highcliffe2

Heavy, thundery showers now moving east. It was fine and sunny this morning, but there have been some showers within the last half hour and I saw a rumble of thunder to my southwest. More to come.

BY PAUL SIMONS TODAY is St Bartholomew’s Day and according to folklore it carries a long-range forecast for the autumn: “If the 24th August be fair and clear/ Then hope for a prosperous autumn that year.” But if it rains today, then watch out for a wet autumn. Worse still, “If this day be misty, the morning beginning with a hoare-frost/ Then cold weather will soon come, and a hard winter.” It is probably no coincidence that St Bartholomew’s forecast comes exactly at the end of the 40-day period indicated in the prediction from St Swithin’s Day (on July 15), of 40 days’ rain or dry weather. If both saints were to do their worst we could expect three months’ rain, but Bartholomew does his best to remedy Swithin’s spell: “St Bartholomew’s mantle wipes dry/ All the tears that St Swithin’s can cry.” This is not just a British phenomenon. Bartholomew’s influence extends across much of Western Europe. In Germany storks are already migrating but if one or two birds are still around today it is a good sign for the coming winter. Maybe there is something in this forecast, because the atmospheric circulation in the northern hemisphere often changes around this date. Unfortunately today’s weather is atrocious across much of Europe, so if you believe Bartholomew do not expect a fine autumn. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS HAVE you ever gone out on a summer’s day and suddenly been caught in a torrential downpour that felt as if a tap had been turned on? You very likely experienced a cloudburst: a sudden, heavy fall of rain in a short period. On this day 70 years ago, an extraordinary cloudburst occurred over Croydon Airport, in Surrey. In one minute, 5.1mm (0.2in) of rain fell — the highest ever extreme rainfall at one point in the UK. But even this pales in comparison with the world record for the most intense rainfall in a minute: 38.1mm (1.5in), recorded at the town of Barot in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, on November 26, 1970. Although there is no meteorological definition of a cloudburst, they come from thunder clouds. These cumulonimbus clouds can hold huge amounts of water, up to 500,000 tons, which is held up above in suspension by strong updraughts soaring through the clouds. While the rain is being held up, turbulent wind pockets toss the raindrops around, smashing them into one another to produce exceptionally large raindrops. Eventually the updraughts collapse and these jumbo-sized raindrops plummet to the ground, often in a burst of cold air that further speeds their descent. For anyone caught underneath, it seems as if the cloud has burst open with a torrent of rain, often over a relatively small area. Link to Weather Eye source

Weather Alert Category: Level 2 Weather Type: Rain/Strong Winds Affecting: The whole of the UK, but the strongest winds will affect Scotland and Northern Ireland. Time and Date Valid For: 18:00 Tuesday 23rd August - 06:00 Thursday 25th August 2005 Time Of Issue: 19:00 Monday 22nd August 2005 An unusually strong low pressure system to the northwest of Scotland will affect all areas of the UK on Wednesday. The forecasted low pressure system will develop rapidly by Wednesday. The track will bring the centre of the low pressure not far from the northern Isles of Scotland. Tomorrow morning, rain will begin to move into northern Ireland and western parts of Scotland. By the afternoon, the area of rain will have expanded to bring a thoroughly miserable end to the day here. Overnight, the rain will start to get itself organised over Northern Ireland and western Scotland, and the winds will begin to pick up. Overnight into Wednesday, Western Scotland and Northern Ireland will see the strongest of the winds. By the morning the Northern Isles, the Inner and Outer Hebrides along with the Shetland Isles will see the strongest winds. The winds will be gale force due to the tight packing of the isobars in these areas, so there could be gusts of 60-70mph. All west-facing coasts will see strongish winds as well, but not as strong as the areas already mentioned. For the rest of the UK on Wednesday, the rain will be more noticeable than the wind. Heavy rain will sweep eastwards across the country on Wednesday possibly accompanied with heavy showers behind. There could be several hours worth of heavy rain into Scotland and northern Ireland, so flooding could be an issue here. Elsewhere, local flooding cannot be ruled out either. Travelling conditions will be affected. On Thursday the unsettled weather will continue with widespread heavy showers, and the odd storm cannot be ruled out. Please stay tuned to Net-Weather for any possible Flash Alerts that may be issued if necessary. Confidence Level: 75% Note: This alert should be considered a guide and we strongly recommend you stay tuned to the Met-Office for further warnings and updates. Please note, that this alert is covered by the net-weather terms and conditions of use, which are viewable here

