Crepuscular Ray

In and around Amersham, swallows are already doing their lining up on the phone wires prior to heading back south thing. I am hoping that this means that they bred early and the chicks don't need feeding any more but fear that for the second year in a row it means that many of them have failed to breed.

Given that solar activity is minimal, the corona should be absolutely stunning for those lucky enough to see totality.

The crack in the Larsen C ice shelf that forced the closure of Halley VI seems to be accelerating: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40113393

Giant explosion from the big spot of a week or so ago. http://spaceweather.com/ Not sure if this should be in one of the related threads, but what the heck. Given that the downturn in solar activity towards the end of this cycle - after a pretty boring time sunspot-wise over the whole cycle - hasn't delivered seven-foot snow drifts in Eastbourne and white-outs in Norfolk, have any of those amongst us who think that there is a direct provable link between lack of sunspot activity and snowy winters in our neck of the woods got any explanations for the lack of apparent correlation?

That beauty was unexpected. PM, given the latitude and messy polarity on the magnetogram (see soho link), do you think that 2644 is still old cycle or the beginnings of the next cycle? https://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/hmi_mag/512/

Live updates from the Brisbane Times website: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/cyclone-debbie-live-updates-queensland-cleans-up-as-storm-moves-inland-20170328-gv8l1o.html

They are now all BBC employees. Their contracts were transferred. As far as I'm aware, Nick, Phil is still there. Or has he left in the last couple of weeks?

Rob's still at AJE, although he's back in the UK for a couple of weeks at the mo. I'm working with him on an antique double-decker bus (probably this one: at the weekend. Yay!! )

Ah. Forgot. I was in the Middle East at the time. It was snowing not that far from where I was.

A lovely day out on the back end of an elderly bus today in leafy south Buckinghamshire. It was shirt sleeves weather for the first time since September.

https://storyful.s3.amazonaws.com/video/syfl-187f9ccafce6a595929ffa72d0d54848.mp4

Use the local council sites or the AA/RAC, they're all free and get their information from the same sources.

As ever with the Sun, it can have spots large enough even for the layman's count during solar minimum. The group near the limb is growing, although the one centre-stage is beginning to decline. http://spaceweather.com/images2017/25jan17/hmi1898.gif?PHPSESSID=g0lllsqqvte9kmjbh3kd768of3

Sounds scary. I suggest that you and your parents start shifting electrical, important, personal-memory stuff upstairs and collect a small bag of the vital stuff (including house insurance docs) in case the worse does come to the worse. Hope it doesn't, though.

I hope that your cynicism proves correct, BobbyD. I fear it might be over-optimistic.

Good luck with that one. http://oiswww.eumetsat.org/IPPS/html/MSG/IMAGERY/WV062/BW/CENTRALEUROPE/ In this EUMETSAT water vapour image, that is a possible "dry slot intrusion" (my guesswork), a known precursor of a sting jet if the system is deepening rapidly.

Evening Bluebreezer. Sunday down on the coast at a friend's beach hut at Eastbourne watching the airshow, including an amazing display from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, was good, apart from the chilly sea breeze that blew up early afternoon. I am still learning how to take photos with my tablet, so I won't bore you with out-of-focus pictures of antique aeroplanes. As for today, it has been warmish, but thankfully not too humid, with a max of about 25.5.

Apparently, the immediate origin is Libya, so your southeasterly is correct. Don't tell the Daily Express, though.

And now in inner west London. That's a first for a long, long time.

My parents in Hailsham are reporting some thunder and wondering whether it's anything to do with a rumoured Spanish plume...

If that's mph rather than kph, it's showing gusts, not sustained wind speeds! Having lived through both the 1987 great storm and the Burns Day storm of 1990, this one has been nothing like as bad. The former had wind gusts more twice as fast as what we've seen today; the latter had sustained wind speeds stronger than today's gusts and killed about 100 people in Ireland, the Netherlands and Belgium. TBH, in my neck of the woods, today has been no worse than a not-out-of-the-way autumn gale, although I am sure others have had it worse.

Cost-cutting excercise in 2010 saw several of the more experienced forecasters removed from television screens - Rob, Phil Avery, Tomasz, Peter Gibbs (except News 24 late at night when - as he put it himself - he wouldn't frighten the children). Peter and Phil stayed on. Tomasz took redundancy but was rehired a couple of years later. Rob went back to Meto HQ for about 18 months but then did other things. He's been at Al-Jazeera since late last year. Really? That was not one of the alternative avenues he explored.

Too humid. Yuck.

Gloriously sunny in London and in the mid/high-teens in the afternoon after a grey start in High Wycombe. A good day for lurking on the back platform of an elderly bus.