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Thundery wintry showers

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  1. Thundery wintry showers
    Some people, after seeing my contribution to threads relating to copyright, might be under the impression that I think people should be allowed to perpetuate illegal activities.

    In reality, I don't ever take that stance on legal issues, on the contrary I think "lawlessness" tends to be unregulated and potentially dangerous. What I do take issue with, though, is over-restrictive rules, and hence I tend to take the stance that they should ideally be relaxed, and that in the meantime I don't object to a bit of civil disobedience.

    It's this perspective that propels me into preaching "copying isn't the same as theft". Some acts of copying [i]are[/i] strongly analogous to theft, but when we come to defining what is "Fair Use" and what isn't, we're inevitably going to end up with very limited "Fair Use" if we define the pros and cons of copying in terms of those of theft. I will admit to having committed acts of "casual copying" over the years but I feel confident that I haven't bought less products as a result. It may be stating the obvious here, but it's remarkable how often this is overlooked: copying is only a bad thing if it results in people buying less than they otherwise would. (I don't "do" peer-2-peer file sharing though, as I believe this practice mostly does result in people buying less, with honourable exceptions existing, but being few and far between).

    I could say a similar kind of thing about various other common legal issues- road traffic offences are the other major one (some people regrettably received a rambling message from me recently about my concerns over ever-tightening "road safety" restrictions as a sneaky way of discouraging car use). I don't want to see a lawless society but I also believe that "what's legal isn't always right".
  2. Thundery wintry showers
    Had quite a hectic week this week.
    On the work front, I had to sort out my project for my MRes course- am doing investigations into a convective cloud initiation project. This will hopefully be relevant to my interests as convective clouds have always been a major fascination area.
    The Atmospheric Science Away Day on Tuesday was good- if a little bit intensive, it is hard to maintain concentration through 3 hours at a time of talks! Also had a good party on Wedensday evening with the Tenpin Bowling Society- I brought a Halloween mask and scared the pants off a few people, and was the only one to bring a mask. Also improved my score this week- 294 in 3 games, so I am back to my usual standard of about 100 per game. Now to break 300 in 3 games! Also saw Man Utd vs Lille- a rather disappointing game in which they lost 1-0 and, IMO, never really looked like scoring. What on earth has happened to the Mancs, they'll be lucky to get in the Champions League again at this rate!
    Some students were talking about snowfalls in Leeds during February 2005, including one day when there was a large amount and there were some large scale snowball fights. So it does snow here, although I am reliably told that it snows rather less here than it does in Sheffield. Whereas during my Lancaster years I wasn't too fussed on easterlies, I would be all up for a good 'Siberian' blast this year, provided that it brought snow showers rather than days of dull dry stratocumulus dross and temperatures between 2 and 5C the whole time.
    There were a couple of impressive firework displays in Leeds last night. I just don't grow out of things like that- many of my posts on the forum may appear serious, but in reality the inner child still lives on. Probably the best displays I have ever seen with a great variety- and free, too.
    The main difference between Leeds and Lancaster continues to be the social side. As I have lamented about before, traditionally friendships have been hard to make and even harder to keep, but it doesn't seem like that in Leeds- I have found it remarkably easy to make friends here, and so far, there haven't been any problems with 'friends' showing themselves to be unreliable, or 'true' friendships being prised apart by possessive and jealous outsiders. Long may this continue, please!
  3. Thundery wintry showers
    A very warm first half. I spent the first third of the month on the Isle of Arran, with some very warm, sunny and summerlike weather during the first week, but the second week was somewhat more cloudy.
    A funny 'quirk' on the 10th- while I travelled from Arran to Leeds and then Tyneside, it was dull everywhere apart from a 10-mile radius around Lancaster (!!) where it was very sunny.
    The second half of the month didn't contain any particularly memorable events in Leeds (where I went to university after midmonth) but it was consistently sunny and generally warm.
    The month averaged 60% on my ranking system, and was the third September in a row to make a sixties score- by contrast, most Septembers of the 1990s 'achieved' forties scores.
    I doubt October will achieve anywhere near that kind of score though!
    Statistics from 17-30 September in Cleadon, Tyne & Wear:
    Mean Max 17.6C
    Mean Min 9.0C
    Mean SLP 1006mb
    Total precipitation 6mm
    Highest max: 21.1C (22nd)
    Lowest min: 3.6C (24th)
  4. Thundery wintry showers
    On this occasion I was priveleged to be at the centre of where all the weather action was happening. In East Exeter by the Met Office, a set of localised but very intense convective cells targetted the area giving over an hour of thunder and lightning around 8-9am. Although the rate of lightning was not outstandingly high (about 20 strikes over that period) most of the thunder and lightning was right overhead, making it very dramatic. But even more remarkable was the rainfall- it was torrential for most of the entire period. Some of the cumulonimbus clouds were extremely dark.

