Jump to content
Will it snow? 7 day forecast Weather Radar Will it be cold?
Snow?
Local
Radar
Cold?

Thundery wintry showers

Site forecast team
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    15,710

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    30

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by Thundery wintry showers

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    The move from Exeter to UEA has proved surprisingly non-problematic. I thought I would really miss the Met Office considering how much I loved it there, but UEA is also pretty good, so I feel like I've settled back in at UEA. It's good to know of different places that are all very good to live near and work at (Leeds University is another example).

    As for the weather, my views on how July 2009 went are decidedly mixed. I certainly go along with the general consensus that it went downhill as the month progressed. But the month's weather overall? I have to say I quite enjoyed it, because of the high frequency of sunshine-and-showers days, the frequent torrential downpours from cumulonimbus cells and the fairly frequent thunder- even through to the end of the month (the 30th in particular had some pretty impressive thunderstorms in Norwich). True, we could have done with some more warmth and sunshine and perhaps not quite as much rain and wind, but if I had to list the most depressing summer months for weather that I've lived through, July 2009 wouldn't be near the top of the list. It would certainly come nowhere near the months Tyne & Wear experienced in June 2007, June 1997 and July 2000.

    I can understand people wishing for a settled spell after all of this wet stuff, but I often wonder exactly what people mean when they talk about "settled", especially as different people might be using slightly different definitions of the term. You can get settled in the synoptic sense- i.e. non-changeable weather patterns, mostly high pressure, minimal Atlantic influence, and you can get settled in the weather sense- i.e. the weather stays the same over a long period of time (which could be sunny & dry or dull & damp for example). I guess from the way people post that most people mean the former, though some seem to interpret it more as meaning "no rain".

    I must admit, while I would welcome a good week-long high pressure spell of the nature of late May/early June as much as anyone else, I groan inwardly when I see the pattern of Azores ridge, cloudy westerlies on its northern flank and all precipitation being exclusively frontal. August 1998 in Tyne & Wear, a classic case of a month dominated by such a pattern, redefined the term "boring".
  6. Thundery wintry showers
    The other two posts are a bit in-depth, so here is an overall summary of my views- extending to sustainability generally and not just sustainable transport.

    In short, I am 100% behind the concept of sustainability, but the key is that in order to be sustainable, we have to make some sacrifices and determine what is "necessary" and what isn't- and this is wherein my main objection to conventional "sustainability" policies lies.

    I think of "unnecessary waste" as primarily practices that we can easily replace at little or no cost to anybody, e.g. leaving appliances on unattended, arranging meetings that involve making 4 business journeys when we could achieve the same thing using only 2, etc. I believe that restraining energy use should target those sort of practices- the ones that have little or no irreplaceable economic or recreational value- as the ones we need to abolish.

    Conventional sustainability policies, for me, involve too much use of the viewpoint that recreational/social use of energy constitutes "selfish, unnecessary waste" and that business-related use of energy is okay because "we all need to work". I believe that this approach risks squeezing most of the "fun" aspects out of modern Western society. Recreational car use is of course the primary target, but the argument can be applied to a range of other recreational activities that consume resources, ranging from eating pies and burgers to playing computer games. I think it's imperative that we see human pleasure as something we need to help preserve within a sustainable society as far as possible, as well as economic productivity and mobility- I don't fancy living in a "functional" sustainable environment where we have limited scope to enjoy ourselves. Instead we must seize the opportunity to create a sustainable [i]and happy[/i] life for future generations- we may well only get one opportunity for it after all.

    Thus, for those of you who have seen Parts 1 and 2 that relate mostly to transport, a lot of the common themes there also extend across my general views on sustainability.
  7. Thundery wintry showers
    Here I'm going to put my neck on the line and suggest a series of proposals that will be rather controversial, as many of them contradict conventional ways of thinking. But I strongly believe that they should be challenged, since although many of their aims are good, they seek to achieve said aims in unnecessarily negative ways.