BY PAUL SIMONS WALNUT trees conjure up pictures of French and Italian orchards, but increasingly these beautiful trees are being grown in Britain. Two tonnes of the nuts are harvested commercially each year, and as their growing season extends in our warmer climate, more trees are being planted. In fact, the nuts and their trees are something of a climate barometer, as both suffer badly from the effects of frost. Back in the 17th century, walnut trees were in great demand for their timber, which English furniture-makers prized for its hardness, dark colour and decorative grain. But in the early- 18th century, walnut furniture suddenly gave way to mahogany, and the climate was to blame. This period was blighted by cold weather. In a particularly severe winter in 1709, two thirds of the walnut trees across northern Europe are reckoned to have perished and timber supplies ran so low that the French government banned their own walnut wood exports. Faced with chronic shortages of their favourite wood, English furniture-makers turned to mahogany from British Honduras in Central America. The new wood was an immediate success, its finer grain allowing furniture to be cut in more slender shapes and carved more intricately. But today mahogany and other tropical hardwoods are becoming scarce, and the demand for temperate-climate timbers is increasing. Perhaps this is the chance for the walnut wood of England to regain its old glory. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS LAST Saturday’s downpour at Old Trafford undoubtedly cost England victory in the third Test match against Australia, and cricket fans will be watching the weather forecasts nervously for the next Test match, starting on Thursday at Trent Bridge. Although it is too early to make a reliable forecast, the bad news is that a nasty depression is brewing in the Atlantic and is heading our way. The problem is a hurricane called Irene. This was the ninth tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, but hardly registered in the news. Irene started off heading towards Bermuda, ran out of steam, and revived again on warm seas ready to attack the Carolinas. But the storm swerved away from the US coast and ran north towards the far east of Canada, strengthening into a full-blown hurricane with wind speeds of more than 74 mph (119 kmph). As Irene swept into the increasingly cool Atlantic waters off the east coast of Newfoundland, she lost power and started to die, but got sucked into a depression. This has created a powerful storm south of Greenland, which is heading towards the UK. The ghost of Irene will create some very unsettled conditions, with plenty of rain next week. Whether the wet weather will last until Thursday is uncertain, but the groundsmen at Trent Bridge will have a tough job getting the pitch ready before then. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS HANS ISLAND is a small rock between Ellesmere Island, Canada, and the northwest coast of Greenland. It is a desolate place, deep inside the Arctic Circle, and in winter its temperatures can fall to -40C (-40F). And now Hans Island has become a flashpoint in a territorial dispute between Canada and Denmark. This summer the Canadian Defence Minister landed on the island, prompting a complaint from Denmark and the dispatch of an icebreaker to reinforce its own claim — Greenland is a semi-independent Danish territory. The issue behind this unlikely dispute is global warming. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and its ice is retreating rapidly. That is opening the famed North-West Passage which cuts thousands of miles off the shipping routes between the Atlantic and Pacific. The passage is now briefly possible in summer, and could become commercially important in future as the ice retreats further. With potential bonanzas in fishing and oil, gas and mineral exploration, ownership of the Arctic will be important. Other changes around the Arctic are equally worrying. Last week scientists announced that the world’s largest frozen peat bog, in Siberia, is melting. They fear that this will release billions of tonnes of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and trigger a huge surge in global temperatures. Link to Weather Eye source

I was awoken at 4:11am by a loud clap of thunder, then saw and heard the lightning and thunder continue for about 45 minutes until it stopped. I wasn't sure about the type of lightning, but the storm was rather close because the strike of lightning and clap of thunder were around 5 seconds away at one point I think. Torrential rain also :lol:

BY PAUL SIMONS AN AMATEUR psychic in Edinburgh was reported to have burnt down his flat and two neighbouring apartments by accident. The blaze was caused by a crystal ball left on a windowsill; instead of predicting the future, the ball focused sunlight on to a pile of washing and set it alight (The Times, August 12). This unfortunate incident showed the principle of how to measure the daily hours of sunshine using an instrument invented in Scotland in 1853. John Francis Campbell, from Islay in the Hebrides, was a keen meteorologist and noticed that a glass ball placed in a wooden bowl focused sunlight into such an intense beam that it left scorch marks on the wood. Marks on the bowl measured the hourly amount of sunshine as the sun moved through the day. Sir George Stokes later modified the instrument in 1879 by placing the glass ball in a metal stand so that it could burn a trace on a card behind the sphere. The elegant Campbell-Stokes recorder has been used around the world since. In Britain, the sunniest places are the Isle of Wight and the Sussex coast, averaging about 1,800 hours each year. The sunniest month on record was July 1911 in Eastbourne, Sussex, with 383.9 hours, while the dullest, with no sunshine recorded at all, was December 1890 in Westminster, London. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS WE MAY console ourselves as we buy expensive sunblock creams for the holidays that nature is already protecting us from the worst of the Sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. But for the layer of ozone in the stratosphere we would be in far graver danger from UV radiation. Each spring in the Arctic and Antarctic, however, that ozone is destroyed by man-made chlorofluorocarbons, allowing lethal UV rays to flood down on the few species of plants that grow at the poles. These plants protect themselves with their own UV-absorbing pigments, and British scientists have found that since the 1960s the levels of these natural sunblocks in some plants have tripled as the ozone hole has grown more extensive. Now in a clever twist, clues about ancient ozone holes are being sought from the remains of UV-absorbing pigments left in fossil plants. Of particular interest is the largest mass extinction in the Earth’s history, some 250 million years ago, when around 90 per cent of all living species disappeared. This is thought to have happened as a consequence of the largest known eruption of lava, in Siberia, which may have released huge amounts of ozone-destroying gases. If that created an ozone hole over much of the Earth instead of just at the poles, the resulting onslaught of UV would have been catastrophic. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS TODAY is the first anniversary of the flood which devastated Boscastle in Cornwall. Homes, shops, roads and bridges, were destroyed or badly damaged, and 115 cars were swept away. No one died, thanks in large part to a helicopter rescue which lifted some 130 people to safety. The flood was caused by heavy rain over the moorland above the town. The waters rushed down steep valleys, flooding the River Valency which tore through Boscastle. Surprisingly, the disaster could have been worse. According to a recent paper in the Royal Meteorological Society’s journal Weather, the heaviest rain fell over a watershed separating four local rivers, including the Valency, thus all four valleys shared the run-off. If the deluge had fallen just a mile away, over a single river’s catchment area, it would have caused a catastrophe we have never seen before. In fact Boscastle has been hit by flash floods many times before. An account from October 28, 1827, recorded: “The whole street was filled with a body of water rolling down and carrying all materials with (it). At Bridge teams of Wagon Horses were saved with difficulty. Pigs also belonging to the Cottagers were taken out of ye Roofs of Houses.” Other floods followed in August 1847, August 1950, June 1957, June 1958 and June 1963. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS DO YOU remember, back in May, weather predictions in much of the media that we could expect a scorching hot summer in Britain? In fact, this summer has been blowing hot and cold in quick succession, so what happened to the heatwaves? High in the sky, a ribbon of fast wind known as the jet stream blows towards the east and is responsible for much of our weather. To get a gloriously hot summer, the jet stream needs to pass to the north of the UK. This allows the Azores High, an area of high pressure usually centred over the sub-tropical Atlantic, to build up and when it gets a firm footing gives increasingly hot weather. Around mid-June, the jet stream passed to the north and much of Britain was roasted in an Azores High. On June 19, the highest temperature of the year so far was recorded in Central London, 33.1C (92.7F), the hottest June day since 1976. But the jet stream naturally wavers around and lately it has been passing directly over the UK. This has steered in low-pressure systems off the Atlantic, giving the wet weather we had to put up with across the country on Saturday. Since then the Azores High has returned, but more depressions are trying to barge in from the Atlantic. In fact, it is unlikely that any more heatwaves will appear this summer. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS THIRTY years ago tomorrow, Hampstead, North London, was devastated by rainfall of monsoon proportions. The day had been hot and muggy, and vast cumulonimbus clouds built up. In the late afternoon, a terrifying thunderstorm erupted, with ear-splitting thunder and dazzling lightning. In just over two hours, 171mm (6.73in) rain crashed down and set off a flash flood through Hampstead and neighbouring areas. The storm flooded the local Underground system and left thousands of commuters stranded. The sewers could not cope with the deluge and manhole covers were forced open by fountains of water, turning roads into rivers up to 1.2m (4ft) deep. Homes were flooded and in some buildings water reached the ceilings of basement flats. One man died. Yet the thunderstorm was so localised that just a few miles away the London Weather Centre recorded about 5mm (0.2in) rainfall from the same storm. Moist warm winds converging over North London had been thrust up over the high ground of Hampstead, and received extra uplift from the baking hot ground. That humid air eventually cooled and condensed into thunderclouds. This was no isolated incident –— another disastrous thunderstorm and flash flood struck Hampstead on August 2, 2002. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS IT MAY be the height of summer, but some first intimations of autumn can already be detected — blackberries are ripening, for example, and now the BBC has launched Autumnwatch. Run with the Woodland Trust and the UK Phenology Network, it plans to follow the progress of autumn across the UK, and volunteers are invited to record the first signs of autumn in their areas. Volunteers have an important role in this work. The BBC’s Springwatch survey this year involved more than 15,000 people and was the biggest project of its kind in the world. By comparing the results of the survey with historical records of the seasons, scientists can obtain a national picture of how climate change is hastening the arrival of the seasons. Britain has some of the world’s longest records of the seasons. For example, in 1736, the landowner Robert Marsham began to record the first signs of spring in the village of Stratton Strawless, Norfolk. He made his observations every year until he died in 1797, aged 90, and, remarkably, five generations of his family continued the survey until 1958. These records reveal that today many of our spring flowers have finished blooming by the date that Marsham would have noted the first sightings of them. You can find more about how you can contribute to Autumnwatch at bbc.co.uk/autumnwatch. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS WHAT do elephants, volcanoes, storms and haunted places have in common? They all generate infrasound — sound waves with such low frequencies that we cannot hear them. Elephants send a rumbling infrasound through the ground to talk to other elephants, and volcanic eruptions pass infrasound waves around the world. As for haunted places, some have been found to be subject to infrasound, possibly from the rumble of traffic, and this seems to produce a deep sense of unease and “ghostly” feelings in people. Ocean storms and waves are two significant generators of infrasound — the regular up-and-down movements of the waves behave like a giant loudspeaker, pushing the air at infrasonic frequencies. The swirling winds of hurricanes generate their own type of infrasonic signals and these could be useful for weather forecasters. A new array of infrasonic detectors is being deployed in the Cape Verde islands, off the West Coast of Africa, an area which spawns many of the small storms that can develop into hurricanes. It is hoped that detecting the rumblings of the storms will give early warning of gathering hurricanes. Another use for infrasound warnings could be to detect clear-air turbulence. This type of disturbed air, often caused by high-altitude jet stream winds, can toss aircraft violently. The turbulence is difficult to detect ahead, but the infrasound it gives off could alert pilots to the danger and allow them to take avoiding action. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS LAST Thursday many people on the South Coast were amazed by a circle of light around the Sun. What made the spectacle even more fascinating were its colours of yellow, red and blue, arranged in concentric circles. Although it looked like a faint rainbow, there was not a drop of rain in sight; it was centred around the Sun and it formed a complete circle in the sky, not a bow. This was a wonderful display of a halo — an optical phenomenon caused by ice crystals, not raindrops. This came from cirrus clouds, often called “mare’s tails” for their wispy strands flicked upwards. These clouds float a few miles high where their water freezes into ice crystals. If the crystals are hexagonal shapes, they bend sunlight into a 22-degree halo around the Sun. As the sunbeams are bent, their wavelengths often split up into the colours of the spectrum, looking like a rainbow. There is a fabulous array of different halo shapes and angles, depending on the shape and orientation of the ice crystals. On truly rare occasions, the sky can be criss-crossed by these coloured arcs of lights. Actually, some of these halos are more common than you might suppose. Look out for thin veils of cirrus clouds draped across a fairly low Sun. It helps to wear polarising sunglasses and hold out a hand to blot out the Sun’s glare. Link to Weather Eye source Interesting Has anyone actually seen the sky 'criss-crossed', as described above?

