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Thundery wintry showers

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  1. Thundery wintry showers

    Christmas

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    I may well be very fortunate with cold/snow over the coming week. The snowfalls from the easterly look like kicking in just after I get back to the North East, so hopefully no disruption to the train journey. And then the upcoming northerly looks like the sort of spell where it would definitely be better to be in Tyneside than in Norwich, as the warmer air will be further south. Could get a hefty spell of snow cover from this.

    It is uncertain how long this cold air will hang around for. Until around 27th/28th December would be most ideal as it would mean a white Christmas, and after a 10-day cold snowy spell I would most likely not be averse to a pattern change to warmer weather- especially if temporary, like the one near the end of December 1981.

    An interesting article on the death of the Christmas party:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8409155.stm

    Interesting because I've had a few Christmas dinners already! But the article makes a point that it cannot easily explain- and I can:
    [quote]He believes it's happened because the media suggests it is inappropriate for companies to throw parties, using terms like "squander".

    "There's a perception that spending on events like Christmas parties is somehow wasteful. The point I try to make to people is there's no such thing as good or bad spend, there's just spend in the economy from one part to another. I find this distinction bizarre," he says. [/quote]

    The distinction is quite simple actually. If it's pleasurable, it's deemed non-essential. If it's work-related, or a health and safety issue it's deemed essential. This is becuase of a perception that we all "need" to work and be healthy and safe in order to fund ourselves and make a living, but we don't "need" to enjoy ourselves. The fundamental flaw in this is that the whole point of making lots of money is so that we have a larger "pot" to tap into in order to raise overall quality of living. So if it's essential to have lots of money in order to fund this, why is it non-essential to enjoy ourselves even though the latter contributes even more directly to well-being than having lots of money does?

    I'm afraid the above is a significant factor in why we are having so-called "nanny state"-ism. If a minority abuse a work-related activity in a way that presents a risk to health and safety or money, since work is deemed essential, people look at the issue objectively and look for ways of addressing this abuse that do not curb this essential activity too much for it to be justified. But if the activity is pleasurable, it is deemed non-essential and thus curbing it altogether is considered justified even for the sake of negligible risk reduction. Arguments like "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" and "the minority have to spoil it for the majority" can then be trotted out whenever anyone complains.

    This is my biggest area of contention with the philosophy of free market capitalism- it's not the market freedom in itself, it's the tendency to measure attainment purely in financial terms and ignore social factors and we end up free [i]financially[/i], but not [i]socially[/i]. Somehow, we need to engineer some kind of "social capitalist" system that measures well-being in terms of the broad spectrum of socio-economic factors that contribute to it, rather than just money and health & safety.
  2. Thundery wintry showers
    Some may have wondered what on Earth I was blithering on about in the monogamy thread and some other related ones.

    I don't have a problem with the demand for [i]sexual[/i] monogamy (except when it's thrust upon people who consent to having "open" relationships). My opinion on polygamous/polymorous relationships has changed a fair bit since posting in the "Monogamy" thread, as there is strong evidence that they are eminently workable in cultures that don't frown upon them. However, at the same time, I think especially in the current cultural climate it's fair to call violating an agreement on sexual monogamy "cheating".

    Where I have a problem is with the demand for [i]emotional[/i] monogamy- expressed in simple terms, "I don't want you loving anyone but me". Emotional monogamy isn't actually as simple as that, because it normally excludes love for family members (because "family is different") and often excludes female-on-female friendships ("best girlfriends" etc). The effect of "emotional monogamy" is to forbid heterosexual men from bonding emotionally with anyone other than family, prohibiting opposite-sex friendships and also prohibiting male-on-male friendships that aren't restricted to purely social bonding. The main basis behind this is the stereotype "heterosexual men don't show emotion unless there's a sexual motive" as well as a legacy of the fear of homosexuality that prevailed in the early 20th century. (It's ironic, as it's usually women and homosexuals who get a raw deal with these traditional values of patriarchal origin- but heterosexual men get a raw deal too if they choose to deviate from the archetypal, macho, emotionally-stunted male gender role).