    [b]1. Encourage a more sustainable/balanced transport system by aiming to turn cars into more of a recreational thing, promoting the use of alternatives for point-to-point journeys.[/b]

    This certainly goes against conventional thinking, but think about it, the advantages of private transport aren't the "getting from A to B" but mainly the spontaneity and the sense of freedom, and certain social benefits, such as taking people for trips out and going to visit people. The only reasons why a lot of people "need" to drive for work is because there aren't enough initiatives for alternatives, including working from home, pooling schemes (think of how workplaces could implement voluntary schemes similar to the school buses that are used in some secondary schools for instance, and the European Union's recent sustainability manifesto has various interesting ideas on how smaller-scale forms of public transport can be developed). Some people enjoy driving, but others find it a chore but feel that they "have" to drive. It surely, thus, makes sense to try to reduce overall car use by removing the drivers who find it a chore, reducing car use without negating its benefits, and thus making it better for everyone. This approach also encourages an emphasis on improving alternatives to the car, a positive approach aimed at giving a sustainable transport system at a high level.

    At the same time we can promote initiatives for cleaner vehicles, while discouraging excessive consumption through taxes on fuel consumption, and compensate the traditionally disadvantaged groups, e.g. with fuel tax breaks for people registered as living in rural areas. I consider this to be compatible with the European Union's ambitious proposal of phasing out petrol-driven cars in cities by 2050.

    In contrast, today's mainstream policies of traffic calming, reducing speed limits etc. will have the opposite effect- they will negate the main advantages of cars, phase out social-recreational car use, and leave us in a situation where people continue to drive but everybody sees it as a chore, and if they do achieve a sustainable, balanced transport system (which is by no means certain) it will be based on the lowest common denominator.

    [b]2. Ideas for promoting walking and cycling.[/b]
    I am in favour of segregated cycle facilities provided that they are thoughtfully laid out rather than just bunged in to be "seen to be doing something" (as haphazard segregated facilities don't really succeed in encouraging cycling and actually cause more accidents). Environmentalists usually dismiss this idea as "giving in to motorists" but it's not about that, it's about giving them an alternative. I agree with the Highway Code's stance that use of segregated cycle facilities should be encouoraged but not made compulsory, i.e. cyclists should still be allowed to use the roads if they wish. I also think dedicated cycle lanes, rather than shared cycle/pedestrian lanes, are more effective and less likely to lead to increases in accidents. At the same time, we should encourage more respect between drivers and cyclists who are using the roads together.

    I am in favour of [i]selective[/i] use of "home zones" with low speed limits, cobbled streets etc, the aim being to create communal areas where people can congregate without being subjected to heavy traffic, play out in the streets etc. The idea is that, when combined with a network of relatively high-speed roads around towns, "through-traffic" is directed, through a carrot-and-stick mechanism, out of those areas and into the high-speed roads.

    In contrast the wholesale application of low speed limits and traffic calming will largely lose that benefit as using major routes won't be significantly more attractive to drivers than taking shortcuts through "home zones". Instead, in my opinion, that agenda (such as the blanket 20mph limits in Norwich) is mainly about discouraging social-recreational car use, and will have numerous negative side-effects such as longer bus journeys and potential for increased traffic volumes (due to increased journey times).

    The blog will get too long if I go onto sections 3 and 4 here, these will be urban planning and road safety respectively, and will be covered in the next blog.
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    Here's my sustainability manifesto, continued over from Part 1.


    [b]3. Some general urban planning ideas.[/b]
    I am in favour of "filtered permeability" in city centres and around "home zones", the idea being a high density of pedestrian routes, a moderate density of cycle routes and a low density of roads. The idea is similar, to combine it with a decent network of relatively high-speed roads outside of those areas, thus helping to filter traffic outside of these areas which prioritise walking and cycling.

    I don't agree with dense residential zoning. I believe that, again, this is primarily about discouraging social-recreational car use by minimising the overall amount of road space, and not about improving the environment for residents. Not many people like living in concrete monstrosities, right next to busy roads, without much green space, and not many people like travelling on crowded buses (high population density + low car use = crowding on public transport).

    I believe that the goal of encouraging a balanced, sustainable transport system at a high level is to design environments for everyone, not design them around cars, and not go to the other extreme and design them with the aim of discouraging social-recreational car use. There should be pedestrian/cycle-friendly zones plus a good network for vehicles that is kept separate from said zones.

    [b]4. Improving road safety. [/b]

    One thing that consistently came out of the recent discussions on road safety is that getting road users to adapt to the specific circumstances is paramount, and that "speed kills" is too simplistic, with a more accurate phrase being "inappropriate speed in the wrong place at the wrong time kills". The problem with low, absolutely-enforced speed limits is that it encourages drivers to drive relative to an arbitrary number, rather than the prevailing conditions, but on the other hand we certainly do need to have speed limits and other restrictions to filter out the reckless excesses. I think we either need relatively low speed limits and generous (but consistent, and strictly enforced) tolerances, or relatively high limits, absolute enforcement, and more in the way of discretionary application of "driving too fast for the conditions". In general we should aim to define road traffic laws such that the responsible majority obey them voluntarily, and enforcement can be directed at the minority of offenders.