BY PAUL SIMONS AFTER the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the Japanese physicist Theodore Fujita studied the devastation across each city and discovered a unique “starburst” pattern of damage caused by the bomb blasts. Fujita later emigrated to the US where he studied storm damage. In 1974 he flew over an area that had been swept by violent thunderstorms and noticed that trees were flattened in a similar starburst pattern. He realised that the storms had produced violent downbursts of wind whose effects were akin to the blast damage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “If something comes down from the sky and hits the ground it will spread out,” he said. “It will produce the same kind of outburst effect that was in the back of my mind from 1945 to 1974.” These downbursts are jets of cold air that can plunge out of thunderstorms at 150mph. The winds smash into the ground, pancake outwards for a mile or more to create the typical starburst pattern of damage. Fujita’s discovery bore unforeseen fruit a year later. On June 24, 1975, a Boeing 727 crashed as it came in to land during a thunderstorm at John F. Kennedy Airport, New York, killing 113 people. Fujita realised that the aircraft had been crushed under a downburst, and his finding led to improvements in airport weather warnings. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS IN THE commemorations of the end of Second World War, one campaign deserves a mention for the role the weather played in it. In June 1942 the Japanese invaded the westernmost part of the Aleutians, a remote chain of islands stretching a thousand miles from Alaska across the North Pacific. It was the only US territory occupied by the enemy in the war. In his fine book, The Thousand-Mile War, Brian Garfield describes how the US, fearing that the Japanese would use the Aleutians as stepping stones to invade North America, rushed in troops to repel the invaders. But they reckoned without the weather. This island chain is where the tropical Japan Current hits cold polar air and the Bering Sea. Winds can reach 140mph, and the violent squalls known as “williwaws” sweep down from the mountains, kicking up spray and mist into what look like huge waterfalls. The fog, which can persist despite the gales, is so thick that some islands have only ten clear days each year. US losses from the weather were worse than from enemy action. Ships were battered on shorelines, pilots were lost in the fog or crashed in the high winds, and the troops suffered from bitter cold and exposure. After months of bitter fighting, the Japanese were finally driven out in August 1943. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS TODAY is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the meteorologist William Dines, who was famous for his study of winds. Dines served on the committee set up to investigate the Tay Bridge disaster on December 28, 1879, when the bridge collapsed during a storm just as a train was crossing. A huge gust of wind destroyed a central span of the bridge, the train plunged into the River Tay, and some 75 people were killed. The committee established new engineering standards for the design of large structures such as bridges, to enable them to withstand storm wind speeds. He invented the Dines pressure tube anemometer, the first instrument to measure both wind speed and direction. This reliable instrument could record sudden gusts of wind, such as the one that caused the Tay disaster, and gave engineers and meteorologists a much clearer picture of wind turbulence. Dines also flew kites with weather recording instruments to measure high-altitude weather conditions. He set up a kite station in Scotland, and used a boat to take kite readings at sea. Dines later used high- altitude balloons to measure weather conditions through the troposphere. This work gave insights into how storms develop a few miles up in the atmosphere away from any turbulence on the ground. Link to Weather Eye source