    The remainder of the day continued with heavy rain. At around 5-6pm, another torrential pulse again concentrated itself over my area, and again there were big cumulonimbus cells and it was very dark- dark enough for the streetlights to come on- but no thunder on that occasion.

    Reports suggest that a localised area close to the Met Office, possibly including my specific location, had over 100mm in 12 hours. For comparison, the average rainfall in Exeter for the whole of June is about 50mm. What was particularly unusual about it was the way extremely intense rainfall persisted for most of the day- it must have been from a succession of convective cells embedded in the frontal system, because rainfall of that intensity rarely lasts longer than half an hour.

    So it may well have been a driech dull wet day- but what a day all the same!
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, this was something of a surprise- my biggest snowfall since 22 December 2003, looking likely to be the longest lasting since the New Year period of 2001/02, and easily beating anything I saw in Lancaster.
    I was getting concerned when I woke up at 6 am. on Wednesday morning and saw no lying snow. I had forecast that the snow would probably settle on Wednesday, and up to that point, we had been warmed too much by the sea, and had had mainly hail and sleet showers. That had been in line with my prediction, but of course the settling snow was the most important compartment of my prediction, and there would be some disappointed faces if I got that bit wrong. But then, at 8:30am, suddenly, there was lying snow. I took way too many photographs of the "beast from the east" for my own good, and a handful of them may well crop up on the site after the breakdown tomorrow.
    Unfortunately we threw away the sledge recently, but plan to go out to Cleadon Hills today and do everything but sledge instead.
    As for Christmas itself, it was quite good. I got a gamepad, and a Monty Python DVD set from the series, and various other things. The Boxing Day tea was massive- so much so that we have spent the next two days finishing off the leftovers!
    On a N-W theme, I received a copy of Philip Eden's latest book, which didn't surprise me as people generally know of the high level of respect I have for him. A good read, and I particularly liked the strong comments about extremists at both ends of the pro and anti GW spectrum at the end- very much in line with my own views on the topic. It was also interesting to see his account of the August 2003 heatwave in France, given that I was also there at the time. I remember going out into the heat for 20 minute bursts, feeling ill and coming back in again, and spent most of the last few days of that holiday in the bath. In a way I am pleased I had the experience, so that I can brag about how I lived to tell the tale and know what 40C+ feels like, but I certainly wouldn't want to experience it again.
    And, unbelievably, there was more snow here in Cleadon than there was in Leeds. Yes, Sod's Law has finally failed to come up trumps.
  6. Thundery wintry showers
    May Bank Holiday- and plenty of sunshine, if a bit windy. I'm coming up to having a meeting shortly with my PhD supervisor about the last batch of work I've been doing and the set of results I have, so hopefully some advances in the PhD soon!
    A bit of a drab Sunday/Monday coming up weatherwise, but there's nowt that we can do about it- it's the weather after all, and it does as it pleases. Some places do need the rain but I'd much prefer it if the rain moved through quickly and/or fell as thundery showers.
    Making some people at UEA that I could start to call 'friends' - but most of them are undergraduates!
    Also keeping tabs on the Arctic ice situation- looks pretty bleak actually, we could be in for a second consecutive year of record melt despite the fairly impressive winter recovery.
  7. Thundery wintry showers
    There's been a lot of discussion on Net-Weather about a supposed downturn in society in the past 50 years, and it's often suggested that it stems from it being more acceptable to be 'different'. I'm afraid I can't agree. I don't have a problem with condemning 'difference' if there's an independent reason as to why it's unacceptable (e.g. it's socially unacceptable to drive on the wrong side of the road because you're likely to cause accidents). But some behaviour is condemned purely because it's different, suppressing individuality and forcing people to conform just for the sake of it, or be rejected. For instance, it's often socially unacceptable in some circles not to want to have children, or to welcome snow.
    Some such traditions are also of dubious origin, like the wife taking her husband's last name for example. It's mostly harmless as long as you're happy to follow it (though I have come across men who do associate it with its origins), but there's plenty of women who would rather keep their names, but feel forced into changing them. Similarly, it's socially unacceptable to shake with the left hand because left-handedness is evil because it is. There's a legitimate case for following both of those traditions, but I can't stand the general intolerance of those who dare to deviate, or even question them.