    I don't believe that we need a "harder" driving test, just more focus on training and hazard perception and less on rigid conformity to a set style of driving (which many people generally disregard as soon as they've passed the test anyway). A lot of accidents arise, not because drivers don't have the necessary knowledge, but they fail to apply it in a particular situation- in essence momentary lapses. While I don't agree with "full retests every 5 years", it might be reasonable for drivers to be requested or even required to take refresher courses once in a while to brush up on essentials of hazard perception and courtesy to other road users that may have been lost over time.

    We also need to be aware that ultra-slow driving is potentially as dangerous as ultra-fast driving. I know people say "those stuck behind a slow driver should just be patient and allow extra time for their journeys", just as I might be told, waiting in a queue at a restaurant, that I should be patient waiting 20 minutes for someone to finish chatting to the waitress. But people do have deadlines to meet, sometimes they genuinely are in a hurry, and it can also be frustrating to have a pleasurable trip out spoiled by someone doing 40% less than the speed limit. Frustration and road rage result. The people who wish to drive slowly should pull out of the way once in a while to let queues of cars past (my dad often does this when there are queues behind him for instance).

    Regarding the "pleasure driving" issue, bear in mind that a lot of reckless driving among 17-19 year olds arises because they feel "I know it's possible to drive in the manner I want and enjoy it in a safe and considerate manner, irrespective of what I was told when I learned to drive, but how far can I go in testing the limits of safety?". This is, of course, a dangerous situation, as inexperience inevitably results in lives being put at risk during the "testing the limits" phase. This is where my proposal on redefining road traffic laws to encourage higher compliance rates come in- then, hopefully, more in the way of young drivers may feel compelled to comply with road traffic laws, and thus make the laws more effective at guiding them away from the excesses of reckless thrill seeking. (The main alternative is to implement a thousand incremental measures to legislate for idiots by restricting everybody, which is the normal way of addressing irresponsible thrill seeking these days, but as with most subject areas it isn't guaranteed to be significantly more effective at improving safety and will hurt freedoms many times more).

    Onto pedestrians, and I think the "war against speed" encourages a mentality that pedestrians are OK running out in front of cars because if they do, the onus is on the driver to slow down in time, and if the driver doesn't, then we chop another 10mph off the speed limit. We need to go back to emphasising that pedestrians and cyclists have to be considerate of drivers as well, it shouldn't be a "one way street".

    Of course, as I've mentioned (controversially) in some threads, many of today's prevailing "road safety initiatives" are really about discouraging car use, which is addressed in sections 1-3. I would also like to mention that discouraging car use is likely to lead to increased frustration and road rage among car drivers, and that traffic calming doesn't improve safety by the amount that a simple reduction in speeds would, because you have to offset that against the increased hazards associated with the calming. Most of these car-deterrent measures probably do improve safety overall, but not by a large amount when the offsets are taken into account. And, as someone partially sighted, I can vouch for the fact that sometimes shared space and traffic calming actually makes walking more stressful (due to having to take more hazards into account and compensate more for being partially sighted), and as a pedestrian I don't want that for the sake of a 1% improvement in safety.

    So, in summary, these are my proposals on how I think we should be aiming for a more sustainable, balanced transport system with some connected ideas on urban planning.
  9. Thundery wintry showers
    I had my swine flu jab on Tuesday (probably much to the angst of PersianPaladin). It gave me a mild headache for a few hours yesterday and my right arm has become fairly sore. Other than that there have been no problems- and in the meantime I feel at far less risk of ending up on a ventilator (somewhat fittingly, the remnants of last week's cold has set my normally-mild asthma going at times over the last few days).

    Am hopefully about to get an academic paper published, which should be good!

    In other news I've been playing a lot of table football (thanks to UEA's Table Football Society where you pay a one-off fee of £3 then get unlimited free games on Wednesday & Sunday evenings) and also a social event at Quasar tomorrow with another society.

    I am also waiting for the "Left 4 Dead + Left 4 Dead 2" pack to come down below £40 on Steam. I missed an opportunity to get L4D1 for £12.49 a while ago, but it's worth noting that if I'd bought that and then got L4D2 separately it would still have come in at over £40- a lot considering that digital distribution cuts out the publisher. Hopefully Valve will issue some kind of offer once L4D2 "activates" on 20 November, whereupon they'll get my money. Meanwhile the "Escape from Enemy Mountain" mod is still progressing- slowly- for Doom 3, but in relation to the above, I've implemented a Left 4 Dead style random monsters system.

