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
    Had a decent birthday today- indeed I can only remember two years when I haven't had a good birthday- it's probably partly because I make such a big thing of it!
    Got some new clothes, some sweets, and a set of Tom & Jerry DVDs. I haven't seen T & J for a long time, but I remember I used to watch it regularly at my grandparents' and I regularly tuned in to BBC when they showed it until 2000. According to reviews there are some issues with PC censorship (shame on the PC brigade) but haven't noticed any on my two favourite episodes. It was like putting the clock back when I viewed them- and I still find them as funny as I used to as a child.
    Had a good morning going to the local painting club and bringing a nice birthday cake in.
    As for the weather, many people might have noticed me complaining about Cleadon's weather today. Ironically, the post in my previous blog...
    ...turned out to be remarkably accurate, though at least the low cloud stayed off until late evening, giving us a sunny dry day rather than a dull one. And yes, I did hear, much to my angst, about how "lucky" I was to miss the showers.
    Yet another example to put with the rest of why, with the exception of its "thundery wintry showers" episodes in winter that inspired my Net-Weather name, I don't like the climate of the north-east coast. Actually, I think much of the North East has quite a reasonable climate; it's just along the coast that gets on my nerves.
    Might be doing more stuff this weekend. I feel more content with life; some feedback from UEA also about accommodation though I don't know where I'll be living yet, and probably won't know for a while. Some feedback also about Exeter and the Met Office- the PhD, and opportunity to work for the MetO, are feeling more mouth-watering as I get closer to the time. Meteorology has been my main passion since the age of four, and it's great to be in a position where I supply forecasts for an increasingly well-known, respected website (i.e. this one) and can think realistically in terms of pursuing a career in climate-related fields.
  2. Thundery wintry showers
    Okay, after a few rants, I thought it was worth redressing the balance with updates on my own life.
    PhD still continuing at a steady rate, while in the meantime I had another reunion with old schoolfriends back in March- a very satisfying experience. Then I enjoyed the storms and convection during the first half of April (I forgot to upload my subsequent photos of cumulonimbus cells and lightning- will do soon). I like to pop down to the Grad Bar on some evenings and get a game of pool in- the recent snooker championships have spurred me into a desire to play more cue-based games. (I'm particularly proud that I can play snooker/pool with both hands, though obviously not as well as Ronnie O'Sullivan).
    The current weather is quite amazing for the time of year, not exceptional in itself, but if current model runs are near the mark, its persistence will be unusual- temperatures widely into the 20s and mostly unbroken sunshine rarely lasts for more than a few days in May. I didn't feel as enthusiastic about this kind of weather in April 2007, after the abnormal warmth of the preceding half-year, but this feels different- we've had quite a varied spring so far with plenty of cold synoptics and wintry, showery weather, so a notably warm, sunny May would provide a suitable contrast with the frequent average to cool weather of March and April.
    Indeed, as I started taking weather records in 1993 (just after the remarkable May 1992), the only really summer-like May that I can vividly remember was that of 2001, although 2004 was also pretty good in Lancaster. But I really do think that May 2008 is likely to be every bit as exceptional as those of 1989 and 1992, maybe even more so.
  3. Thundery wintry showers
    We often hear southerners talking about how the correct way to say words with "ath" is the "ar" sound, rather than the "a" sound that's common up north. E.g. barth, carstle, grarss. But is it really the correct way? The South East biased media think so, but these links suggest otherwise:

    [url="http://lairdofglencairn.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!FA29A59CC6777652!3323.entry"]http://lairdofglencairn.spaces.live.com/Bl...!3323.entry[/url]
    [url="http://digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=837551&page=2"]http://digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread....7551&page=2[/url]

    Yes, the "r" pronounciation only came into being up to a few hundred years ago as a dialect around London, which then spread to the rest of southern England.

    So if there is a "correct" way of saying it, it's actually the northern way! Although I personally prefer to think of there not being a "correct" way, but rather a difference of dialect/opinion.

    Howay man!
  4. Thundery wintry showers
    After a couple of what were, by North East standards, feeble cold snaps in January and February, something with rather more substance happened over the last few days.
    Monday had sunshine and wintry showers throughout the afternoon, although it did feel more like a potent early to mid-April cold snap, or a half-hearted late March snap. I recorded a max of 7.8C, but it frequently fell to 2-3C during wintry showers, and there were impressive Cb cells around.
    Tuesday: I only got up to 3.8C, which is a notably low maximum for a day in the second half of March that brought with it a fair amount of sunshine. I had 3cm lying snow in the morning, and some of it survived the daytime thaw, though by 1pm there was less than half-cover. There were some impressive near-'blizzard' conditions at times, with horizontal blowing snow, it looked almost like puffs of white smoke moving from north to south. Snow cover returned last night but not to the same extent; it's now thawing in the sun.
    So possibly a bit warmer by night due to the high SSTs, but overall a fairly potent northerly once those -10s at 850hPa came down on Tuesday.
    Looking further ahead, it's quite possible that the cold could be followed by a very warm spell, if those easterly winds subside; the GFS 00Z then has a white Easter in the offing (though the GFS should not be trusted at T+360!) Maybe this year we might end up with a variable spring.
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    I have to say I've been very impressed with the recent changes to the N-W charts in the datacentre. Until recently, I have to admit, I tended to prefer the Wetterzentrale versions, but recently the team has been implementing changes to give the N-W versions the advantages that the WZ versions have.

    I particularly like the Northern Hemisphere orientation that in my view is better than the one at WZ- finally our set of charts are looking professional!