    Then you get norms that are harmful even just through people following them, e.g. when a few idiots in a group misbehave, you punish the whole group, or else get sued for negligence. Or, it being considered inappropriate for men to show affection towards non-'family' members, which used to severely restrict men's friendships, and nowadays severely restricts their ability to interact with young children.
    Once norms, good and bad, are ingrained in society they can be very hard to challenge or question- social inertia is strong. There's the argument that "it can't be helped because it's just the way it is", "life is unfair and that's life", rejecting proposed reforms as soon as someone can find a flaw in one of them, the argument "adults can make their own decisions, therefore it's their decision to follow the norm, and you can't force people to change, therefore that's life", and "it's meant to be that way because everything happens for a reason", for example. Ironically, the traditions people tend to get most defensive of are the ones that enforce negative behaviour and/or suppress legitimate individuality, probably because those who challenge them have a very good point, and need to be silenced through force for the 'status quo' to be effectively maintained.
    The problem in society isn't the tolerance of difference, it's the tolerance of harmful behaviour. In fact, this has always been a problem- it seems new nowadays because we get less abuse of authority, and more abuse of 'freedom of speech and expression', but it still stems from the same sort of thing. Becoming less tolerant of those who are different is not the answer- sometimes, a harmful behaviour can actually be the norm.
    Rant over.
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    In most summer months, the east coast of Tyne & Wear is mostly thunderstorm and "sunshine and showers"-free, relative to much of the rest of the country. Not so in August 2005- this time Tyneside had quite a convective month while many other areas had a very benign month.
    The first week of the month was dominated mostly by sunny intervals and showers, with a couple of dull days thrown in there. Some quite dramatic convective storms too.
    The second week was also predominantly showery, and two days particularly stuck out: the 10th for its warmth and high humidity together with some torrential rainstorms, and the 13th for a thunderstorm, which passed just to the north of where I lived and brought some spectacular cloud formations.
    The third week contained a mix of dry sunny days and dull dry days, then the fourth week went back to being on the showery side, with the 25th sticking out as quite a convective day.
    My main memory of the month will be the Leeds thunderstorm on the 31st. A very hot sunny day was followed by some of the darkest clouds I have ever seen, lightning flashes at a rate of about five per minute at one time, and torrential rain- there was a fair amount of flooding. Interestingly, the Tyne & Wear region was reported to have been hit by a similar-intensity storm too, but for once, the fact that I wasn't there didn't matter.
    August 2005 scored 60% on my ranking system, a fairly solid score, and left Summer 2005 at an average of 59%- not a classic summer, but certainly one of the higher scoring summers of recent years.
  9. Thundery wintry showers
    In Cleadon, Tyne & Wear, the statistics were as follows:
    Mean Max 14.8
    Mean Min 7.2
    Mean Temp 11.0
    Warmest: 20.9C (5th)
    Coldest max: 9.3C (13th)
    Coldest: 1.7C (14th)
    Warmest min: 11.8C (18th)
    Precip: 39mm (I think my rain gauge might have under-recorded slightly!)
    Air frosts: 0
    Fog 1, Hail 0, Thunder 0, Sleet/snow 0.
    In Cleadon the first half was warm, though less so than in many other regions of the country, with the wind off the sea helping keep maximum temperatures down. The second half was cooler than the first half, for the first time in May since 2000. The second half was unsettled and windy with westerly winds.
    The month as a whole was about 0.8C up on the local long-term average, but was the warmest May only since 2004. The 13th featured the first single-digit maximum in May since 1997, but occurred due to extensive cloud cover, whereas the 1997 single-digit maximum was associated with a day of sunshine and snow showers.
    Spring 2006 as a whole was the coldest spring since 2001, but also the sunniest in the area since 2003. However, this hides the fact that March was quite dull, and May near average, with April having sunshine about 40% above the local average.
    Leeds
    In Leeds the month had a rather different character, with an exceptional warm and sunny first half (23-24C reached on a couple of occasions) and a cool unsettled second half. Convective storms were a regular feature of the month in Leeds with three thunderdays, all of which featured quite impressive thunderstorms. All in all, I was happy to be here rather than in Cleadon.
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    Have just had a two-week holiday to Cleadon, and expect to be going back to Norwich on Monday. It's been a pretty fruitful holiday, and I went on three walks "out in the sticks", the second two of which were very interesting. It's also nice to spend some time in a nice big house after a while spent in either rented or student accommodation.

