SnowBear

Dropped to 20% in 48 hrs, 30% in 5 days, formation chance is low.

To be fair many water main burst during hot weather are caused by ground heave, especially in clay areas. You can try and prevent, but you won't prevent all of them. This one in London may be the result of a number of reasons, perhaps older pipes, drying clay under London itself, plus working and reworking of roads and paths by cable companies, gas, electric and so on.

As I see it will take the awakening of the hurricane systems to break this pattern as we have seen many times in years past. This year, the seas off Mauritania, the southern Western Sahara coast, Senegal and The Gambia have been 1-2°c lower than normal, at around 24-25°c with a small patch of 26°c off Senegal. Usually they will be at 26°c and above. 26°c is generally the sea surface temperature for tropical storm/hurricane development. We do now have a disturbance moving off that coast near Senegal which has a 40% chance of developing into a tropical system, but currently its a disorganised area of convection. Once we do start to see systems move off and start their long tracks into the Northern Atlantic then we will start to see our patterns change too. Many have spoken on how little energy the Atlantic has at the moment, as there is little energy being introduced by these systems right now, it results in what we see in our weather.

Feltham: Homes evacuated as crews tackle west London blaze WWW.BBC.CO.UK About 60 people have had to leave their homes as trees burn to the rear of several properties.

We had the same here on the estate last night, I believe it was the pub on the corner who should really know better.

There were millions of trees planted to apparently offset the carbon foot of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. A small park near me had about 250 planted, I doubt 10 if any have survived. Its similar to when developers cut down mature trees and plant young saplings, the gesture is there, and probably because they have to to meet planning conditions, but many don't survive. These half heart efforts were planted in direct sun, land that is prone to dry out, and no plan to water or look after them afterwards. If you look at woods and forests trees don't have to try and grow in parched open land with man modified top soil barely spade depth, they grow in rich leaf mould and soil enriched by fallen trees, and often in the shade of others and so are sheltered until quite some decades old. These trees will live for hundreds of years.

So where is our rain? Try Death Valley.... Record amounts of rainfall there in this topsy turvey year for weather... Flash flooding swamps California's Death Valley WWW.BBC.CO.UK Nearly 1,000 staff and visitors were unable to leave as all roads in and out were closed.

Maybe, this is an article from Lincolnshire on one farm that has suffered a poor harvest. Low rainfall causes 'disastrous' potato harvest in Spalding THELINCOLNITE.CO.UK We've only had 4% of the average rainfall this month We grow a lot of spuds round here too, and the dry weather won't be helping at all, never does, every dry year is a bad crop. Will enquire during the week how the crop here is when I catch up with the farmer.

Farmers I've spoken to reckon the spud crop this year is up to half what it should be.

Fairly low chance at the moment though so a big maybe hehe ZCZC MIATWOAT ALL TTAA00 KNHC DDHHMM Tropical Weather Outlook NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL 200 PM EDT Sat Aug 6 2022 For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico: 1. Eastern Tropical Atlantic: A tropical wave is forecast to move off the west coast of Africa tonight and early Sunday. Environmental conditions are expected to be conducive for gradual development of this system while it moves westward to west-northwestward at 15 to 20 mph across the eastern and central tropical Atlantic during the early to middle part of next week. * Formation chance through 48 hours...low...near 0 percent. * Formation chance through 5 days...low...30 percent. Forecaster Berg

It is pretty much disinformation and shows signs of a reporter who has no clue what he or she is reporting on. Burning stubble was a practice widely used some years ago, it cleared the ground of stubble, weeds and pests, the ash was turned in as a fertiliser (potash). Obviously to prevent air pollution that practice had to stop. But in no way does it "destroy" a field, that's modern sensationalist reporting with an agenda/bias... wording which brings to the mind of many I suspect of complete destruction, unusable from then on, bringing a loss, etc. Completely the opposite is true and I suspect the farmer was quite happy to see it burn, next year once ploughed and we have rain I reckon a good crop from that field!

Things getting really serious in France. France drought: Parched towns left short of drinking water WWW.BBC.CO.UK Trucks are supplying many parched French towns with drinking water after an exceptionally dry July.

Maybe the spiders are earning their keep? Lol

Lol, need a pickaxe or pneumatic drill to dig my garden at the moment, it's like rock!

Some photos taken on the way home today... Everywhere is scorched. Last few days even large trees are starting to show signs of stress. Everyone... Well most should I say, are now being super careful incase of wildfires. None of the neighbours have had bbqs lately. There was one lot of idiots setting off fireworks on Saturday night somewhere over on the estate

Everywhere here looks like that, lawns, grass areas, fields, verges, only the trees and hedges have greenery, and I notice some of those are turning. The field maple and others others are now curling up and falling. Blackberry seems to be loaded this year but without the rain the berries are not going to be good. In the garden I've lost a Rhododendron, a blueberry, and a couple of Heathers. Others are looking weary, peony, bayleaf, and even some of the very old shrubs I have are looking very stressed now. Just some rain, even overnight would be wonderful

Although there is heat chasers here it might be an idea to chase when we get some rain, it's all good and I understand the fascination and enthusiasm for heat, but it might be an good to look for rain for as quickly as possible. Right now farming is desperate for rain. To put into context here is my post from another thread.. So, heat aside, when do we think we will get rain in the south folks? Do the models show any possible rainfall? It's actually in all our interests for food and their prices to get rain as soon as possible to be honest.

Not good really, problem is although it's good for ripening wheat and grain, it's far more dangerous to harvest especially in stony ground with flints etc, if the combine hits a flint it can set the field on fire. Also other crops like spuds won't be so good or more importantly won't store for so long. We also have so little field grass now that winter feed is going to be in severe shortage, plus winter crops which would be sown won't be as no moisture in the ground to quite some depth now to get them going.

We really need rain here badly, I know it's nice to have wall to wall sun and dry weather etc but, I hear from the farmers being as my works is in a unit in a farmyard and right now it isn't good at all.

Good view on Afar TV feed https://youtu.be/YsRFmU7aUVo

Just reposting this from cyclonic's post above, excellent info and view

It really narks me when the BBC peddle headlines like "Field fire destroys large area of farmland in Boxted". Like eh? Destroyed? Never to be able to be used again? Poisoned or something? Do they not realise we used to fire fields every year so the ash could be ploughed in as fertiliser and next year it could actually give a better crop? Destroyed.... Oh the drama

Ireland was Hibernia, the Romans called England Britannia, before that it was Albion.

Sorry, but most grape vines cultivated in the UK although most have Mediterranean origins, are cultivars for cooler climates. You still won't get much success with old world cultivars as you will get a crop, but the length of season isn't long enough to ripen it.

Much of that is down to cultivation of modern vines which are able to withstand colder climates. Old world vines species were alot different.