    Regarding the weather there's not much to say. October 2009 came in at 1.1C above average at Cleadon making it the warmest October since 2006, and the most recent below-average month (using the 1971-2000 reference period) was January 2009. The first half of November has come in close to average with warm days and cool nights, but I expect the second half to raise temperatures much above average. I can't say I'm a big fan of these relentless "Atlantic" patterns when pressure is frequently high to the SE and fronts move across at regular intervals, preventing those sunshine-and-showers polar maritime regimes from taking hold. They may be changeable, but for me, changeable in quite an uninteresting way!
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    Having kept a close eye on the recent snooker tournaments and been thoroughly entertained by the all-out attacking style of Judd Trump, I've been seeing a fair number of comments flying around like, "he needs to tone down his attacking instincts, play more safety, mature into an all-rounder". This is a common situation in sports- we had the same sort of thing when Blackpool were fighting in the football Premier League with attacking football, and Alan Hansen in particular saying exactly the same thing about Blackpool for instance.

    It is always a tricky topic because we know that in general an "all-round" game is, for most people, the best way of getting results, as it maintains consistency (you win when you're playing well and you don't get hammered when you are not playing well- whereas with all-out attack, the wins are brilliant but the losses can be very embarrassing). Of course, even the "all-out attackers", to have any success, have to have some sort of defensive basis, it is a question of competitors focusing mostly on attack with a modest amount of defence vs. putting comparable emphasis on both.

    The problem is that if Judd Trump was to "mature" into an all-rounder and put a lot more emphasis on safety play instead of going for risky shots, I (and many others) would find him a lot less entertaining to watch, and he wouldn't stand out from the other players. After all, part of what made Jimmy White so entertaining in the early to mid 1990s was the "edge of seat" effect of him sometimes going for shots that an "all-rounder" would turn down, sometimes giving brilliant success and at other times giving embarrassing misses. While it would certainly make his results more consistent, it's debatable whether it would make him win many more tournaments (it doesn't seem to have worked that way for Shaun Murphy after he toned down his all-out attacking style that he won the title with in 2005). Snooker would probably be worse off if he was to do this, because even if he won more events, it would be offset by the audience being less keen on him winning them. Similarly if Blackpool had toned down their attacking instincts last season, they would surely have become more consistent, but they would have lost a lot of fans, and if this had meant losing a lot of games 1-0 rather than 3-1, they would still have been relegated.

    On the other hand, while I don't like the "play safe more" advice these attackers get, I think they often can put a greater emphasis on defence without compromising their attacking play, simply by making sure that when they feel a need to play defence, they aim to defend well, rather than just putting a quick defensive move in. For instance Judd Trump is capable of putting more thought and effort into playing a telling safety when he feels a need to play a safety-shot (I have to say, I've often thought the same of Stephen Hendry).

    The same issue also used to crop up in Formula One, when the likes of Jean Alesi, and Mika Hakkinen (prior to his 1995 crash at Adelaide) were all-out attackers but sometimes went overboard, prompting calls that they needed to "mature" into more all-round competitors; Juan-Pablo Montoya was a more recent one. These days such competitors have largely been lost from Formula One because when optimistic moves don't come off, not only do they lose positions but they also get a string of drive-through penalties, as noted a couple of blogs earlier. Some competitive sports/games don't have any scope for non-"all-rounders" at the highest levels- e.g. in grandmaster chess there is strong homogeneity in playing style at the highest levels, because computer-assisted preperation and strong defensive play means that any sort of "all-out attack" backfires more often than not.

    As readers of this piece might have guessed, I tend to aspire towards the "all-out attack" approach when I play competitive sports and games- this is a major reason why I don't aspire to be a chess grandmaster as I know that, at the level I currently play, I can get away with using that sort of approach, and thus end up with a long list of entertaining, albeit sometimes error-strewn, chess games that I will want to look back through again and again, rather than numerous uneventful wars of attrition ending mostly in draws with a few victories here and there.
  11. 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.
  12. Thundery wintry showers
    I've been seeing a few comments floating around recently about how we shouldn't hope for thunder and lightning because of the problems that it causes and that we shouldn't discuss looking for the "best" storm, instead using the traditional terminology of "worst", and also that we "need" rain but we don't "need" thunder and lightning.