    I have particularly serious concerns over the concept of "emotional cheating", defined as feeling closer to an opposite-sex friend than to one's partner, or confiding in an opposite-sex friend about problems that are occurring within one's partnership. (Maybe it's primarily a US thing?) Yes, sometimes people do use emotional manipulation to break apart partnerships, but by no means is this confined to opposite-sex friends (family members are just as capable) and what happens when a partnership becomes unstable or abusive? By those definitions of "emotional cheating" any platonic opposite-sex friend becomes a sitting duck waiting to be scapegoated for the problems within the partnership.

    I may have been unlucky with friendships over the years, but there's surely other men out there who would love to be able to express emotion freely with others, in the way that women can, but are frightened to because of the risk of getting in serious trouble for "emotionally cheating" on someone or, worse still, having their affection misinterpreted as attempted molestation. In my opinion we should all be allowed to love and care for one another. By all means people should continue to have partnerships and deal with genuine third-party attempts to undermine them, but society would be a lot better off if people (especially men) felt able to care generally for others rather than just members of their families.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    The Andy Gray story has developed widespread publicity now and I've given some opinions of my own in the relevant thread of the forum. I felt that the comments on Sian Massey crossed the line between "jokes" and "personal sexist remarks", and that the reprimand and suspension was a fair punishment. However, I then felt that the sacking as reaction to the stuff that was leaked afterwards was OTT.

    The overall verdict on these things is that the punishments should fit the crimes, and that the rules should be the same for everyone. The norm is for men to be punished harshly, and women leniently, for equivalent offences and we need the genders to effectively "meet in the middle" on this front. We can't necessarily score this as an example though, because it's possible that some people didn't like Andy Gray (e.g. repeatedly blasting referees when replays showed their decisions to be 100% correct) and just wanted him out.

    In the meantime I recall a discussion on the Martin Brundle "Pikey" issue (where he used it in a jocular sense, unaware of its stronger usages):
    http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/47973-is-the-term-pikey-racist/
    ...where I noted in that thread that I could have caused myself similar trouble with "nonce" as until 2006 I only knew of its jocular use to describe idiots and not its stronger sex-offender connotations. As it happens, Danny Kelly has now fallen foul of this one- he got 130 Ofcom complaints for calling Rafael Benitez a nonce (by which he meant nonsensical, as he pointed out in an apology 15 minutes later) and Rafa is now taking him to court over it.

    I think what these kind of incidents illustrate is that we should be careful of throwing insults at people we don't know, but also that we need to be careful to avoid letting choice of words carry more weight than the intended meaning. Any word can be corrupted and evolve offensive meanings, particularly if it becomes widely used among the likes of racists and criminals- and for instance if we take a line that no potentially-offensive words are acceptable and "idiot" is then corrupted in this way, a lot of us will have problems!
  6. Thundery wintry showers
    We're getting close, not only to the end of the season, but also to the review of the rules concerning team orders. Here are some thoughts of mine on the issue.

    I think that the main problem- certainly the one that gets up many fans' backsides- isn't so much team orders, but rather team favouritism, in particular requiring one driver to defer to another while the "number two driver" still has a significant mathematical chance of winning the Drivers' Championship. In seasons where one team runs away with it, it denies fans the possibility of an in-house battle for the title. In close seasons, it puts the lead driver at an advantage in the Drivers' Championship (as opposed to team-mates taking points off each other) and thus rewards non-competition.

    Most F1 insiders see F1 as a team sport and the drivers as employees who should do as they're told, point out that F1 has always been a team sport, and argue that the fans are deluded if they think otherwise. In fact, I think they're the ones who are being deluded, via the black and white assumption "either it's a team sport OR it's about the drivers". F1 has always been both, and most fans don't like the way its emphasis shifted towards "teams over drivers, business over sport" between the mid 1990s and the mid 2000s.

    Just because the current rule is haphazard, too broad-brush and impossible to enforce, I don't think that's a conclusive argument for abolishing it completely- it can just mean that the rule needs to be reduced in scope, and made clearer, more specific and easier to enforce. I reckon that teams should be prohibited from ordering one driver to defer to another unless it will clearly lead to the loss of the Drivers' Championship, or one driver is in with a mathematical chance of the title and the other isn't, while other team orders should be legalised. I think that would be easier to enforce against and would still prohibit the two main instances that got the fans' backs up in the last decade (Austria 2002, Germany 2010) as well as recognising that driver swaps in the last race of the season, when the championship is at stake, are usually considered acceptable by a large majority of fans.
  7. 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".
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    Perhaps not a strictly accurate title. However, as a couple of recent experiences have starkly reminded me, while I sometimes misbehave and sometimes get punished for it, I usually get punished less for my own misbehaviour, than by association with other people's misbehaviour.

