Wildswimmer Pete

Amazing the difference in conditions here just 14 miles inland. I could see the sunshine just a few miles away looking towards the Wirral. We had overnight rain but cloudy and damp all morning. The sunny conditions appeared to be approaching until a sharp shower early afternoon, then the cloud closed in. Currently broken Sc with some clear patches. Breezy this morning but currently light breeze F2. I can see clearly the tit on the top of Moel Fammau so visibility >20 miles. Forgot to reset my weather station last night so no max or min reading but currently 19.1C. Pressure 996mb

Wet overnight but currently dry, roads etc. damp. Not been out yet but looks quite breezy. Liverpool ATIS is reporting 17C, haven't checked here yet.

Most if not all male bare-skin winter swimmers are built like brick outhouses - it's all that blubb.........err.......insulation. I currently weigh 109kilos

It's down to physiological adaptation, in my case it took me two years to train in order to be able to do that. I must admit I like the "shock and awe" factor. Want know how to do it? https://wildswimmerpete.wordpress.com/2014/10/27/cold-acclimatsation-training/ You can download the PDF Hopefully I can bring my blog up to date, but the winter swimming help me overcome several years' bad health, confirmed by those treating me.

13C isn't cold - this is cold : My avatar was taken in the River Nene at Islip, 13th December '10, air temp -15C, water temp a measured 0C and that slab of ice is 1" thick. I still despise the British winter.

After Saturday's fog and cloudfest, the day dawned clear with some fair weather Cu developing through the morning. The afternoon mirrored most of last week: cloudless. Currently cloud seems to increasing from the west. Little or no breeze F0-1. Visibility >10 miles. Overnight min:7.3C, max: 18.3C, currently 12.1C and dropping. Pressure has been falling over the weekend, currently 1007mb. Went swimming in my local River Weaver at Frodsham, water temp 13C which is pretty normal for the time of year. Probably helped by the warm conditions last week.

I don't want to see them - those of us somewhat long in the tooth are affected by the cold more those younger. As it is the nasty British winter culls thousands. It's also the expense of heating our homes, thanks to our privatised, poorly regulated cartel of energy companies.

Another one for the fog bank - yesterday, Saturday 3rd dawned foggy. The fog had begun to form around midnight.

Problem is, carrying electricity 1,000 miles undersea from Iceland to the UK. Think of the losses - we'd be immersion heating the Atlantic. We've got enough hassle sending high voltage DC 30 miles under the Channel. I think we have to await room temperature superconductivity - we're getting there.

Problem is - getting the power to the surface. The geosynchronous orbit (Clarke Belt) is about 22,000 miles from Earth, well inside the Van Allen Belt. While you could technically moor a satellite in the Clarke Belt the problem is that satellites move. They need to continually correct the positions of communication satellites as they are nudged by the solar wind, especially after a large solar prominence. Assuming we've got our power satellite correctly placed, the only way I can see using current technology to transfer large amounts energy is via microwave or laser. The beam would have to be highly collimated over 22,000 miles to stop "spreading" over a large area. Assuming we've got our tightly collimated beam accurately focussed on the receiving array (microwave diodes or photovoltaic cells), what happens when our satellite is nudged out of position the next time the Sun throws a wobbler? A beam carrying gigawatts of energy goes walkabout and ends up in a city centre?

We built the first large fusion machine: ZETA (Zero Energy Torus Apparatus) in 1957. I wouldn't trust current claims as to why the ZETA was abandoned - I was a kid at the time and remember the real reason was because the brain-dead military high brass wanted their big boy's toys to threaten the USSR during the Cold War. So we took the fission course with the excuse of "electricity too cheap to meter" (which didn't happen) and built the Calder Hall* reactor. The real purpose wasn't civil power but of course plutonium for bombs. It was an immediately neighbouring air-cooled graphite-moderated pile that went into meltdown in '57. And we are still playing with our dangerous little toys. *Calder Hall is now part of the Sellafield site.

Check out France's nuclear capacity - plenty of it and it's cheap. http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/France/

Foggy first thing but by my getting-up time it was sunny. A few tiny fair-weather Cu over lunch but the afternoon was cloudless. Calm all day. I can see the aircraft lights on Stanlow's smokestacks at 8 miles but locally seems to be a very slight mist. Overnight min: 5.4C, max: 20.9C, currently 9.3C. Pressure last night was 1031mb, now 1018mb so falling.

