Weather Eye

[Methuselah]

Thank you Highcliffe...

[highcliffe2]

BY JEREMY PLESTER

AN INABILITY to predict the weather has always been a pain for homemakers.

For years we have longed for long, hot summer days with dry skies and a fresh wind; the best conditions to dry clothes on the washing line. Then, in the 1930s, the invention of the tumble dryer took the risk out of doing the laundry — but these use a great deal of electricity.

Now an invention by Oliver MacCarthy, a Birmingham-based student at Brunel University, could tell us whether pegging out is the best option. He has invented the first intelligent clothes peg.

The peg, despite its interesting design, looks fairly normal. But it can predict the weather and prevent washing being hung out just before an unexpected downpour.

The peg takes barometric readings of pressure at half-hourly intervals and then calculates the chance of rain within the drying period. If the prediction is for rain, the peg locks, and no washing can be hung on the line.

MacCarthy is now seeking backing so that he can take his designs to the shops. A prototype of the clever peg can be seen on his website, www.oliver-maccarthy.co.uk

Link to Weather Eye source

[optrex]

The Times are slow, that was yesterdays news

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE final episode of this summer’s Ashes is finally upon us with England seeking at least a draw to regain the Ashes. The weather has already played its part in the series when it accounted for the best part of a day’s play in the third Test at Old Trafford — a match England might well have won if the rain had stayed away.

Weather watchers will have noticed that the forecast for the finale has been chopping and changing every day this week, but as we get closer to the bowling of the first ball it looks as though wet weather will pinch a fair chunk of play.

Weatherman Tony Conlan predicts: “for the vast majority of today and Friday, play will be uninterrupted but there is a question mark after tea on Friday afternoon, when scattered but heavy showers are likely to be drifting around the Greater London area.” He then went on to say: “Saturday is a different day altogether and is likely to be badly disrupted as a slow moving area of low pressure brings along showers, rain and very little cricket. All the rain should clear away by Sunday morning leaving the rest of the game uninterrupted.”

The message from the forecasters then, is for England to attack, as, if this game carries on at the lightning pace of some of its predecessors, a result is still highly possible.

Link to Weather Eye source

[Methuselah]

Thanks H2...My raindance wasn't entirely in vain then??

[highcliffe2]

BY JEREMY PLESTER

THE weather in the British Isles is pretty simple — for most of the time we are fanned by winds from the Atlantic and they bring rain, showers and brighter periods inbetween. From time to time high pressure will appear, bringing a period of calmer weather.

In addition to our staple weather there are plenty of rarer events that bring distinctly different weather. One example is the Spanish plume, when an area of hot air moves north from the Spanish plateau — invariably with the accompaniment of downpours and thunderstorms. Although the term “Spanish plume” would be known and understood by weather enthusiasts, the expression has struggled to gain public understanding or acceptance.

Over in the United States it is a different story: its weathermen have a range of colourful expressions that they inject into their everyday forecasts.

This becomes especially useful when inclement conditions are on the way. The mention of an “Alberta clipper” will have folks around the Dakotas, Minnesota and Great Lakes preparing for a snowstorm, while the “Pineapple Express” brings colossal amounts of rain to the Pacific Northwest.

Link to Weather Eye source

[Methuselah]

Thanks Highcliffe...

I'll wish for an Invernesneckie Clipper then?

[highcliffe2]

BY JEREMY PLESTER

THIS SUMMER has been fairly mixed as far as the weather in Britain is concerned. Apart from the tornado that tore up parts of Birmingham in July, it has produced little to excite for weather watchers.

Sunshine amounts, after an average June and July, picked up last month, especially for those living in the West or North West of England, Wales and the Midlands.

But some folk will still be hoping that dry and sunny weather will extend deep into the autumn and produce an Indian summer.

A common misconception is that an Indian summer refers to the sub-continent. In fact it was imported to the UK by early settlers in North America.

The settlers took note of the calm and above-average temperatures brought about by high pressure, which sprawls from the Midwest across to the eastern seaboard during autumn.