    Rather than going into an in-depth analysis, how about the following question: why don't people get pulled up for hoping for the "best" heatwave or prolonged dry spell? After all, the European heatwave of August 2003 caused well over 10,000 excess deaths, and the 1995 summer drought caused myriad problems as well, and we don't "need" heat and dryness in order to fulfil the mundane bare essentials of survival. Actually, let's take that further, we don't even "need" more than 1000 hours of sunshine per year in order to survive, using that rather political, economic and mundane definition of "need". I rather think it's because it's considered "normal" for people to want hot dry sunny weather, and "different" for people to want thunderstorms, and "normal" behaviour tends to be exempted from that kind of scrutiny. Also, I sometimes cynically detect hypocritical stances of "it's alright to hope for extreme weather but only as long as I want it".

    True, most of the people wishing for heatwaves aren't after something as extreme as an August 2003 in France, but then again most of the people wishing for thunderstorms aren't after something as extreme as the catastrophe that recently hit Alabama. It's fair to say that there's a tradeoff between exciting weather and associated danger, and that some of us have higher thresholds than others, and that "careful what you're wishing for" may apply to some of those hoping for ultra-extreme events and not thinking of the magnitude of the consequences, but I tend to object to any significant advance on that.
  13. Thundery wintry showers
    Still five and a half months for things to change, but so far I have to give the Met Office a big thumbs up- seems a very good place to work, and I've been having a good time there. It isn't particularly difficult to find fellow weather enthusiasts, as might be expected. I'd been concerned that my social life might suffer, but in fact the MetO has a wide range of social outlets associated with its sports facilities, and thus so far it's been fine socially as well.

    The climate down here in Exeter is pretty poor for snow, as I gathered before I got here, but we get plenty "sunshine and showers" here which is always a bonus as far as I'm concerned. Although snow is very rare, Exeter does get a surprising amount of frost, probably mainly due to it being inland and in a valley. A couple of days ago, it was 0C at 11pm, rained at 4C at midnight (temps have a habit of shooting up just as the showers arrive) and then fell to freezing again, leading to a lot of "skitey bits".

    I've been playing quite a bit of chess recently as well, after a spell where I hardly played any (the chess society at UEA fizzled out).
  14. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, although there's been a pleasing absence of it on this forum this year, I see that the "ban fireworks except public displays" brigade are out in earnest among the population.

    [Disclaimer: I do not subscribe to the views below, by the way!]
    Viewing the world from the eyes of the Authoritarian, while we're on with it, we can also:
    [list]
    [*]Ban pleasure driving because of a few boy racers,
    [*]Incrementally force a slow but sure reduction of traffic speeds as close to zero as we can get away with because a few idiots drive too fast,
    [*]Ban computer games because a few idiots let them take over their lives,
    [*]Ban men from befriending children because a few idiots molest them,
    [*]Ban male-female friendships because of potential for affairs and stalking,
    [*]Ban social networking sites because men might use them to befriend women or children (see above two bans) or steal ID,
    [*]Ban personal cameras because a few idiots photograph public transport for terrorist purposes,
    [*]and so on.
    [/list]
    ...by extension of the same lines of argument as for banning fireworks. The benefits are outweighed by the downsides, given that human pleasure doesn't come into it because it's non-essential, and that only matters relating to work, health and safety are essential.

    Clearly, persecuting and demonising innocent people for daring to enjoy themselves is a sign of being hard on offenders, the issue of idiots going underground can be tackled by banning the alternative avenues of abuse (rinse and repeat until we have no recreational activities left to ban), and Ian's ridiculous suggestion of differentiating abuse from responsibility won't work because it isn't flawless (you can't always tell). Because it's not as if mass prohibition isn't flawless or anything.

    In addition we can tackle global warming by demonising the people that pollute. By making life as difficult for those evil motorists as we can (this fits in nicely with the authoritarian measures to legislate for the idiots who drive recklessly as well!) we can create a splendid balanced transport system at the lowest common denominator, alienate motorists, and achieve a 1% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

    Isn't authoritarianism wonderful! ... er... not?
  15. Thundery wintry showers
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&hl=en-GB&v=qfME9mVT5tY

    Police in Surrey, who were on patrol, decided to join in a snowball fight! Just thought that with the stick that a lot of police get (some deserved, some not) that it would be worth showing that not all police are averse to having a bit of fun.
  16. Thundery wintry showers
    As time goes on I am fearing that the Model Output Discussion is going to degenerate into the usual summer fare, where the UK's weather is over-simplistically divided into two types: "settled" aka "good", and "unsettled" aka "bad".