    I also recently went on a computer game shopping spree as a result of some of my gaming friends picking up Steam accounts. For various reasons I am strongly against mandatory online authentication for offline use/installation of games- for me, the best balance between DRM and consumer rights is probably what Stardock uses, where offline use is DRM-free, but downloads and online multiplayer require a valid Impulse account. But I can't deny that Steam has a lot of good points as well, and the Orange Box (5 of Valve's high quality games for £16.99) was too tempting an offer to pass up. After that I downloaded a load of id Software's old classics on Steam, and then a few more (Descent 1-3, Painkiller, UT2004) from the download site "Good Old Games". GOG is particularly good in that the prices are competitive and the games are DRM-free, but it turns out that many of the old games you can get on Steam can be rendered DRM-free as it is often possible to use a source port to run them instead of Steam.

    Other than that, the storm on the 31st August was somewhat unexpected. I just expected a bog-standard frontal rain event, and was surprised when a large amount of convective activity appeared along the front which eventually gave rise to a big thunderstorm- making Summer 2009 go out with a bang. As for the summer itself, I was quite lucky in that I spent June in Exeter (where it was a mostly warm, sunny and varied month, with two cracking storms), July in Norwich (where sun, showers and thunder dominated). The first third of August was pretty dull, dry and boring in Norwich, leading to my clashes with those who said "you can't complain about boring weather after we suffered all that rain in July!", but plenty of warm, sunny weather in the remaining two-thirds easily made up for it.
  11. Thundery wintry showers
    The CASE period at the Met Office is up, so after a bit of an emotional last day, have now returned to UEA- and strangely am living in exactly the same place as before!

    However late next week features a chess tournament up at Leeds University which should also be interesting.

    As for the upcoming weather, next week looks like being my "cup of tea" with sun, showers and thunderstorms, although the longer-range outlook, towards next weekend, looks, er, "Pretty Awful" lol!
  12. Thundery wintry showers
    I've complained quite a bit about the BBC recently, particularly re. their weather forecasts and dumbing down of documentaries. So, to balance the books, it's only fair that I give them credit when they do a good job.

    One example is the Formula One coverage. I think this has shown a definite improvement over the ITV coverage. The online coverage is more comprehensive, while the TV coverage is far more objective- there seems to be far less bias towards the British drivers than there was on ITV, and more interest in the rest of the field. I don't think Jonathan Leogard is as good as Murray Walker, but he's a lot better than James Allen. In addition with keeping Martin Brundle on board and adding Murray Walker to the online analysis, the BBC certainly showed it was prepared to listen to the popular consensus among fans. Brundle remains as good as ever.