A South Today viewer sent in a picture of a halo around the sun taken at late morning, looked very nice B) Today started fine and sunny, but high cloud spilled in during mid morning but there was still occasional bright spells too. At around lunchtime it looked as though it was going to turn gloriously sunny as skies cleared from the west, but once again the cloud has set in and rain isn't too far away Weather: 100% cloudy Temperature: 18ºc Feels like: 18ºc Humidity: 73% Dew Point: 13ºc Wind: 12 mph W UV Index: 0 Low Visibility: 6.2 miles Pressure: 30.27 in and steady Sunrise: 5:38 AM Sunset: 8:47 PM As reported at Bournemouth, United Kingdom last updated 8/4/05 6:50 PM Local Time

BY PAUL SIMONS THE Air France passenger jet that caught fire at Pearson airport, Toronto, on Tuesday, had landed during a severe thunderstorm. Conditions were treacherous, with strong winds, torrential rain and poor visibility, and the aircraft may have been hit by lightning. Normally, aircraft are well insulated from lightning by their metal bodies. Lightning bolts rarely penetrate the aircraft, although they can leave pit marks or burns, and occasionally even puncture holes. On April 8, 1977, however, lightning did rip the nose cone off a private jet flying over England. The pilot of the Hawker Siddeley 125 executive jet managed to land safely at Luton airport. Cockpit instruments are vulnerable to the massive surge of electromagnetic power from a nearby lightning strike. This potentially dangerous situation could explain the crash on May 24, 1995, in Yorkshire, when a commuter aircraft was flying through torrential rain. A schoolboy nearby was using a radio scanner to listen to the conversation between the pilot and air traffic when he heard the pilot suddenly shout that the aircraft had been hit by lightning. The radio went dead, and the aircraft plunged to the ground, killing all 12 people on board. It is thought that the lightning strike scrambled the artifical-horizon display instrument, and since the pilot could not see where he was going, he accidentally flew the aircraft into the ground. Link to Weather Eye source

