mike Meehan

As far as the moon is concerned I have noticed from time to time that the weather changes from settled to unsettled, or vice versa at the time of a full moon, though I have never made records. It seems that with the progression of time more is being learned on how the condition of the stratosphere affects the weather here below, so it would not be so far fetched to visualise the magnetosphere influencing the stratosphere.

I have been a slave to the weed for the past 55 years and it annoys me that a group of 'holier than thou' people should have enacted the no smoking law in its current form. I am by no means convinced that smoking is the sole culprit in lung disease and would suggest that the impurities discharged into the atmosphere though internal combustion engines and the like are also likely to have an important effect. This legislation has run roughshod over smokers - I used to enjoy visiting the pub for a pint and a social chat with friends in a calm relaxing atmosphere with a smoke but come the first winter of the ban when I had to go outside into the cold every time I wished to have a smoke became an endurance and took away all pleasure from this activity, so I stopped going. I appreciate that now there are many non smokers who find smoking offensive and make efforts not to smoke in their presence but it would not have taken much wit to have still allowed a segregated room or area as it was in the few years prior to this smoking ban, where we could puff in peace. As it is now I have been made to feel like a pariah or a second class citizen - I am not allowed to smoke in any public building - there is no longer a sanctuary in hospitals, airports and other such places. I suppose one solace is that I do not and have not paid the current uk rate of taxes on my appalling habit for quite some time - I buy my baccy in Spain when I go to my place in France - there it is some 4€50 for 50 grams of Condor as opposed to well over £10 here now. That's enough for nearly a week.

The Scandy High appears to be teasing us towards the end of the month but this stage I am not putting too much faith in that - I know from previous experience she can be such a fickle flirt.

Couldn't agree more, though it is nice looking at the Meteo Ciel charts for the 19th

The cold weather started off in December of 1962 and for a time we had freezing fog where the temperature remained at a -5c for a few days - during month I went to a friend who had a houseboat on the Thames and the river was starting to freeze over - there was ice on the inside walls of his houseboat which wasn't really anything more than a caravan on a punt. The next I recall was when I went with my then fiancée to her parent's in the Chilterns not far from Whipsnade Zoo over Christmas and it started snowing on the Boxing Day. Then on New Years Eve we went into central London when it started to snow again with large flakes falling on the pavements not melting at all. At the time I was living in Hounslow and early in the New Year woke up to find considerable more snow which had formed drifts up to 2 feet deep on he roads - it had not been disturbed by traffic and remained virginal. At the time I was spending most of my time working in the Met Office in the Queen's Building at Heathrow as a scientific assistant. At various times some forecasters would try to drag up a front from the southwest but it never materialised exactly like that - I beleive we did get one front from that direction which ended up with snow preceeding and falling after the front when normally it would be expected for the following precipitation to turn to rain. I recall others remarking on the balmy weather they were having in Stornaway which was getting highs of 4C. We did get a patch of milder weather for a few days and this coincided with me being sent over to the 'North Side' where we did our obs - it made me feel a little disappointed to see the snow starting to turn grey with the pollution and slowly melt a little but it did not last and thankfully we entered the ice box once more with a little fresh snow to make everything look nice again. I visited my fiancée at regular intervals, travelling along the M4 on a motorcycle to Kensington where she was living - at speeds above 40 mph the snow hitting my face grew quite painful - we had open helmets in those days. On a visit back to the future in laws I was negotiating a right bend when I lost the front wheel through ice which was beneath the snow - we both fell off but no damage was caused - just that my throttle remained stuck open and the engine was screaming for all it was worth, so my instinctive first reaction was to go to the bike and close the throttle - it took a little while to live that down. Eventually it became milder and patches of green beneath the white started to look quite strange - by this time we had got so used to a white landscape that anything else seemed odd. I've spent the rest of my life hoping that one winter we may get a repeat performance especially in terms of the longevity of the white stuff - I have been hopeful a few times when we have had a cold spell, say for one two or three weeks but we have always been thwarted eventually by the Atlantic, so I have ended up somewhat disappointed.

Look on the bright side folks, your heating bills won't be so hefty

If it carries on like this I am going vote that this summer things are evened up so we shall have a glorious BBQ season. Roll on spring - I don't like rain and perpetual gloom.

http://www.meteociel...&ech=384&mode=1 http://www.meteociel...&ech=384&mode=0 Look's like a change mid month for a few days when we could have a bit of wintryness, though the Greenie high is not showing any sign of staying too long. Still a long way ahead - anything could happen really.

The difference between then and now being that now we have available worldwide communication and some understanding of what is going on whereas in the times of yore the people would have put it down to displeasing the gods. However if we were to put more research into the discovery of 'drowned cities' it would help us understand more and possibly, as I suspect, push back the beginnings of civilisation further back in time.

Naw - after all this time it is bound to have a few holes in it - just wouldn't be safe to sail - best stick to the rubber dinghies, welly boots and waders.

