Weather Eye

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

WHAT will the weather be like for election day, May 5?

Computer forecast models are changing as conditions remain unsettled for the next few days, but the weather may settle down by next Thursday — most of the UK could be fairly dry and warm, although the North West and Midlands may have sunshine and showers.

Piers Corbyn at weatheraction.com uses solar activity to make weather forecasts, and he predicts sunshine and showers, with the rain sweeping in from the South West.

But does the weather make any difference to an election? The conventional wisdom is that Conservatives benefit from bad weather because their voters are more likely to brave the elements, and this can be important if turnout is low.

In June 1970 Edward Heath won for the Conservatives on a day of thunderstorms, and rain fell on all three of Margaret Thatcher’s election victories. John Major’s victory in 1992 was largely dry and sunny. The 1997 election was a fine day when Labour won a landslide, but Labour’s victory in 2001 was on a mixed bag of weather.

Perhaps more important is the weather before elections. The hard winter of 1947 led to powercuts, fuel rationing and misery across Britain. The electorate is said to have blamed Labour for the problems, and voted it out in the 1950 election.

Link to Weather Eye source

[Weather-history]

BY PAUL SIMONS

. The electorate is said to have blamed Labour for the problems, and voted it out in the 1950 election.

Link to Weather Eye source

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Bad research.

Labour won the 1950 election by a narrow majority.

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

IT SOUNDS too good to be true: this Bank Holiday weekend could see some hot weather. Warm winds sweeping up from Spain are expected to bring some sunshine — though heavy showers will break out in many places across Britain as a low-pressure system jostles in from the Atlantic.

The May Bank Holiday is often cursed by horrendous weather. When Jim Callaghan’s Government introduced the holiday in 1978 it was seen as a good way of taking advantage of the improving spring weather. But that first May Day was a complete washout and bitterly cold. Scotland, which did not have a Bank Holiday, was dry and sunny.

Since then the holiday has often been cursed with rain, frost, gales, thunderstorms, hail, waterspouts and even flooding. In 1997 there were snowstorms — Arctic winds swept down heavy rains which turned to deep snow as far south as Wales and Derbyshire. In fact the whole of that May was so miserable that it was colder than April.

Which raises the question of why bother having an early May Bank Holiday at all. At this time of year the seas around the UK are still relatively cold, often leaving the seaside chilly and wrapped in mist. Worse still, bitter easterly winds can sweep down from north Europe and leave the entire country shivering.

Link to Weather Eye source

[Weather-history]

BY PAUL SIMONS

In 1997 there were snowstorms — Arctic winds swept down heavy rains which turned to deep snow as far south as Wales and Derbyshire. In fact the whole of that May was so miserable that it was colder than April.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Crikey, Paul Simons has had two bad days at the office.

May 1997 was not colder than April 1997. April 1997 had a CET of 9.0 and May 1997 had a CET of 11.5

He is thinking of April and May 1987, where May 1987 was colder than April 1987. He is mixing 1987 and 1997 up.

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

GARDENERS looking to sow seeds and bed in new plants may well be pleased with the wet weather this month, but have the April showers saved much of Britain from drought?

For the first time in ages, this month’s weather has been average across the UK. Temperatures were average, and normal amounts of rain fell, even in dry regions such as East Anglia and southeast England which had very little rain this winter.

However, April is actually one of our driest months of the year across Britain, despite its wet reputation, and the recent rains may be too little, too late.

On April 22 the country’s first hosepipe ban of the year was imposed on parts of Surrey, and will stay in force depending on how wet the rest of the spring and summer are. The supplier responsible, Sutton and East Surrey Water, relies on boreholes deep underground for most of its water, and these supplies are recharged only from winter rainfall. A similar pattern applies across much of Southern and Eastern England.

Now that trees are coming into leaf and the sunshine is growing hotter, much of the rainwater is evaporating before it has a chance to sink deep into the ground. The dry regions need a much longer spell of rain, and there could be a glimmer of hope — long-range forecasts are hinting at a fairly wet May.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

ON THIS day in 1775 Benjamin Franklin completed the first scientific study of the Gulf Stream.

It began with a puzzle: why were British mail ships taking days or weeks longer to cross the Atlantic than heavier American merchant ships?

The British authorities sought an answer from Benjamin Franklin, postmaster general of the American colonies at that time. Franklin consulted Timothy Folger, a sea captain on a whaling ship, who described an Atlantic current called the Gulf Stream. The current swept northwards from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and American ships used it to sail faster to England but avoided it on the return journey. He added that the whaling ships occasionally crossed the current and met British ships struggling to sail against it, but their captains refused the advice of “simple” Americans.

