by late June they were defeated.

The victories at Kohima and Imphal marked a turning point: from then on, the Japanese were in retreat and eventually they were pushed out of Burma.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

April 23, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

WEATHER often features in Shakespeare’s plays, and there is intriguing evidence that the storm in The Tempest may have been inspired by real events.

In 1609 the pioneering colony of Jamestown in Virginia was in dire straits and a small fleet was sent from England with urgent supplies.

The ships had almost reached there when a hurricane struck, scattering the fleet and sending the flagship Sea Venture aground on what became Bermuda.

The crew and passengers survived and, incredibly, eventually reached Virginia in homemade boats. One of the survivors, William Strachey, wrote an exhilarating account of the ordeal. “Windes and seas were as mad as fury and rage could make them,” he wrote. “The sea swelled above the Clouds and gave battle unto heaven.”

His story caused a national sensation back home and Shakespeare must have seen it — in fact, the two men may have known each other.

The Tempest was written some time after Strachey’s account, and the plot about a ship wrecked in a storm on a desert island has striking similarities. But was it coincidence or inspiration?

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

April 24, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

TOMORROW marks the anniversary of the death of a Swedish scientist who invented an easy way of measuring temperature. Anders Celsius, physicist, mathematician and astronomer, invented a temperature scale using 100 degrees between water boiling and freezing.

The Centigrade scale, as it became known, was elegant and user-friendly, but Celsius died only two years later in 1744 and his name was eclipsed by Gabriel Fahrenheit and his more cumbersome temperature scale, based on the temperature of a healthy man.

However, the simplicity of Centigrade gradually won over many countries, especially after it was adopted by the French in their revolutionary metric system in 1790.

Of course, anything from France was anathema to the British, who stuck to Fahrenheit. And so, centuries later, we are left with that legacy and some horrendous conversions between the two temperature scales, the bane of this weather column.

But while Gabriel Fahrenheit got his name immortalised, Celsius remained largely unknown. So to make things fair, an international conference in 1948 officially changed Centigrade to Celsius.

Link to Weather Eye source

[J10]

I wonder where they get these figures from according to BBC Wales Website, Swansea gets around 43 inches of rain a year at Mumbles weather station, so I doubt the accracy of these "survey" figures. I wonder if the Met Office has official statistics of rainfall, so a genuine comparison can be made. If it were we probablywould be wet, and not as much as that survey suggests.

And the statment that Northerlies are blocked out by the Hills isn't completly true, we often get snow from Northerlies and in particular North Westerlies.

I won't argue about the windy bit though.

[highcliffe2]

April 26, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

WHAT would happen if an asteroid hit Manchester? It may be highly unlikely, but scientists have used a new computer model to study a relatively minor asteroid 45m (150ft) wide striking Manchester city centre.

The results are not attractive. Within seconds, the city would be vaporised and a crater roughly 3km (2 miles) wide ripped open.

The explosion would shoot millions of tonnes of rock high into the sky and shower it like bombs more than 30km (20 miles) away in a devastating blitzkrieg.

Places such as Manchester United’s ground at Old Trafford would be left in ruins.

The computer model also shows the blast triggering a vast fireball followed a split second later by shockwaves with winds of 4,000km per hour (2,500mph), and so powerful that they smash into outlying areas such as Wilmslow and Bolton.

As if that were not enough, a severe earthquake is set off seconds later.

The only crumb of comfort is that asteroids of this size hit the Earth once every 1,000 years on average, and the chance of one making a direct hit on Manchester is about once in every five billion years.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

April 27, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

BY THE end of this week, last weekend’s glorious sunshine and hot weather may be a distant memory. It came from a ridge of high pressure thrusting up from the warm Azores islands in the Atlantic.

On Saturday temperatures soared to a high of 23C (73F) in Central London, about 10C above average for this time of year.

It was also a day of some hazard. We are only two months away from the longest day of the year, which means that the sun is high in the sky, launching ferocious ultraviolet rays able to burn skin.

But high pressure on its own is not enough to create hot and sunny conditions.

West of Ireland, a high is sweeping cooler, moister air into the North West. As it hits the warm land it is setting off thunderstorms.

Worse still, by Saturday that high pressure may be dragging air down from Greenland and bringing the chance of ground frost.

But the high pressure is struggling with low pressure to the north and south, and by Bank Holiday Monday a depression may bring heavy winds and rain.

Link to Weather Eye source