    The main problem is that the desire for "settled" weather, for most people, is tied in with images of clear blue skies, warm sunshine by day, and evenings spent in the garden with the barbeque going. Of course, high pressure can bring such weather, and many of us will have memories of that phenomenal spell at the back end of March this year.
    [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2012/Rrea00120120326.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00120120326.gif[/url]
    But in fact we only need to think back to the last third of July 2011 for an illustration of how we can be "bitten" by being too simplistic about this association. The forecast models showed a fairly sustained settled period with high pressure close by to the west, and the model output thread was buzzing with posts insisting that we were in for a lot of barbeque-type weather. In reality, though, for many of us the spell turned out dry and cloudy with a chilly northerly wind which left those BBQs gathering dust indoors.

    The problem is that for high pressure to bring us "BBQ weather", it really has to be in the right place. Here's one synoptic chart:
    [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1991/Rrea00119910515.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00119910515.gif[/url]
    Let's be brutally honest, how many people would look at a chart like that and not think, "sustained settled spell- barbeque here we come"? In fact May 1991 was one of the dullest Mays on record as well as one of the driest and most settled.
    Another stark counterexample occurred during June 1988. This was an often-forgotten warm sunny month across much of Scotland (leading into that infamous washout July) but also an often-forgotten dry cloudy one across most parts of England, characterised by high pressure in the wrong place:
    [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1988/Rrea00119880610.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00119880610.gif[/url]
    [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1988/Rrea00119880625.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00119880625.gif[/url]

    Also, you don't actually need a sustained strong area of high pressure to bring this sort of "barbeque weather". The last week of June 2010, for instance, had a lot of this type of weather, but was only weakly anticyclonic:
    [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/2010/Rrea00120100623.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00120100623.gif[/url]
    And on relatively rare occasions, you don't even need any high pressure at all. I remember that in Tyneside (where in some summers, like last year's, we struggle to justify getting the BBQ out at all) I had a nice BBQ on the evening of the 4th July 1999:
    [url="http://www.wetterzentrale.de/pics/archive/ra/1999/Rrea00119990704.gif"]http://www.wetterzen...00119990704.gif[/url]
    ...and how many people would see a chart like that and think, "oh dear, dull wet unsettled dross"? That spell in early July 1999 turned out generally warm and sunny but with sharp thundery downpours, so as long as you timed your BBQ well you were okay.

    In fact it isn't all that unusual for the most "settled" spell of a month to end up being the cloudiest, if the unsettled weather is mainly bright and showery and the settled weather has high pressure in the wrong place. The dullest spell of this April so far was the relatively quiet one over Easter when high pressure (in the wrong place) ridged across from the west. It can even happen, more rarely, during a generally dull unsettled month (the dullest spell of August 2008, for many of us, was actually the relatively warm settled one near the end).

    Some of it probably stems from how we were brought up. I know that when I was at school, we were taught, "high pressure is settled (good) weather, low pressure is unsettled (bad) weather".

    I realise that, as a big fan of convective type weather, I am always going to be less enthusiastic than most others about sustained spells of high pressure (which have a habit of being convection-free). However, that consideration shouldn't affect the above analysis- I've deliberately looked at it from a "hoping for warm dry sunny BBQ weather" perspective, and shown how flawed/over-simplistic it is even from that perspective.
  17. Thundery wintry showers
    After complaining that Norwich missed out on the remarkable October event (when even Cleadon got some excitement- lying hail overnight 30/31 October) could we be in for a spell where I make up for it big-time?

    Ever since I first came to Norwich, one of the things I most wanted to see was a full-on northerly outbreak from the Arctic in November, knowing very well that Norfolk lies right in the firing line of the showers drifting down the North Sea, and that the strong contrast between cold airmasses and the warm sea can generate very intense shower activity at this time of year.

    Unless I'm dreaming, I can see not one, but two such northerly incursions that are projected to happen within the next week by all three of the main models (ECMWF, UKMO, GFS). The first one looks like it may even give some snow with Norwich being a little bit inland, while the second looks good for a wintry mix (probably rain, hail and sleet) but with some exciting convection. There are precedents- similar setups on 17 November 1995, 17-18 November 1999 and 8 November 2001 not only brought wintry showers to Norwich, but also brought thunderstorms.