    The other is the recent weather documentaries- rain, snow and then wind. I honestly can't remember a better documentary series on the weather- so far it seems to have struck the perfect balance between being informative, being unbiased, and not being too technical for those with limited knowledge of the subject.
  13. Thundery wintry showers
    We learn from an early age that life isn't fair, but learn to accept it, cope with it and be pleased that there are people out there who are much worse off than we are. But few ask the question, why isn't life fair?
    Life isn't fair partly because of random chance, unplanned events, or 'fate' or 'God' if you believe in that sort of thing, things that generally can't be helped, though their ill-effects can often be helped. However, a large proportion of unfairness is caused by human behaviour- something that generally can be helped.
    So, some perceived unfairness can be reduced in extent, but should it be?
    1. There's the "some people can have it, so why can't I?" type of unfairness. I contend that we should address some aspects of this type of unfairness- especially inequality of opportunity, by helping give the less well-off access to the same opportunities as the well-off. However, what we must be careful of is the dreaded lowest common denominator policymaking, where we address it by denying everyone access to the opportunities that only some used to have. That's a case where reducing unfairness isn't necessarily good.
    2. Then there's the "I want it, why can't I have it?" type of unfairness.
    Again, there are cases where I contend this should be addressed, and others where it shouldn't. If people want something that is likely to have harmful effects on themselves/others in the long run, or that is unrealistic, giving them it will create more injustice than it solves.
    But otherwise, why shouldn't they have it? In practice, the main reasons why they don't get it are because of the harmful behaviour of other people- or, the enforcement of unjust laws or norms that restrict responsible behaviour as well as irresponsible behaviour. Again, these issues need to be addressed, by getting the balance right between authoritarian rule vs. liberty to do what you want.
    The problem with us Brits is that we love to moan about issues, but the second someone suggests doing something about them, we get defensive, and we say "that's life, it's just the way it is" and "there are much worse things to worry about, like the starving African kids, therefore we needn't address them". Injustices don't annoy me in themselves, what annoys me is when injustices happen that can, and should, be avoided, but in practice people are resistant to the idea of avoiding them so they continue to recur.
  14. Thundery wintry showers
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid=10565358

    I see that according to this link, there's a project to make the world's weather records freely available on the internet. I can see a lot of advantages behind this, including the points made on the site. It may make it easier to get access to all climate data for use in climate change analysis (such as for the IPCC reports) and studying of local climates to help identify hazards and recurrence of extreme events.

    The points about curiosity about past weather events should not be overlooked. I'm always on the lookout for North East weather data from the period 1993 onwards to see how other nearby sites' observations differed from my own observations for Cleadon, plus it would be interesting to finally see what the weather was doing on June 22nd 1984 for example.

    In addition it would help clear up all of the arguments surrounding availablility of the climate data that is used by various climate scientists, as I quite often see the scientists getting flak for hiding data when really it's more of a copyright issue.

    Talking of copyright, that's the one disadvantage of making these records freely available. Do weather companies make much in the way of money by making them available only commercially, and does this help the weather community as a whole? I'm not knowledgeable enough on the rights and wrongs of this to know the true answers to that- plus I have vested (mainly curiosity-based) interests in it, but it's clear that this will be the main barrier to making records freely available.

    One feasible middle ground for those worried about copyrights and revenues could be to make records freely available for non-commercial use only, or Philip Eden's method of restricting the use of long quotations without permission, or quotation without acknowledging the source.

    On a related note, I'm currently doing a major redesign of the "Cleadon Weather Records" section of my website, where I will soon be uploading a new revised version which will hopefully look more professional and user-friendly and contain a bit more information on the observational side (a section on "significant events" for each month). This approach is inspired partly by an article of Philip Eden's in "Weather" where he correctly points out that the recent move towards automated weather stations is coming at the expense of traditional observational diaries. I'm aware that one day, these records could potentially be of use to people, and I am happy to employ a similar approach to what Philip himself does with making his weather records available.
  15. Thundery wintry showers
    There seems to be a common process when changes are proposed or go ahead. Firstly, the masses tend to be resistant to change (whether for good or bad or in between) and mass OTT over-reactions break out. Then we get the proponents latching onto the few people who support the changes, while dismissing everyone else with comments like "get used to it, it's the future". And then, in the long run, everybody does "get used to it"- regardless of whether the change is for better, worse or in between.

    As with many such issues, we tend to end up with opposing positions at the two extremes. One is that change is usually good, people only resist it because they're naturally resistant to change. The other is the general resistance to change of any kind, amounting to "change is usually bad". And what we get precious little of is objective analysis of the pros and cons of the change, to determine whether it is or isn't a good thing.