Folger drew a sketch of the Gulf Stream, but when Franklin had it printed and presented to the British the chart was ignored.

Franklin, though, was intrigued by the Gulf Stream, and in 1775 he mapped it on a journey from England to America. He found that the current was some 3.5C warmer than the surrounding sea, and by taking regular temperature readings of the water could trace its course.

“The thermometer may be an useful instrument to a navigator,” he wrote, also noting that the water colour and the seaweeds changed in the current.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

SEVERAL newspapers reported last week an apparent blunder by the Met Office’s new supercomputer. The recently installed £27.5 million NEC SX-8 was heralded as a big improvement in weather forecasting, and for Sunday, April 24 it predicted a thoroughly wet afternoon over London. But instead the skies remained gloriously blue and warm.

The press claimed this was a big mistake, but was it? Heavy rains did sweep up from the south, although the stormclouds moved more slowly than expected and did not reach London until night. The mistake was the timing of the rain, not where it would fall — small comfort, though, for anyone who cancelled a barbecue.

The new computer looks at the weather in much greater detail than its predecessors. It works with a grid of squares whose sides are 4km long — this yields a vastly greater resolution than the 12km squares used previously. But at this level of detail, it is possible to miss small upsets in the atmosphere which can sometimes build up into much bigger problems, leading to forecasting mistakes.

But if the entire Earth and its atmosphere were monitored by weather sensors, these tiny local upsets would be found and make forecasts — at least in the short term — incredibly accurate. That is the holy grail of weather forecasting, and with its new computing power the Met Office has taken a big stride towards it.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE recent thunderstorms brought more than just dazzles of lightning. The weather chatroom ukweatherworld.co.uk received an eyewitness report of a strange glowing light on Sunday in Basingstoke, Hampshire.

The witness described how his car roof was covered in “a misty blue-looking gas hovering about 5-10in and a sound of needles dropping on a floor”. At the time, there was intense lightning, heavy hail and rain, and the air seemed to be electrified: “The feeling I was getting in my body was a tingling sensation in the end of my fingers,” he added.

This was almost certainly a case of St Elmo’s fire. It was often seen in the rigging and masts of sailing ships, as Shakespeare described in The Tempest, when Ariel, the sprite, speaks of fooling with unlucky sailors: “I flam’d amazement. Sometime I’d divide,/ And burn in many places; on the topmast,/ The yards, and bowsprit, would I flame distinctly.”

St Elmo’s fire is a plasma, an electrified gas. It usually forms when the air is intensely electrified during a thunderstorm and a large charge builds up around the tips of pointed objects, such as ships’ masts or even the horns of cattle and policemen’s helmets. It ranges from a dancing flame to something like fireworks, often coloured blue or bluish-white, sometimes with a hissing sound.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE wind has been blamed for causing a range of medical complaints, from migraines to heart attacks, but finding hard scientific proof of a link has been difficult. Now, however, a new study has found a clear connection between a desert wind and an infection.

Every year Mali and the surrounding region of West Africa is hit by an epidemic of meningitis; a highly contagious disease, it affects up to 200,000 people, particularly children.

The climate of the region has two principal seasons — a rainy monsoon and a dry season, when a viciously hot and dusty wind, the harmattan sweeps down from the Sahara.

The study, which lasted several years, found that the harmattan usually reaches its most savage intensity in the second week of February — which is just when the meningitis outbreaks begin. The number of meningitis cases drops rapidly as soon as the rainy season begins, in April.

The wind appears to help the spread of the disease by damaging the mucous membranes in the throat and lungs, helping the bacterium to invade the bloodstream and so trigger meningitis.

Thanks to this finding, it may be possible to provide an early warning of meningitis epidemics in this region and thus help to limit their impacts.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

FIFTY years ago, East Anglia experienced one of its worst dust storms, reminiscent of the infamous dustbowls of the American prairies in the 1930s.

Springtime across East England in 1955 had been unusually dry, including a heatwave at the end of April, and reduced topsoil to a crumbly dust. Then a severe gale with winds gusting to 65mph began on May 4 and lasted two days. The soil was whipped up into a vast black cloud of choking dust. Day turned into night as the sun was blotted out and visibility reduced to just a few yards in some places. Dykes and ditches were filled with dust reaching 6ft deep and houses were blasted with black dirt that blew inside through gaps around windows and doors.

“It has been like driving in a thick fog,” described one driver in the Eastern Daily Press, and farmers reported losing thousands of acres of crops and tons of valuable soil.