The Native Americans used the fine and dry weather to bolster their stores before the onset of winter.

In the breathless air of their Indian summer they would light brush fires, the smoke from which they would use as a screen before descending on their prey.

It is early to make predictions on the rest of autumn but it seems that once this weekend is over we will head into an extended period of calm and settled weather.

Link to Weather Eye source

[shuggee]

BY JEREMY PLESTER

It is early to make predictions on the rest of autumn but it seems that once this weekend is over we will head into an extended period of calm and settled weather.

Link to Weather Eye source

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Where's Philip? This Jeremy guy is starting to annoy me - amateur forecast outlook attached to the end of the piece - Philip never did that. And where does he get his info from? Pouring down more like... Or does he live in the South East?!?

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

ON FRIDAY, a thunderstorm raged over West London, with thunder that sounded like guns exploding. Later, though, the thunder changed its tune to a deep, soft rumble like “that deep and dreadful organ pipe” that Shakespeare described in The Tempest.

That change in the sound of thunder tells us something about a thunderstorm. A typical lightning discharge rips through the air with more than a million volts, heating the surrounding air to more than 30,000C (55,000F), five times hotter than the surface of the Sun. The air explodes and sends out shock waves, which is what we hear as thunder.

If the lightning strike is near by, the explosion comes a fraction of second after the flash and you hear a colossal bang that can reach around 120 decibels, equivalent to being 60m (200ft) from a jet aircraft during take-off.

But if the lightning is much further away, the high-frequency sounds of the explosion become muffled by the clouds and rain, leaving behind a deep, rolling rumble of thunder.

Lightning travels at the speed of light and is seen virtually instantly, while thunder passes at the speed of sound, about 1130km/h (700mph). You can tell the distance of a thunderstorm from that difference in speed: count the number of seconds between the flash of lightning and the thunder that follows and divide by three for kilometres, or by five for miles.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

HAVE you ever noticed how the distant rumble of traffic on one day can sound like it is right next door on another?The key to this phenomenon is the weather.

Unusually loud noises usually come in calm, cold weather. A strong temperature inversion can form in the atmosphere, when a lid of warm air traps colder air close to the ground. Sound waves bounce off this invisible lid, reflecting the noise down to the ground, which makes it seem louder. In fact, extreme temperature inversions have been known to carry human conversations as far as two miles (three kilometres).

Not all sounds in an inversion are a problem. New research shows that elephants in Namibia broadcast extremely deep rumbles for up to three hours after sunset or just after sunrise. These are exactly the times of day in the savannah when inversion layers form and help to pass the elephant calls further. During the day the sun warms the ground, heat rises up in thermals and this puts a stop to the elephant broadcasts.

According to the report in the journal Earth Interactions, elephants use these calls for finding mates, or telling one another where food and water are. Some believe that elephants can hear thunderstorms far away, and then head towards the rains to drink.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

A MAN in Australia turned into an electric fireball this week. He crackled with sparks, left a trail of carpet burns and one building he visited in the city of Warrnambool, Victoria, had to be evacuated when it was feared he could trigger a power failure.

The man is thought to have carried more than 30,000 volts of static electricity, created entirely by his clothing. Walking around wearing synthetic materials can build up large static electricity charges, and gives nasty electric shocks on touching metal door handles or railings. The problem is particularly bad in dry conditions — water in the air is a good conductor and dissipates the charges.

The static electricity comes from rubbing two different materials together. Electrons get knocked off one material and planted on the other, giving them electrical charges, and these get attracted to opposite charges. This is why rubbing a balloon on a pullover makes it stick to a wall, or why clothes clump together after they have been in a tumble dryer.

In extreme cases, static electricity has set off explosions at petrol stations. If people sit in their cars while filling up, static charges build up on their bodies from the car seat. That static can discharge as a spark when they touch the metal nozzle again, igniting the petrol fumes.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

AFTER Hurricane Katrina, the Mississippi region could have more trouble in store. An earthquake faultline runs under the river basin and it is growing more active.

This quake zone may result from the end of the last Ice Age, when North America flexed as the colossal weight of ice sheets melted. The strains of that recovery are continuing.