    The process is that others misbehave, I behave in a way that is innocent, but which gets tarred with the same brush as their behaviour (often via some unwritten code of etiquette, sometimes by a rule) and so I get sternly reprimanded for misbehaving. The argument is: their behaviour is bad, my behaviour is associated with it, so therefore my behaviour must be bad.

    If I defend my behaviour it's interpreted as condoning the associated misbehaviour perpetuated by others. Also, if I have a strong case for my behaviour, it poses a threat to authority (unlike those who attempt to justify harmful behaviour, which can be refuted on moral grounds). Thus to defend their authority they have to fall back upon authoritarian lines like "rules are rules", "I'm right because I say so", and "we're watching you- accept you're wrong, or else!" Thus I often get dealt with more harshly than the actual offenders.

    For those who were wondering about my big issue with "the minority spoiling it for the majority", the above should give strong insights.
  9. 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).
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    I have resisted "My Documents" and "Program Files" for many years, and the main reason is user choice: if we all "give in" to having no user choice, there'll be no incentive for Microsoft to keep it in future versions of Windows.

    [b]My Documents[/b]
    Proponents of the "My Documents" system say that it's good because it gives each user a standardised home directory and makes it easy for multiple users to have multiple accounts on one system with their own "My Documents" directories.

    If this was all that it amounted to, I wouldn't have a problem with it. It would be no different to using C:/ as a home directory except that the location is standardised and set up for multiple users. But unfortunately, it's also come at the expense of users who want to set up files and folders how they like within their home directories. Microsoft has set up a standardised pattern, e.g. "Pictures", "Music" and "Videos", and applications religiously default to them. In addition applications increasingly install various things into subdirectories of "My Documents" which you can't choose- in the past you could usually define where they should be installed.

    In addition there's a trend towards all programs defaulting to using My Documents instead of "the last place you saved to", at least every time you restart the computer. This is a flaw as far as I'm concerned, because it encourages users to bung everything into My Documents instead of subdirectories within My Documents- it's not much better than bunging everything in C:/. Some default to specific subdirectories, but those contain the problem described earlier- users don't get a choice as to what subdirectories they go into.

    [b]Program Files[/b]
    Microsoft's idea behind Program Files appears to be to move towards a standardised system where all of your program data is stored in Program Files and can't be modified in any way, and all editable files go into My Documents. It's argued as a "security feature"- I guess this refers to the fact that multiple users can log on without risk of one of them deleting program data that the others rely upon.
    However, many of us don't have multiple users on one machine, or can trust other users not to modify/delete our program data, in which case this security provision isn't necessary. My personal home computers are usually used only be myself.
    On Vista and Windows 7, it is extremely problematic with many computer games that require modification of the game's installation directory for mods and the like. For example stories are rife about how on Vista and Windows 7, you can only make/install mods for most games if you install them outside of C:/Program Files or remove User Account Control altogether (thereby defeating the point of the system).
    Again, it's also enforcing a specific file structure and removing choice from the user. What about those who liked the system of having games install to C:/Games and general tools to C:/Program Files? What about those who want to install to drive D instead of drive C?

    I also note that installers, while providing the option to change the installation directory away from the default, are increasingly hiding that option, e.g. tucking it away in "Custom Install" or even a small print checkbox. One problem is that the default directories are often quite hard to locate, e.g. instead of defaulting to "C:/Program Files/Program" they default to the likes of "C:/Program Files/Company Name/Publisher Name/Applications/Games/Program". They call it "putting all programs in one place for ease", but the way it is at the moment, it's not much better from that perspective than bunging all programs in C:/. Although Microsoft probably assumes you won't ever need to find where the programs are installed...

    [b]Useability Testing for Newbies[/b]
    One common justification for the "removing user control" is that users need to be protected from themselves because computers have to be set up so that "Granny" can use them intuitively. But this goes back to the "black and white priorities" problem- newbies are considered more important than experienced users so experienced users get completely ignored, instead of being assigned a lesser weight.