The results so far on this thread really are mind boggling and I would suggest they show a mostly neglected field of research where there is far more to learn. Having reviewed the contents so far it appears likely that by the end of the ice age that the majority of civilised mankind, i.e. that living in settled cities and having a farming life style as opposed to hunter/gathering, would have lived in more coastal areas just as a great many of the large cities of the world are located today, This suggests that civilisation goes back much further than what I have previously been led to believe, i.e. circa 10,000 years ago. The river referred to in Gujarat would well have been formed by the melting glaciers on the Himalayas, hence the volume of water. More sudden inundations where the general sea level rose quickly could have been caused by the breach of the 'dam' on the Laurention ice sheet, the waters of which went on to carve out the Grand Canyon amongst other things. When you think about it, it must have been a real catastrophy with only a minority, in some cases where the flooding was swift, surviving. It probably put back the development of mankind by several hundreds of years, if not thousands. It really makes you wonder what other cities there are hidden beneath the waves, perhaps we are on the wrong track with Atlantis and it may not have been the island which exploded near Crete some 3,500 years ago but some city and lands buried beneath the waves somewhere. It is often said that nowadays we know more about space than we do about our oceans and seas.

Mt Ararat is not that far from the coast and if the level of the Black Sea suddenly rises by some 150 metres it could be that the ark settled on what is now the coastline but was previously a foothill to that area. In any case these legends are often embellished through time and although it is more than likely there is an element of truth, I doubt that the incident occurred in exactly the same way as it has been described in the Bible. I think it more likely that Noah had the good fortune to be on a boat which was able to withstand the forces of a turbulent current to eventually come to rest against dry land when most of his neighbours would have perished. Of course back in those days you would say that you had been saved by God and no doubt believed it; add a few more embellishments and we have the story as we understand it today. But Noah would have been the only one to survive hence the other stories from around the globe.

There is a suggestion that the final inundation was caused by a tsunami as a result of a landslip into the sea off Norway.

Like saying it is too cold to snow, though for us to get a good fall it is necessary for some wetter milder air to be mixed in with cold air but it is never really too cold to snow as evidenced by the snow cover in Siberia in the winter.

Joanna Lumley made a program relating to Noah's Ark which was broadcast a few nights ago which was interesting but set me off thinking further. No explanation was given for 'The Flood' but thinking about it, the most probable explanation is likely to be the melting of ice at the end of the last Ice Age. During the Ice Age there is evidence to conclude the the levels of the Mediterranean and the Black Seas were much lower than their present levels, in fact it is suggested that they were landlocked with the latter being a large freshwater lake. Overall the melting caused the sea levels worldwide to rise by some 150 metres inundating the landbridge between the British Isles and the continent until the ancient land of 'Doggerland' finally gave up its quest to remain dry land circa 8,200 years ago, whilst Ireland became separated some 10,000 years ago. Prior to this there would have been settlements in low lying regions around the various coasts and on islands, now submerged. The melt water would have caused some rise in the Mediterranean and the Seas but it is likely that the rise in the level of the Atlantic Ocean were faster, so much so that the waters from the Atlantic overflowed into the Mediterranean until these two bodies achieved the same level. As the depth of the Mediterranean increased, this in turn overflowed into the Black Sea, flooding the coastal regions and turning a fresh water lake into the salt water sea we know today. This is believed to be some 6,000 to 7,000 years ago, a time when Middle Eastern communities were changing from a hunter/gatherer life style to a more settled farming life style, within the time frame, in my view, for these events to be remembered in folk lore. Flood legends are not just confined to the Middle East but they are contained within the folk lore of peoples across the globe, so it appears to me that the rising sea levels on a global scale from the melting ice could give rise to legends of floods from the peoples living in the then low lying coastal areas. http://christiananswers.net/q-crs/crs-blacksea.html

They are now talking about the east from east receding as far as Moscow, being pushed by the pest from the west, perhaps after it has receded it may advance again - I'd give it a month for this, so we may get lucky the end of Jan, otherwise I will be earnestly looking forward to spring. That HP just off the coast of Iberia seems to be the cause of our problems - the Greenie and the Scandie have had a go but this one is a bit stubborn.

See the cold is starting to creep west now, sub zero getting to Berlin

I'll be watching what happens to Moscow and Scandinavia - the latter has warmed up recently but Moscow remains very much brass monkeys - if the Russian high with its cold temperatures extends back towards Scandinavia we could see the beast from the east yet though it will take some time - probably a cold snap mid Jan to mid Feb. At least if we get a proper beast from the east we stand a chance of getting some decent powdery snow - far better than the slushy type substance we get on N Westerlies down here. Otherwise if the weather is to continue in the current vein, I say roll on spring. The other thing I wonder about after a relatively wet 8 months is when the next drought is due? - these patterns normally even out on the long term.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone

We've got a vacancy for a 'jetstream trainer' - anybody interested?

So 'snow' is 'snø' in Norwegian - a bit like 'ale' being 'øl'

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.

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.

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.

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.