    This scenario arose with the BBC weather graphics change in 2005, which ties in with my previous blog entry. But the current examples I'm primarily thinking of are the Facebook layout changes and the F1 points/wins change, both brought in without warning and at short notice. Personally, I don't agree with either of the changes, and on N-W, there has been a pretty good discussion on the latter. But a glance at the comments on messageboards like the BBC and Facebook reveals a bucketload of OTT nonsense, giving reasons for rejecting the changes that just smack of aimless whinging. The proponents will look at those and think, "oh, just resistance to change as usual"- and miss the good reasons for rejecting said changes.

    Maybe society could do with some education from a young age on how to carry out logical deductive reasoning in order to reach well-rounded opinions, and on how to have an open mind. The seemingly inept decision-making that prevails among politicians is echoed all too strongly in many "discussions" on topics on internet messageboards among the general public... it suffices to say that if I ever think Net-Weather has its problems with discussion quality, they pale by comparison with many other internet forums/messageboards.
  16. Thundery wintry showers
    Since I didn't get my weather records in until after the April 2006 Summaries thread was closed for some reason, here's the April 2006 Summary.
    Mean Max 12.2C
    Mean Min 4.3C
    Mean Temp 8.3C
    Highest max: 16.7C (25th)
    Lowest max: 6.9C (4th)
    Highest min: 9.5C (25th)
    Lowest min: -1.8C (5th)
    Air frosts: 3
    Precipitation: 27mm
    There was sleet/snow on 3 days (sleet on the 7th and 9th, snow on the 8th) and four days with hail or graupel. Snow was lying at around 3pm on the 8th April, but there was nothing on the ground by 0900 the next morning.
    Overall the month had a rather cold first third with sunshine and wintry showers, then the remaining two-thirds were dry, consistently warm and notably sunny. There was a remarkably homogeneous nature about the warmth, with no maximum above 17C for the first time in April since 2001.
    The average maximum temperature was actually higher than for April 2005, but the average mean and minimum temperature were both the lowest since 2001. It was also the driest April (along with 2002) since 1997.
  17. Thundery wintry showers
    Having scanned through various motoring threads I regularly see the term "comfortable" bandied about. Of course, while it's being used with reference to the comfort of travelling in a car, it can equally apply to a train, bus or boat journey.

    When it comes to the actual seating and space, I have no arguments with the traditional definition. The more pleasant to sit in, and the more spacious, the more comfortable.

    But it's in ride quality where my definition of "comfort" seems to be distinctly unique. "Comfortable" in that sense usually means "as smooth as possible". I agree that being jolted over potholes and the like is pretty uncomfortable, though if just on a short trip I can derive pleasure from being thrown about as I would be on a rollercoaster.
    However, I can genuinely say that I find being gently rocked about [i]more[/i] comfortable than a ride where if I closed my eyes I'd hardly know I was moving. For instance, I find the clickety-clack of the Newcastle to Carlisle trains to be more comfortable than the ultra-smooth Virgin trains. Similarly, if well built, I often find cars with fairly stiff suspensions more comfortable to travel in than travelling in cars with soft suspensions, for much the same reasons. Yes, sometimes I can get out of such a car or train feeling like I'm still rocking about on a boat, but such a sensation is rarely troublesome and doesn't last long- it's not like the sea-sickness after being on a boat in stormy seas.