    Not surprisingly I'm getting those camera batteries charged up for the weekend. If this potential for dramatic weather is fulfilled I won't mind missing out on that remarkable October snowfall- as these November northerlies are what I've been waiting for.
  18. Thundery wintry showers
    Thanks to everyone who gave me birthday wishes. I had a pretty good day- celebrated in style at the Met Office, and had some good messages on here and on Facebook- I got a subscription to Chess magazine as well for my birthday (I've subscribed to it before but had stopped- but given my record at the MetO, 8 wins 4 draws 0 losses, it was appropriate to restart).

    I'm getting quite excited about the upcoming week's weather. It may end up a bit humid for my liking, but otherwise as far as I'm concerned it looks like being my idea of summer bliss- highs in the mid 20s by day, plenty of sunshine, and chances of thundery downpours in late afternoon and evening. It will be a good way, weather-wise, to round off my stay in Exeter if this comes off.

    I would be pretty "narked" about the upcoming spell if I was on the Tyneside coast- no chances of thundery downpours there, and probably not much chance of sunshine either from Thursday onwards- but it doesn't matter because I'm not there!
  19. Thundery wintry showers

    UEA Norwich

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    I arrived on Saturday to UEA, and have been getting to grips with the campus. With being here for Fresher's Week I can get my bearings for a week before the PhD work starts on 1st October.
    I'm going to see what sort of societies are about tomorrow. Of course I'm going to need to do plenty of work for the PhD, but hopefully I should be able to fit work and social events around each other so I can both get the work done to the best of my ability, and have a good social life (which I managed to do pretty well during that fantastic year at Leeds University). I'm also hoping that, as in Leeds, 'work' and 'leisure' may overlap to some extent; the work I did over there often didn't feel like work, and I sometimes did work-related things in my leisure time.
    So far I've been very impressed by the UEA campus. The student's union is very good, the IT facilities look good, and there are plenty of good restaurants and pubs around the campus.
    As for the weather, I may as well quote an extract from Trevor Harley's site here:
    I don't know if Norwich really is the thunderstorm capital of Britain, but I've only been here four days, and there was thunder today.
  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

    Update

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    The 8-week period before starting the PhD is down to 5 weeks- trying to make the most of what I'm up to now, while part of me is looking forward to the PhD and another part is apprehensive.
    Been continuing with the level episode I'm doing for Doom 3, with only one level (a short level as well) to go, I hope to finish that last level before I start my PhD as I'm aware I won't be spending as much time on level editing once the PhD gets underway! It will most likely be a 'beta' product, for as most amateur level designers know, level editing skills tend to advance as one progresses through the episode- so the earlier levels aren't as good as the later ones. Thus I expect to be tinkering around a bit with the earlier ones.
    It's all very much a hobby- ever since I first got the original Doom, I had always wanted to create a Doom-themed level episode. I have no intention of becoming a professional level designer.
    As for the weather, it looks like the pattern of downgrading of settled spells is continuing. To be honest, the first third of August wasn't too bad at all in the North East, indeed sunshine was much above average, but we're starting to return to the sort of summer we got used to in June and July. Haven't had any thunder-days yet either up here.
    Had to get a new power supply for my computer as the fan was deciding to pack in, but fingers crossed, it's now fitted.
  22. Thundery wintry showers
    There is often a large debate over whether we should keep updating the 30-year reference period every 10 years (the World Meteorological Organisation does it every 30 years, the Met Office traditionally does it every 10 years but has partially held onto 1961-90 in the recent update).

    My view is that it depends on what analysis we're doing and that there is often plenty of room for argument. When we're comparing current weather (or the past month or year's weather) with the "average", i.e. what the public are used to as being "average" conditions, I think repeatedly shifting the reference period forward is a good idea, because it is the most representative of the average that they're used to. For instance if we compare January 2010 with the 1961-90 average we're using a reference period that ends before a fair number of people were even born!

    But I think when we're doing an analysis of long-term climatology, it is often better to stick with one reference period. For the period 1993-2009 my Cleadon weather records are always compared with the estimated 1971-2000 averages, and I don't think I'll be updating to 1981-2010 anytime soon. It would have the effect of masking any long-term changes in Cleadon's climate. In fact I think a much longer reference period (say 1951-2000 or even 1901-2000) would be most ideal for this kind of analysis, but such reference periods are harder to get data for than the 30-year means.