    And incidentally, some very tasty synoptics out in f1:
    [attachment=70569:f10000.jpeg]
  6. Thundery wintry showers

    Work

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    At the moment, I am a week and a half into an 8-week break at home, before I go to University (again!) to do the PhD. It's both exciting and apprehension-inviting at the same time- I don't know what it will be like! However, since I'm going to be researching into the realms of meteorological statistics, the work is bound to be interesting regardless.
    Other than that, relaxing. It's been a relaxing year out, but at the same time, I've been finding that with regards 'work-life balance', it's possible to have too much 'life' and not enough 'work'! I found doing my MRes at Leeds gave rise to a suitable work-life balance- hopefully the PhD will be similar.
    Having read about a certain member of N-W's recurring job problems, ranging from 70-hour workweeks to emotion-sapping office dragfests, reminds me of what lots of people have preached to me over the years. "Your mentality of 'I want to pursue a career working in areas where I enjoy the work' will have to change." they say. "You'll learn that money has to be the top priority- the mentality should be 'I can put up with work I can't stand, as long as it pays well'. That's life- it's necessary because it's just the way it is."
    There are plenty of social norms that I can't stand, and this is certainly one of them. I'm very used to being at odds with the social norm, and it can be a risky business (delving into the unknown, and if you encounter resultant troubles, it's seen to be your fault for being different.) However, so far, I've done a pretty good job at dodging this one, and it looks hopeful that I should be dodging it successfully for at least three more years.
  7. Thundery wintry showers
    So, onto another of my pet rants, the idea that we should be of a two-season persuasion, one being "winter mode" where we're interested only in cold and snow, and another being "summer mode" where we're only interested in heat, sunshine and thunderstorms. So once a certain time arrives in spring, you're supposed to "move on" from "winter mode" to "summer mode", and if you show any desire for cold/snow, you are clinging onto the past instead of moving on.
    I've never agreed with the idea that moving on is about cutting old things out of one's life (for instance, the old family values saying that you need to periodically cut out old friends to make way for new ones). But this is something else, because spring is a time of year when traditionally, it can still snow, indeed in many regions snow is no less likely on Easter Day than it is on Christmas Day. So, basically, the argument runs that we should be cutting out all desire for something that still exists in the present, in order to "move on" to circumstances that don't apply for another two-three months. What part of 'living in the present' does this come under?
    Let's be fair here, people are entitled to not want cold weather or snow in spring, or indeed any time of the year. But I can't stand views like this:
    1. I don't want cold weather in spring.
    2. Therefore, all spring cold must bring miserable weather.
    3. Therefore I hope that any spring cold snap brings miserable weather, to show the stupid snow lovers who are clinging onto the past instead of moving on, that I am right, and cold weather in spring is useless. I don't care that it would ruin my ability to go outside more than sunshine and scattered wintry showers would, the most important thing is for me to be right and people who cling onto winter to realise that I'm right, and move on.
    Rant over.
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    Going off to Norwich in two days, and the apprehension increases; it's very much delving into the unknown. I don't know how much different doing a PhD will be to doing the research part of my MRes; hopefully the two will be quite similar, because if they are, it should be a very rewarding three years ahead.
    Some will remember that I had some friendship issues some years ago. Most people seem to follow an unwritten rule that all conflicts involving friendships are the friend's fault and that you need to "move on" by "cutting the friend out of your life". Although I didn't have many issues at Leeds University, one of the people on my course fell foul of this one, she had an unfortunate clash with someone else, and everyone assumed she was stringing the person along and cut her out. She was effectively a scapegoat.
    I believe that principle stems from the general idea "family matters, friendship is unimportant", as in family conflicts this principle never seems to apply. However, if a person follows it, it doesn't mean the person sees friendship as unimportant- as it's widely accepted without question, most people tend to follow it regardless of their other related beliefs. Whatever, it causes many innocent friends to become scapegoats.
    In recent weeks, I've got back in touch with quite a number of people I never thought I'd get back in touch with again. And, if I'd followed the above unwritten rule, chances are I'd have "cut most of them out of my life", rendering myself worse off in the long run. Yes, I know it's seen as "moving on" in the sense of moving from old friends to new friends, but I've never been keen on the idea that moving on means holding lifelong grudges against people, often for things they haven't done, and that letting go of said grudges is a sign of not having moved on! Another line of evidence for my argument perhaps.
  9. 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.
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, after an extremely hectic last week of term in Leeds University, I am back in Cleadon, Tyne & Wear for the Christmas holidays- but unfortunately coming down with a bit of a cold.
    Will be seeing quite a bit of the people I know from my junior school, one of whom has been my closest friend for over 10 years. Also have a bit of revision to do for exams in January.
    Having set up my professional weather station and, for the first time, having a thermometer which I know is accurate to within a couple of tenths of a degree Celsius, I am hoping that there will be a decent fall of snow in Cleadon- even if it happens while I'm in Leeds- in order to see what the "temperature profile" looks like, and whether snow does indeed settle readily at temperatures of up to 1C, or whether my past thermometers over-read a little. There might, just might, be a chance this Saturday. I'm not going to complain if it's a bog-standard 36 hour northerly with an inch of snow for Tyne & Wear if I happen to be here when it matters.
  11. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, with a lot of help from my dad, I finally have a kind of Stevenson screen set up to house my automatic thermometer sensor, which is placed by the side of my back garden near a fence (and at the opposite side from the house). It is louvred at all four sides, and has a plain white top and bottom.
    Some inflated readings while the sun was shining on the screen today that I might have to look into; don't know if the sun is somehow causing the screen to radiate heat despite it being 100% white, or if the sun shining on the solar panel has anything to do with it. Readings were fine after 2pm.
    Hopefully, next summer it might mean not having to correct for inflated maxima due to warming from the hut, wall or various heat source that my thermometers were previously situated on.
×
×
  • Create New...