    But in practice it's just taken as given that a car with a stiffer suspension is less comfortable by definition, and thus less pleasurable to travel as a passenger in. Sometimes I really wonder if there's something wrong with me, as my instincts and preferences end up totally at odds with the accepted norm!
  18. Thundery wintry showers
    So onto another topic where I have issues, the entitlement to have opinions.
    The main issue I have with letting people have their opinions, is that there's a line between letting them have opinions, and letting them force their opinions down everyone else's throats. It's like the question of how much a tolerant society should tolerate intolerance- if there's no onus on the intolerant to let people have their opinions, on the grounds that they're entitled to the opinion that nobody should be allowed an opinion but them, then what happens is that the intolerant people force their views on everyone else.
    There are circumstances where opinions are highly likely to be forced down people's throats. For instance, when people are debating laws and rules, or making committal decisions that impact upon others, by definition, a decision will often involve imposing an opinion on others. Or, when "opinions" are just beliefs that are widely accepted without question, whereupon many people will impose those beliefs on others without thinking, because they're accepted as givens. For instance, very few unjust laws or social norms are overturned by people just "letting their followers have their opinions". As an extreme case of where entitlement to opinions can be mutually exclusive, if someone's opinion is that it's okay to murder people, unless we suppress the person's opinion, the person will murder someone, thus imposing their opinion on others.
    There are all kinds of issues surrounding this. For instance, in environmental policy, it's increasingly widely accepted among environmentalists that the only way to solve global warming is to marginalise and alienate motorists, hoping to deter them from driving by making driving worse than the alternatives. If I try to challenge that view- even just with the purpose of making it known that other, potentially legitimate, opinions on the issue exist, I often get told, "let them have their opinions". Of course, if everybody just "lets them have their opinions", their opinions will be imposed on everyone through incremental changes in legislation. Then the hypocrites can come out with "yeah, but people force their opinions on others and that's life". So let's see now, I have to let others have their opinions, but have to accept it as a fact of life that their opinions will be forced on me?
    Tolerance is a great thing, but just as with freedom, it has self-limiting points- if we are too tolerant of the intolerant, the intolerant will force their views on others, by definition making the society less tolerant.
  19. Thundery wintry showers
    Why is it that all of the ills of society are blamed on working mothers? "Too many mothers are in work and not looking after the children, so children can't always rely upon Mum being there." say the masses. "We need to bring a return to the traditional family where the father goes out to work and the mother stays at home and looks after the children."

    Some suggest that we should have one parent stay at home irrespective of gender, but that would lead to the same result, as the mother is still expected to play the main role in bringing up the children- it would mostly be mothers who would stay at home.
    Some points:

    1. Most children who have two parents who work actually grow up to be good adults, and the ones who turn out badly-behaved, while clearly representing a major problem, are in the minority. And what about the kids brought up by single mothers who turn out reasonably behaved? As usual everyone are being made to suffer because of a minority.

    2. If a stay-at-home mum feels she is trapped, she is ruled by her husband and kids, her career sits in tatters and she has no life (which [i]can[/i] happen)- how is that going to be good for the kids? Quantity of time spent with Mum is important- but so is quality.

    3. If more employers were willing to offer flexible working patterns and chances for going part-time when bringing up young children where it was feasible, we'd get situations where parents could work, but work at different times so as to ensure that most of the time, at least one of them was available for the children.