    I suspect that these sort of considerations might be behind the Met Office's inconsistency in updating to 1971-2000, e.g. the monthly assessments are clearly in the former category, but one could argue that, for instance, the CET diagnostics are more the latter type and so are arguably better served by a reference period that is more representative of the longer-term (and 61-90 is more so than 71-00).
  23. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, quite a quiet period in some ways. I've been busy applying for PhDs, and had a couple of interviews at Manchester and UEA- I'll be giving more details of what's been going on when I get confirmation of whether I have funding or not for any of the projects. Hoping to get funding this year, or else it's another year of hunting for what limited employment there is in this region in the fields I'm after.
    According to the law of society, I'm supposed to be obsessed by money and thus getting any old job just to get paid, but at the moment it's not a major issue; the main one for me is getting advanced in an environment/meteorology/research type career.
    Other than that, been messing around, doing some oil paintings (many of which were weather-related, including a "Spanish plume" hazy scene, a picture of a cumulonimbus from that snowy ENE'ly that never was around 22 February 2007, and a stormy sunset. Some non-weather-related pictures too. Also, I've been playing quite a bit of chess.
    Saw the programme on the Global Warming Swindle- I think I made my views on it fairly clear in the environment thread- a good summary of the flaws in the views of the extremists who support anthropogenic global warming (AGW), but not a major challenge to the science behind the theory of AGW. I'd quite like to see a programme on TV that takes a more intermediate stance, along similar lines to Philip Eden's books relating to the subject, rather than focusing on one side or the other. It's hard to argue with the notion that humans are probably affecting the climate to some degree- even if you take out the CO2 issue, there's aircraft contrails, methane, old aftereffects of CFCs, deforestation, albedo changes etc.
  24. Thundery wintry showers
    It's been ages since I last updated the blog- so I will dutifully make amends!
    I had a pretty successful end to 2007, with getting the PhD underway, and getting back in touch with a large number of old schoolfriends through that notorious social networking site Facebook (a subject of heated debate at times on this forum). I even met up with some of them on 29 December, which considering that I was hardly in touch with anybody four months beforehand, was pretty amazing.
    Getting back into the swing of PhD work now- I think the real 'nitty gritty' work is upon me now, with plenty of data analysis and manipulation of UK rainfall data. However, as long as I don't have too many problems on the programming front (the main downside of PhDs generally), the work should be pretty interesting, making motivation reasonably straightforward.
    I'm also updating the weather records section of my website as it's poorly arranged at the moment and a bit cumbersome to update. Within the next month I should hopefully have all the years (1993-2007) up online again, though of course it will depend on how the PhD work goes.
    As for the weather, I enjoyed that little taster from the east on 3 January, but at the moment it's a westerly train. I quite welcome this sort of westerly weather when it first sets in, but grow tired of it when it persists for over a week, which looks likely at the moment, unfortunately for snow lovers living away from high ground in Scotland and Ireland.
  25. Thundery wintry showers
    I quite often read about how society is becoming broken due to the decline of traditional family values since the 1950s. I often read about how the 1950s were a golden era where people loved and cared for one another, families functioned as a strong unit and, since mothers generally stayed at home and raised children, children got more frequent parental care than they often do today.

    For sake of balance, I refer readers to a couple of opinion pieces on the internet which paint the 1950s in a rather less positive light:
    [url="http://ezinearticles.com/?1950s-Family-Life&id=3375411"]http://ezinearticles...Life&id=3375411[/url]
    [url="http://www.criticalenquiry.org/theory/society.shtml"]http://www.criticale...y/society.shtml[/url]

    Yes, I admit, they're probably somewhat biased towards the negative, but no more so than many "today's society is broken" type comments are biased towards the positive.

    When I look into this topic I see a lot of evidence to suggest that the 1950s "family values" were actually a relatively recent construct that evolved primarily during the Victorian era and, following the two World Wars, peaked in the 1950s. They involved a narrowing of the definition of "family", focusing mainly on parents/children/siblings/grandparents, whereas earlier cultures were often more inclusive of extended blood relatives and close friends. They were tied in with a heightened fear of sexuality (especially homosexuality) which led to a significant decline in the extent to which people made very close friendships.

    With all of this in mind, the 1950s family values really aren't what they are often made out to be. The key concepts of loving and caring for and supporting others may often be associated with "family values" but they were also around long before the 1950s- indeed they were written about extensively in the Christian Bible and other texts from the first few centuries AD.
×
×
  • Create New...