We've already got it - the cross-Channel DC Interconnector?

"I suspect we would need tens of mlllions of windmills to achieve that sort of power coverage - Midlands Ice Age"* The typical output of a wind turbine is around 10MVA. A typical coal/nuclear power station uses turbo-alternator sets rated at around 600MVA. In my day typical CEGB stations had four such sets giving a capacity of around 2,400MVA - equivalent to 240 wind turbines. Hardly millions. *bloody duff javascript

We already have hydro for baseload, but think of all the Nimbys kicking off should anyone attempt a new hydroelectric project. The same would happen should someone propose tidal barrages. It's already happened here over the proposed Mersey barrage.

You still need baseload currently supplied by coal and nuclear. The spinning reserve of turbo-alternator sets spun up to speed and synchronised to the Grid, which can respond to any rapidly fluctuating load ie all those kettles switched on during the advertising slots of major soaps. I understand that back in the Sixties (ie the days of the CEGB) a generating set was connected to the Grid a just couple of degrees out of phase and the entire set promptly exited though the roof of the power station. It takes several hours to spin up and synchronise a big turbo-alternator set. Gas-fired stations can be spun up to speed and synchronised in less than an hour - combined-cycle sets are spun-up by the gas turbine alone before the hot turbine exhaust is available to raise steam for the associated steam turbine.

I was given the whole glossy press pack in the early '80s which included a big sectional view (like those we saw in the Eagle comic) of the JET tokamak. I'll see if I can find it. The energy needed to "fire" the fusion reaction is greater than the total power on the Grid, so massive flywheel generators were "spun up" from the Grid and the energy stored after several hour's acceleration is discharged into the plasma in a fraction of a second. I worked on power electronics but unfortunately nothing as hefty as that. There is a Supergrid link to the Cullingham JET site straight from the banking yard of Didcot power station.

Summer1959 was also a scorcher, and long. After that the '60s saw a couple of bad summers: 1962 and '63, the rest were pretty meh. Today another nice day that should've happened in July. Dawned clear, with some Cu infill developing that dissipated somewhat during the afternoon, so no cloudless day yet. Quite breezy, I'd say F2-3. I was able to catch some rays bare-chested in the back garden when I got home from cardiac rehab. Currently clear with visibility >10 miles. Overnight min: 7.9C, max:21.3C*, current 11.3C. Pressure 1031mb steady which is a drop from yesterday. *Sensor sheltered but not screened, I live in a small UHI

Not such a cold morning today but misty over the Cheshire plain adjacent to the Mersey estuary. After breakfast the sky was partially obscured by a sheet of cirrus while a little later Cu infill developed. The afternoon saw a return to blue sky, currently clear. Light breeze all day, F1-2. Overnight min: 6.5C, max: 20.5C, currently 12.8C. Pressure 1032mb steady.

Day dawned clear and cold. Remained sunny all day with less than 1/8 fair weather Cu coverage. Currently clear. Warm day, more so than during our so-called "summer". Overnight min: 4.4C, Max: 20.5C, current: 12.5C and falling. Pressure 1032mb steady. Had a swim in Hatchmere (Delamere Forest), water temp about right at 15.5C.

After a cold night I thought I was going to see something I've not seen for 2-3 years: a completely cloudless sky. it wasn't to be, sunny intervals until lunchtime and then the infill, a mix of Sc and Ac. Overnight min: 4.5C, max 20.0C*, current: 11.8C. Pressure 1026mb steady. Currently calm and clear. *Sensor sheltered but not screened. Minor UHI

Overnight min 8.5C, currently 11.6C. Pressure 1023mb rising. Short shower this morning but otherwise variable cloud with sunny intervals. Quite breezy.

Temp now falling quickly, currently 11.8C - suspect tonight will be a chilly 'un. Pressure rising, now 1011mb

There wasn't anything particularly unusual about winter 69/70 but we did have a snowy Christmas period but nothing severe. Early March saw a late cold snap with some snow. Otherwise pretty wet and windy. Bear in mind I'm quoting from 45-year old memory.