Dust storms in this region are known as “fen blows”, and although nothing like the scale of the American dustbowls, they cause serious damage to the soil. The fens were originally ancient marshlands and after centuries of drainage produced a peaty soil that turned increasingly dry, crumbly and shrank. As a result, the soil is highly susceptible to erosion and may well disappear completely as the climate becomes dry in decades to come.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

IF YOU are reading this with a glass of lager, or any other fizzy drink, then you have before you the makings of a fascinating lesson in how clouds are formed.

If you watch streams of bubbles rising to the surface of the drink, notice how they do not form willy-nilly, in some random order. Instead, the bubbles tend to appear on tiny cracks or particles on the surface of the glass, or particles floating around in the beer itself.

These centres of bubble formation are called “nucleation sites”, and a similar seeding process happens in clouds. When water condenses from a gas into cloud droplets it needs tiny particles in the air to grab hold of in order to develop and grow on. These particles tend to be dust, salt or any bits just the right size floating around in the atmosphere.

This is the principle behind cloud seeding, trying to make clouds form extra water droplets so that they rain in drought-stricken areas. Favourite cloud seeding agents are silver iodide or common salt, and you can try a similar seeding process for making bubbles in your drink.

If you can bear the thought of ruining beer, try sprinkling a big pinch of salt into the drink and watch it create a cloud of bubbles. The same happens with fine sand, but this may be taking the experiment too far in the interests of science.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

CROCODILES are living in the Sahara. This sounds bizarre, but several small groups of crocodiles are living in parts of Mauritania, in the western Sahara, where occasional rains fill up pools of water in which the crocodiles can feed on fish. But when the weather grows too dry and hot, the reptiles slip into a summer “hibernation”, known as aestivation, taking shelter in caves, burrows and under rocks.

The Saharan crocodiles are far smaller than other crocodiles, about 5ft long, possibly because there is not much food for them most of the year, so they grow slowly and reach small sizes.

They are the relics of a huge population of crocodiles that roamed the Sahara several thousand years ago when it was a lush region. Thanks to a slow wobble in the Earth’s axis, the northern hemisphere was bathed in more solar energy during the summer months, helping to drive monsoon rains further north into the Sahara. The land turned into a grassy savannah, with shallow lakes and rivers, animals such as elephants and rhinos, and probably looked rather like the big game reserves of Kenya today.

But some 5,000 years ago, as the Earth’s axis gradually shifted, the monsoons grew weaker and the Sahara turned into a desert. Most wildlife died or migrated, but a few crocodiles took refuge in the last pockets of water and survived.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

WHEN the American poet James Lowell (1819-91) called May “A ghastly parody of real Spring / Shaped out of snow and breathed with eastern wind”, he was spot on.

Despite the long hours of daylight and periods of brilliant sunshine, the weather this month can have a decidedly chilly feel to it in Britain, as well as North America.

The past few days have had a nasty nip, even bringing flurries of snow over the Scottish Highlands. For most of the UK the nights have been particularly cold under clear skies, as heat escapes from the ground and brings temperatures dipping below freezing. Added to that, a chilly airflow is feeding down from the Arctic on the flank of a large low-pressure system sitting over Scandinavia.

The problem at this time of year is the temperature of the sea. Although the land is rapidly growing warmer under the sunshine, it takes far longer for the seas around around Britain to warm up, rather like waiting for radiators to turn warm after central heating is turned on.

So, when the air comes down from the Arctic it is sweeping over chilly seas and has had little chance to warm up by the time it reaches our shores.

Hence the need for warm clothes and bad news for gardeners hoping to risk tender young plants outdoors.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE next three days could be nerve-racking for gardeners thinking about planting out tender seedlings — we are now in a chilly spell of weather known as the “ice saints’ days” which has a reputation for cold northerly winds and frosty nights.

Folklore says that an unusually cold bout of weather strikes from May 11 to May 13, celebrating the feast days of three saints, Marmertus, Pancras, and Serviatus, respectively.

In Germany the frost was delivered by Eismänner, or ice men, who visited on these days, and people believed it was never safe to plant crops until the Icemen were gone. In England many sheep farmers avoided shearing their flocks at this time, as an old saying goes: “He who shears his sheep before St Serviatus’ day, loves his wool more than his sheep.”

But is there any truth to this ancient tradition? The UK’s lowest May temperature, –9.4C (15F), was recorded on May 11, 1941, in Thetford, Norfolk, but that could be put down to coincidence. A more chilling picture comes from a look back over the last century, with around 60 per cent of the years recording unusually cold spells in the middle of May, including snow on nine occasions.