    It wouldn't be too difficult to simply make the factory defaults easier to modify without them keep resetting themselves, or even provide two installation options: "Standard Install" and "Advanced/Experienced User Install" where the former applies default settings suitable for newbies and the latter for experienced users.
  11. Thundery wintry showers
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8553629.stm

    As someone posted in the Comments section, the main arguments against any kind of technology seem to be:
    [quote]1) it slows the game down
    2) controversy is part of the beauty of the game[/quote]

    I'll give my twopenny's worth:
    1. too much "black and white" thinking and slippery slope fallacies I reckon. It's important that we don't implement technology to such an extreme that it will seriously disrupt the flow of the game, but there is such a thing as "striking a balance" that seems to pass over quite a number of the nay-sayers.

    2. I do think football needs a bit of controversy, but there is a big difference between controversy over contentious issues (which is often good for a sport) and controversy over obvious injustices which annoy a lot of those involved. No amount of technology would remove the need for referees, at times, to make decisions that are open to considerable debate. Of course there's also the usual "maintaining the status quo" arguments to defend point 2, e.g. "the traditional approach to the injustices associated with officiating always used to be 'that's life', so why change that?"- without the dominance of arguments like those I reckon the world as a whole would be a fairer place.

    I don't just look at this from the players' and supporters' point of view, I also think of it from a referees' perspective (as presumably does Graham Poll as an ex-referee). The "respect" campaign is always at risk of being one-sided if there isn't an onus on referees to do a good job as well as players/managers, but referees are only human like the rest of us and it would help if it was made easier for them to do a good job.
  12. Thundery wintry showers
    My latest word on intellectual property is: we need the masses to start seeing past the premise that "copying is theft". Theft is a relatively black and white issue- barring exceptional circumstances it is wrong to take physical property away from people, and in a large majority of cases, a theft from a retail outlet equals a lost sale. The popular argument, therefore, is that since "copying is theft", "every copy made is a lost sale", and therefore that copying should be kept to the absolute minimum just like theft is.

    But copying is actually quite different, and its effects on sales can go either way- you have to weigh up the lost sales from people receiving clones of things [i]that they would otherwise have paid money for[/i] (this last bit is important) vs. the extra sales that result from the increased product exposure/brand awareness. Too much copying and the losses probably outweigh the gains, vice versa for small amounts of copying, and we also need to bear in mind that too much IP risks stifling the advance of information and technology, giving consumers poor value for money, and giving too much power to a small minority of powerful companies. The current trends in IP are, frankly, quite worrying, and heading strongly for this latter scenario. The stifling of debate on the issue is also a worry- increasingly if you argue against tightening IP laws you get roasted alive for "condoning theft".

    This consideration is why I take the stance that "casual copying", which is mostly moderate, is probably not the threat to the industries that it's made out to be, whereas the en-masse stuff is a real threat. The industries of course focus on the former because it is easier to police with DRM, and they assume that every copy is a lost sale... but they are wrong. Indeed I doubt that "casual copying" (dating from back in the days of the cassette recorder) should ever have been made illegal.

    That's not to say that I think all IP infringements are overstated in terms of their severity. The hacking into and leaking of unreleased stuff, for example, is not just an infringement of IP but also infringes upon privacy and security, often alongside many other things, and so morally speaking it is usually very serious.

    An interesting case study is "Steam", which I've been using quite a lot recently. I think its online support, and requiring log-in access for it, is a very good way forward, as it creates a big difference between a copy and the original, as is offering digital distribution as an alternative to retail. But the online activation DRM aspect of it is an unnecessary evil, giving the IP owner a huge amount of control over the end user, making software functionality dependent on external servers, and if they got rid of it, any lost sales due to increased "casual copying" would probably be at least offset by extra sales from people who got exposure to the products and went on to buy them in order to get easier access to the support on Steam. Thus, I reckon that Steam without the DRM would most likely give a "win-win" type of balance between content creators and end users.
  13. Thundery wintry showers
    In some ways this spell is starting to remind me of the sense I had during July 2006. Until that month, I'd thought that I had a limited tolerance of prolonged heat and sunshine- but I soon found that if it's generally on the low side of 30C, and interspersed with the odd showery/thundery outbreak for variety, I can easily "tolerate" it for upwards of an entire month (more like "find it very enjoyable").

    The same is happening here with the cold snowy spell. Having had a fair dumping up in Tyneside (12cm on New Year's Day) I am now finding myself willing Norwich to catch up with the Tyneside snow depths. It's a tall order, but with a dumping likely tomorrow, not out of the question.