    Giving mothers more scope to stay at home if they wish to is no problem, but I certainly don't want society to move in the direction of making mothers feel guilty if they work, as if it equates to child neglect. As per point 1 above, only in a minority of cases does this appear to be true.
  20. Thundery wintry showers
    Currently cracking on with this main project, and failed the latest PhD application- looks like I'm going to be going home and looking for jobs (preferably related to meteorology!) in the autumn.
    There were some astonishing thunderstorms yesterday, which I posted about in the storms section. Continuous thunder for 20 minutes isn't something that happens very often, let alone three individual storms in one day.
    It seems that Sue started something of a trend among the moderators with Sloganizer.net- I had a look on there myself. After the usual typing in of my own name, I had some humorous experiments typing in the likes of "thundery wintry showers", "snow showers", "the weather", "the GFS", "an idiot", "a complete failure", "pie", "a nonce", "an imbecile" and "murderers"... plus some vulgarities... and some humorous stuff came out. My favourite was:
    "I wish I was a complete failure."
    And how about: "Call a friend, call an idiot."
  21. Thundery wintry showers
    July 2005 began with me taking a fortnight's holiday in France. The first three days were sunny and quite hot with a 32C on the 3rd, the day when I went to see the French Grand Prix (and subsequently suffered heat-stroke)
    The weather turned rather cloudy during the following few days. I remember one day with a little sunshine and a few convective showers, but most of the time it was dull.
    In the second week- which I spent near Strasbourg- the weather was hot and sunny with occasional thundery showers, particularly during the first half of the week. Temperatures reached highs of 27-30C, which I would find uncomfortably hot in this country, but over there the air was much cleaner and fresher and the humidity lower, and in any case the showers and thunderstorms were spectacular.
    Meanwhile, Britain (well at least most of Britain) was very sunny and dry, and hot too with 27-30C reported also, even in the north.
    The second half was spent in Tyne & Wear- and it was excessively dull, with cool days and warm nights.
    On my rating system, the month averaged 55%, but the final third averaged only 25%, offsetting a high-scoring first half. The last July to average a sixties score was back in 1999!
  22. Thundery wintry showers
    I am away in France from 5 to 23 July- starting to prepare for that. In the meantime, I've been busy uploading my weather records into the internet; finally finished doing so yesterday, so that's that done! Meanwhile, this month looks set to break all kinds of weather records for the wrong reasons (e.g. record flooding, June locally in the northeast, the dullest of any month since Feb/Mar 2006!) I expect to be updating my website with monthly data not long after the turn of each month, rather like Paul Tall does with his Newton Aycliffe summaries.
    Other than that, had an enjoyable bowling alley trip on 24 June with my mates (as I often do at around birthday-time), and been raising some laughs at some of the Tom & Jerry DVD cartoons- apart from the censorship issues I ranted about in the last blog, it's a top-notch collection.
  23. Thundery wintry showers
    I haven't updated the general section of this blog for quite some time.
    Essentially things in Leeds seem to be going quite well, but I don't have my coursework marks yet; I need to get above 50% average in all modules to be able to continue with this CSIP project analysis. I am also messing around on my computer quite a lot, and having some social events. It's no exaggeration to say that friendship-wise, the period September 2005-May 2006 in Leeds has been the best of my life so far, all I can say is that I hope it continues!
    As for the weather outside, it certainly seems to have recognised that summer has arrived. Although my favourite weather types are of the dramatic convective variety (sunshine and showers, thunder events and snow events), this kind of warm dry sunny weather is a very close second. I did make use of it to some extent, eating outside in Hyde Park this evening.
  24. Thundery wintry showers
    In Cleadon, Tyne & Wear, the stats were:
    Mean Max 9.6C
    Mean Min 3.2C
    Warmest: 14.6C (3rd)
    Coldest: -3.7C (19th)
    Lowest max: 2.6C (28th)
    Precipitation: 49mm (62)
    Air frosts: 10
    Days of snow lying: 0 (smattering on 28th)
    Sleet/snow: 3
    Hail: 3
    It was the coldest November since 1998, and the sunniest since at least 1947 (probably for much longer). The first half averaged 10.2C and the second half averaged just 2.5C making it the warmest first half of November since 1994, while the mean minumum of -0.6 in the second half was the lowest since 1993. The month was a few tenths of a degree below the average for 1971-2000.
    Illustrating my approval of the month's weather, in Leeds (where the month was very similar) I awarded the month an average of 65%, which is the highest rating for a November since 1996, and the highest of any month since May 2004.
  25. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, at long last, it seems that I have a Stevenson screen set up such that there is, at worst, only a small anomaly relative to the sort of readings one would expect from standard Met Office stations (by small, I mean quite possibly no greater than a degree Celsius on the sunniest days, which is pretty good for a back garden site)
    I have had an automatic weather station since 22 June 2005, but until November 2006 the temperature sensor was placed on the side of a hut, giving anomalously high readings by both day and night in summer (due to heat radiating off the hut) and anomalously low overnight readings in winter (due to exposure).
    November 2006: set up Stevenson screen but with only one set of louvres; result; anomalously high readings in sunshine. Put on the second set of louvres and it worked fine until February/March when I started getting anomalously high readings again.
    The instrument was situated right next to a fence; some members of this forum suggested that the proximity to the fence, when heated by the sun, was probably a factor. I have recently had it moved further away from the fence, and it seems to have worked. So for the moment at least, it looks like I'm not going to have to keep 'calibrating' my readings relative to what my two older, more primitive thermometers are showing for days when the Stevenson screen readings is anomalously high.
    The last few days, incidentally, have been a big test of this, with plenty sunshine every day except Friday. My maxes were 18.8C on Thursday, 12.3C on Friday, 16.1C Saturday and 16.3C Sunday; pretty promising readings I'd say.
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