This week is no exception, with widespread frosts across many parts of Britain and a northerly airflow blowing down from the Arctic. But long-range forecasts do predict warmer weather by the end of the month.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

HAVE you ever taken a day off work because the weather was too bad? According to a new study, it seems that a great many absences from work can be blamed on the weather.

Absenteeism was studied at a clothes factory in North Carolina over several years and it was found, predictably, that cold weather, heavy rain or snow led to an increase in absenteeism, possibly because it was uncomfortable or more difficult to get to work.

But there were some unexpected results — hot or humid weather seemed to have no effect on attendance, but changes in atmospheric pressure were important. According to the report, in this month’s International Journal of Biometeorology, some weather conditions could aggravate health complaints. Heart problems and strokes are known to be triggered by winds or very cold weather, and changes in atmospheric pressure can set off pain such as in arthritis, migraine and bad backs, all common causes of absenteeism.

The Confederation of British Industry calculated in 2002 that an average of about eight days were lost by each employee every year, adding up to a national cost of £11.5 billion.

Although the weather may account for only part of this absenteeism, weather forecasts might be used for predicting how many people will turn up for work each day.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

OUR summers are gradually getting hotter, and heatwaves growing more intense. On Tuesday night a BBC One programme, Heatwave, imagined the consequences if Britain were struck by a heatwave similar to that in continental Europe in 2003, when more than 27,000 people died because of the high temperatures.

The programme showed hospitals overflowing as thousands of people died, mostly elderly and sick, while the transport system buckled and wildfires ran out of control.

Unfortunately, the script given to the actors playing the so-called experts was littered with appalling science, such as “When you get a high pressure and you get a low pressure and you put them together, then . . . bang!” If true, Britain would endure endless bouts of exploding weather, as we are often buffeted by high and low-pressure systems.

Strangely, the programme overlooked possibly the greatest problem with a severe heatwave — what happens if everyone buys air conditioners. The National Grid would be unable to cope with the enormous power demand, and the country would suffer severe power cuts, as has happened in California. Ironically, if electricity continues to be generated by fossil fuels, any increased power demand will pump out yet more carbon dioxide, and so increase global warming and bring more heatwaves.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

WHAT will this summer be like? There has been much speculation in the media in the past few days that we can expect a scorcher.

This is based, it seems, on a long-range forecast by the Met Office. In fact, the seasonal forecast from the Met Office had said no such thing — it merely pointed to the “chance” of above-normal temperatures, but said that at this stage it is impossible to predict much else.

The excitement highlights the problem of how we should treat long-range forecasts. These are very inexact predictions, far removed from the daily weather forecasts, and should be taken with caution.

They are based largely on the temperatures of the oceans, which soak up vast amounts of heat — just the top 3m (10ft) of the Earth’s oceans contain more heat than the entire atmosphere. Because that heat is released slowly, like a colossal storage heater, forecasters can deduce what might happen to temperatures and rainfall months ahead. An unusually warm or cold body of seawater in an ocean, for instance, could be a sign of significant changes in weather to come.

Great strides have been made improving these seasonal forecasts using a fleet of robotic buoys spread around the world’s oceans. But they are still a long way from a proper weather forecast.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

TWO weeks ago, on Bank Holiday Monday, you may have noticed cars and windows covered in dust. A sandstorm over the Sahara a few days earlier had lifted up fine particles of sand, with the consistency of talcum powder, which were swept over on high-level winds and dumped over southern Britain in light rains.

The Sahara is the largest source of the dust floating in the atmosphere, and it is blown over Britain several times a year. Apart from leaving dirty windows and cars, this dust also plays a key part in the global climate. When the dust falls into oceans it helps to fertilise the seawater with iron. This stimulates the growth of phytoplankton — tiny organisms that feed on carbon dioxide for their photosynthesis — and so helps to reduce the greenhouse effect. The Saharan dust even blows right across the Atlantic to Amazonia and fertilises the soils there.

The dust helps to stop hurricanes forming in the North Atlantic, and helps to cause violent thunderstorms in Florida — where it also creates spectacular sunsets.

Because the clouds of dust shield out sunlight, they cool the atmosphere below, which should help to cut global warming. However, Nick Brooks at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich has found that this cooling effect tends to suppress seasonal rains in the Sahel region, thus provoking the droughts that frequently devastate the area.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

IT IS difficult to know what to wear at the moment with temperatures oscillating wildly between cold and warm days. In fact, May is a transitional month between winter and summer, and it can even snow.

Fifty years ago today almost the whole of Britain was gripped by a ferocious blizzard whipped up on a northerly gale; it was more like the depths of winter than late spring.