Beautifully sunny and warming up :lol: A few clouds to my northeast with a nice coolish breeze. Temperature: 18ºc Feels like: 18ºc Humidity: 68% Dew Point: 12ºc Wind: 13 mph NW UV Index: 2 Low Visibility: 6.2 miles Pressure: 30.21 in and rising Sunrise: 5:37 AM Sunset: 8:49 PM As reported at Bournemouth, United Kingdom last updated 8/3/05 9:20 AM Local Time

BY PAUL SIMONS SIXTY years ago the US was preparing to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The bomb components were assembled on the Pacific island of Tinian, with the uranium core delivered on July 26, 1945, by the cruiser Indianapolis, which had steamed in from San Francisco. But soon after delivering her secret cargo, the Indianapolis met her own fate as she sailed towards the Philippines. Two huge explosions ripped her open just after midnight on July 30. The cruiser had been hit by torpedoes from a Japanese submarine and she sank after only 12 minutes. Only 317 of nearly 1,200 crew members survived — it was the worst US naval disaster of the war. How the submarine spotted the Indianapolis was not clear, though. The weather was overcast and visibility was poor. But three years ago scientists found that it was moonlight which sealed the ship’s fate. Using astronomical computer programs, records and weather reports, they discovered that visibility that night was best toward the east, where a three-quarter moon had just risen. By chance the moon emerged from behind clouds just as the Japanese submarine surfaced and it would have seen the Indianapolis silhouetted against the bright moonlit sky. In these circumstances the cruiser was a clear and easy target for a torpedo attack. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS THE small town of Hawarden (pronounced “Harden”) in Flintshire lies a few miles from Chester. Its most famous resident was William Gladstone, though others might argue that the footballer Michael Owen deserves an equal distinction. Hawarden can boast also of a notable weather record. Ten years ago today it registered the highest temperature recorded in Wales, a blistering 35.2C (95.4F). The explanation for that record comes partly from the geography of North Wales. To the west of Hawarden lies Snowdon, one of the wettest places in Britain, averaging around 4,570mm (180in) rain per year. But Hawarden lies 50 miles away as the crow flies, and has a yearly rainfall of only about 610mm (24in), roughly the same as London. This sharp difference in climate is thanks to the “rain shadow” effect of the Welsh mountains. As depressions roll off the Atlantic, they meet the mountains of Snowdonia. Once the winds have passed over the mountains, their moisture is largely spent, leaving places sheltering in the shadow of the mountains much drier. Also, as the winds pass down the mountain slopes they warm, and this increases the dryness of the air even more. It is this sheltered climate that makes Hawarden not only dry but also one of the hottest places in Wales. Link to Weather Eye source

BY PAUL SIMONS THERE is a suspicion that spiders can forecast rain by showing up indoors — especially in showers or baths (The Times, Letters, July 25). In fact, house spiders live indoors all the time and get trapped in baths after venturing in to drink water droplets. Outside, spiders survive downpours by forming a tight bubble of air around their bodies by surface tension, creating a tiny diving bell. This also explains why they are difficult to wash down a plughole, because they just wait in the U-bend, wrapped in their air bubble. Some spiders also take up special postures on their webs when it rains. They hang straight down beneath their webs with their front legs stretched out below as a sort of guttering — the rain runs off the webs, down their bodies and drains off their legs. According to folklore, spiders use short threads to fix their webs to nearby supports before rainy weather, but if they make long threads then fair conditions will come for several days. The idea persists that spiders running about indoors can indicate rain. As Thomas Hardy described in Far From the Madding Crowd, when sheep farmer Gabriel Oak noticed “two black spiders, of the kind common in thatched houses” it was, he thought, “Nature’s way . . . of hinting to him that he was to prepare for foul weather”. Link to Weather Eye source