    It hasn't changed my stance on what I would like to see for February and the spring either- a February of alternating cold snowy and milder spells, and then a spring with frequent warm sunny weather but interspersed with switch-arounds and northerly outbreaks. As far as January is concerned, we're locked into this cold spell and Norwich only has about 3-4cm so far, so it may as well continue through to at least the middle of the month, as I don't see myself tiring of it before then.
  14. 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!
  15. Thundery wintry showers
    For those of you who think that the trend towards increased subjectivity in forecasts, like the increased frequency at which the phrase "at least it will be mild" is used, is more due to the BBC than the Met Office, here is an article from 2005 that strongly supports that view.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4310702.stm

    Now I'm not sure what to say about the first part of the Met Office's advice, moving away from using scientific language, as of course you get the problem of confusion vs. perpetuating lack of understanding by taking away information- it's a tradeoff. But the second part of their suggestions actually make many of the same points re. spin and subjectivity as I've been making for some time (the paragraph relating to telling people what is good and bad could just as easily have been lifted from one of my posts!). It is clear that the BBC has taken on board the first part of the Met Office's advice and not the second.

    So next time you hear that accursed phrase "at least it will be mild"... don't go blaming the Met Office!
  16. 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!
  17. 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.
  18. Thundery wintry showers
    PhD still going okay, and still enjoying the work for the most part. The fine spell of weather looks like being downgraded, here's hoping that the NE'ly brings my favourite convective "sunshine and showers" stuff and not the usual low cloud.

    I continue to strongly dislike the way the UK is going regarding personal liberty:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8249020.stm
    As an individual measure it might not seem too bad, but the logical end result of incremental steps like these is a society where you cannot go within a few metres of a child unless you can prove that the child is "family" (i.e. related to within a few generations). Meanwhile of course child molestation will continue to occur on an infrequent basis within families, a consequence of families being exempt from these measures.

    I just hope the UK doesn't follow the USA's lead and become similarly hysterical over harassment and sex abuse in general, rather than just against children.

    On a lighter note, I'm liking the look of the upcoming football season. Man Utd haven't got as strong a squad as in the past, and are missing Cristiano Ronaldo rather more than they would like. Chelsea have a formidable team but their current manager is unproven and they are facing a transfer ban- which might not affect them too much, it depends on how many injuries they get. Arsenal are looking quite good. I felt quite gutted at their loss to Man Utd, as they were IMHO the better side for most of the game, but they are showing encouraging signs of being close to their best. Arsenal were, in my view, probably denied a stonewall penalty early in the game because of the memories of Eduardo's blatant dive. I don't think Liverpool will be challenging for top spot this year though.

    And as for England- I always had high hopes that Capello might be able to mould the team into a cohesive unit that plays well. It is looking strongly as if my hopes were not misplaced. I don't expect England to win the Cup but a quarter or semi final spot would still be a success after the depths of the Steve McLaren era.
  19. 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.
  20. 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".
  21. 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!
  22. Thundery wintry showers
    An updated version of my "Winter Snow Events" analysis will be uploaded to N-W over the coming few weeks, based on a wider range of sources and overall casting the net much wider. There has been considerable "inflation" in the values for each season as a result, the average "snow score" has increased from the low 20s into the low 30s.

    Some brief (provisional) details to get the ball rolling:
    [list]* The winters prior to 1988 have been upgraded relative to the 1990s and 2000s (as I missed some snow events from the earlier years in my previous analysis) such that the period 1971-76 comes out with comparable amounts of snow to some of the winters since 1987. In particular 1972/73 came out with a similar total to 2003/04 and 2004/05. However, that 6-year period still had slightly less snow overall than the period 1988-2009.
    * Winter 2008/09 was only slightly above the 20th century average for snow, yet it was the snowiest winter overall since 1995/96, and the second snowiest since 1985/86.
    * All measures of "snowiness" have their issues, and the main issue with my method is that it measures occurrences of lying snow events rather than duration of snow cover. For example, by this measure 1978/79 was a snowier winter than 1962/63. The snowiest winter of the 20th century appears to have been the other famous one, in 1946/47.
    * The most snowless winter appears to have been 1991/92.
    [/list]
  23. Thundery wintry showers
    This is a slightly controversial topic that used to be referenced quite frequently by Philip Eden- how does one define "showers"? The dictionary typically tells us that a shower is a brief fall of precipitation, whereas most meteorologists use the term "shower" to refer to convective precipitation.