Snow ploughs were called out as high-level roads across the Pennines, Peak District and South Wales were blocked. Even cities were overwhelmed. Sheffield had 10cm (4in) of snow and Birmingham had 2.5cm. In London it snowed for three hours during the night — it was the last time that substantial snow fell on the capital in May.

The warning signs of the dreadful weather had come a few days earlier as bitter cold and frosts took grip. By May 14 snow and sleet were falling, and on May 16 the thermometer plunged to -4C (25F) at Lincoln. The following day the snowstorm burst south from Scotland and eventually it reached parts of the South Coast.

The freezing spell ended on May 22, and bouts of cold returned in June. But there was some consolation — July, August and September were gloriously hot and sunny.

Link to Weather Eye source

[johnholmes]

thanks for that.

I do remember it well, as I went with my parents into Sheffield from just outside Chesterfield. At home it just about covered the ground but in the higher areas of Sheffield 4-5 inches was lying by late afternoon.

[Methuselah]

Blimey John...Something that I don't remember - for once!!

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE northern lights have made some dramatic appearances this year. Last weekend large swaths of North America were treated to ribbons of coloured light streaming across the night sky; unfortunately we missed out because the aurora came during daylight hours in the UK. Even more spectacularly, two X-class solar flares — the largest type of solar explosions — erupted in January, spawning auroras as far south as Arizona in the US.

Strangely, the textbooks say that auroras are not expected at the moment. The Sun goes through a cycle of about 11 years during which the numbers of its sunspots — seen as black specks on its surface — rise and fall. Sunspots are signs of furious eruptions from the Sun’s surface, spewing out massive clouds of electrical charges. As these explosions hurtle through the solar system they batter the Earth with electromagnetic energy that sets off aurora displays. The storms can also knock out satellites and disrupt power supplies on the ground.

Next year the sun will reach the quietest part of its cycle, when few sunspots, solar storms and auroras are expected. However, the Sun is very active at the moment, and these bursts of activity show that the idea of the solar minimum is something of a myth, and that the Sun can erupt at almost any time.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

AUSTRALIA could face a shortage of steak and lamb over the coming months or even years. A crippling drought has gripped almost half the country’s farmland and it has suffered its driest four-month period and hottest April since records began in 1910 — and things look likely to get worse.

Australian meteorologists are warning that a new El Niño could be about to bite. This climate phenomenon sends wind and ocean patterns across the Pacific into turmoil: colder waters drive towards Australia, bringing dry winds, while warmer waters shunt eastwards to North and South America, delivering torrents of rain. The warning signs are growing clear. This winter heavy rains fell in the US Southwest. Los Angeles was flooded, the deserts of California and Arizona bloomed with wildflowers, and huge snowfalls in the Sierra Nevada mountains gave ski resorts one of their best seasons.

Although these events were dramatic, it was thought that El Niño would fizzle out soon. But now there are alarming signs of a resurgence as the South American coast is now about 2C (3.6F) warmer than average, and rainfall is shifting away from Australia towards the central Pacific.

This comes as many farmers in Australia are still recovering from the last bout of El Niño drought in 2002-03, dubbed “the big dry”. The long-term outlook is even bleaker as climate change is expected to turn Australia even drier.

Link to Weather Eye source

[Shiny_Bottom_1]

Thanks Highcliffe.

Keep up the posts, as I, and many others, find them of interest and use.

Poor old Australia though. Is it not their late autumn now? and should probably be getting a high share of its annual rainfall during this period?

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

PRESIDENT George Bush was bundled into an underground bunker, the Vice-President was evacuated to an undisclosed secure location, and heavily armed servicemen took up defensive positions. On April 26, the White House appeared to be under attack when radar picked up intermittent blips from an approaching object moving through restricted airspace at about the speed of a helicopter. But the “target” turned out to be a fast-moving rain cloud scudding towards the White House. At the time, there were light rain showers with a gentle wind.

There is an irony that radar designed for security could detect clouds by mistake, because this is how radar originated — as a weather service in the First World War. Pilots were being battered by thunderstorms in their flimsy aircraft, and the Scottish physicist Robert Watson-Watt devised a warning system by tracking the radio interference from distant thunderclouds. It was only much later, in the 1930s, that he refined his system to pick up aircraft.

Radar does not actually “see” clouds as such, because the droplets in the clouds are too small to reflect radar beams. Instead, the signals bounce off larger drops falling from clouds, and the bigger the raindrop, the better the radar signal, as shown by brighter colours on the displays. And the problem of interference also works the other way — weather radar sometimes get confused with echoes from aircraft.

Link to Weather Eye source