    I don't agree with Philip Eden's assertion that a shower should be termed a brief fall of light rain and that a brief, torrential fall is a "cloudburst" (it has to be said, I rarely disagree with what he says, but this is one such occasion). Think about it, most non-weather definitions of "shower" (e.g. taking a shower, being showered with gifts) involves short, sharp outbreaks, so I don't see why a cloudburst can't reasonably be called a heavy shower. However, I do agree with his point that to most of the "lay" public, the type of cloud that the precipitation falls from is not really relevant, and if a frontal system breaks up to give brief falls of precipitation, to most people, they would constitute "showers".

    In my view, though, when talking about showery weather on a large scale (such as when making a forecast) the distinction based on convective vs non-convective precipitation makes a lot of sense, because it is very rare for brief falls of precipitation to occur on a wide scale without them being at least partly convective in origin- plus it is much easier for forecasters to differentiate convective vs non convective precipitation than to differentiate prolonged vs short-lived precipitation (in addition to the fact that the two are strongly correlated anyway). It wouldn't surprise me if this was the main reason why "showers" as referring to convective precipitation came into widespread use.

    Another part of confusion concerns the definition of my favourite weather type, which . In the old days, it was sunshine mixed with brief falls of precipitation. These days my favourite weather type is rather more specific- sunshine mixed with [i]convective[/i] precipitation.
  24. 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!
  25. Thundery wintry showers
    Is this phrase catching on? There is an excellent site from Reading University's Meteorology department documenting the daily weather going back to the late 1990s:
    [url="http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/"]http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~brugge/[/url]

    ...and in its summary for the 3rd February it says the following:
    [quote]Overnight into the 3rd snow fell mainly in E areas of England and Scotland although some falls were reported in Ireland, SW England, the Channel islands and other places. To the S of the snow most places in England and Wales had an air frost - with Cent and E England then having a cold day. During the day there were further falls of sleet and snow in N and E Scotland resulting from fronts circulating around a low pressure area centred over S Ireland (MSL pressure down to 985mb). There were also some snow showers over Ireland, Wales and SW England that gave some heavu falls in places. The Met Office also reported some [b]thundery, wintry showers [/b]in S countiews of England which died out as they moved N.[/quote]

    I remember being affected by those showers in Exeter on that day- there was no thunder here but there were certainly some quite dramatic showers of snow, sleet and hail.

    The 15th June was an amazing day of weather in Exeter. It started off dry and sunny but shower clouds shot up during the morning and there was a colossal rainstorm at 11:30am, which led to some limited flash flooding around the Met Office. After some sunshine and showers over lunchtime, a thunderstorm came over from 2 to 2:30pm, with even more torrential rain- rivalling the deluge of the 6th June, although it was of more normal duration for rain of such intensity (about 10-15 minutes). There were about 20 rumbles of thunder in total and some overhead lightning. Flash flooding again occurred and although I didn't specifically notice any hail, it was reported from the location as well. The rest of the day was mainly sunny with a few showers, and at 7pm there was a "sunny shower"- a moderate shower with bright sunshine throughout leading to a vivid rainbow.
    True, the Norwich area got rather more severe thunderstorms (as per usual!) but from what I've seen and heard the rain was no more intense than in Exeter and the storms constituted one long spell of thunder- a large part of me feels happier to have had the short sharp cloudbursts that Exeter experienced.

    On a related note I am leaving the Met Office in three and a half weeks' time. The place and the people who work there will certainly be sorely missed, but on the other hand it will also be good to be reunited with UEA and the people who work there. The MetO has made an excellent account of itself while I've been there, and I hope to end up back there at some point during my future career.

    As for the climate of Exeter, I don't like the climate as much as that of Norwich overall, but I have to say that it's rather better from my perspective than I expected (and that's not just because the winter was unusually snowy- though if that is ever a problem there's always Dartmoor which is about as snowy as inland parts of North-East England). Sunshine hours are good, anticyclonic gloom relatively rare, summer weather pleasantly warm, and although thunderstorms aren't that numerous, there is no shortage of heavy convective rainstorms at any time of the year. Certainly more interesting than the climate of Lancaster, which is the other part of western Britain that I've lived in.
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