In 1811-12 the fault erupted with several earthquakes, the greatest in the history of the US and ten times larger than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Huge waves tore up the Mississippi River, the town of New Madrid, Missouri, was obliterated, St Louis was badly damaged, and tremors made church bells ring in Boston, 1,000 miles away. But the population around the epicentre was relatively sparse and casualties were few.

Since then the faultline has been quiet. But recent studies reveal renewed activity in the past few years, and the US Geology Service calculates there is now a 40 per cent chance of a significant earthquake within the next 35 years. Worse still, this region sits on clay and sandy sediments that would behave like liquid in a quake, with catastrophic results.

Memphis, Tennessee, could be devastated, putting the population of nearly one million at risk. It is expected that damage would spread through much of St Louis, nuclear power plants across the Midwest, and even reach Chicago, hundreds of miles to the north.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

SUMMER is hardly over, the tree leaves are barely starting to change colour and already forecasts are being made for what sort of winter we can expect. The Sunday Telegraph last weekend carried a stark warning that the coming winter is going to be bitterly cold with heavy snow, and, to add to the misery, households across Britain could face power blackouts.

But before you reach for the thermal underwear, this prediction was a tentative note issued by the Met Office for utility firms, and was not a definite forecast for the winter. In fact, the long-range forecasts may change considerably over the coming weeks and months.

The latest assessment was based on a big seesaw in atmospheric pressure between Iceland and the Azores, which has a major effect on our winter weather. When the pressure is low around Iceland and high by the Azores, the UK can expect mild, and often wet and windy, winters.

But if the pressure builds up around Iceland, we can be plunged into bitterly cold weather and thick snow. However, this pattern of pressure can fluctuate weekly, so making a confident forecast for the months ahead is tricky, to say the least.

In fact, all long-range weather forecasts are a minefield for the unwary. You only have to remember last October when there were confident predictions of a bitter winter to come — and it turned out to be largely mild.

Link to Weather Eye source

[johnholmes]

nice post mate, perhaps you should consider dropping it into the overheated thread which just seems to refuse to calm down on what the Met Office are supposed to have said??!!

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

HURRICANE experts have got enough on their hands without having to worry about what to call new tropical storms, but a naming crisis will soon loom.

This hurricane season there have already been 17 named storms, and we will soon run out of names for more storms.

Names beginning with the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z are not used because they do not offer much scope for naming, and that leaves only four more names left this year: Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma. With the official hurricane season ending on November 30, the possibility of running out of names is considerable.

This situation has never occurred before. Since weather records began in 1851, the greatest number of Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes in one year was 21, in 1933, and that was when names were not usually given to storms.

The hurricane authorities have a contingency plan, though. Once the alphabet is used up, any new storms will be given the names of Greek letters, from Alpha onwards.

But that poses its own problem. Normally the name of an intense storm — such as Katrina or Rita — is retired from the list of names and new names have to be drafted in. So if there is a deadly Hurricane Alpha, what will replace it the next time round?

Link to Weather Eye source

[reef]

Interesting, maybe they should change to latin if the Greek names are retired. I guess it would make it even more confusing

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

A HUNDRED years ago, Harold Des Voeux coined the word “smog”. Addressing the Coal Smoke Abatement Society in London, Des Voeux, a doctor, described how coal smoke and fog combined into smog; a foul, polluted air.

The Daily Graphic newspaper interviewed him: “He said it required no science to see that there was something produced in great cities which was not found in the country, and that was smoky fog, or what was known as ‘smog’. ”

Smog has had a long history in London. In the 12th century, large supplies of soft, bituminous “sea coal” from North East England were burnt in the capital, but it was inefficient and incredibly smoky.

When a lid of warm air lay on top of cold air on the ground, smog could be trapped for days or weeks. Complaints about the foul air dated back to at least 1272 when King Edward I, on the urging of noblemen and clerics, tried to ban the burning of coal, without success.

Richard III, Henry V and Elizabeth I also failed to curb the burning of coal, and in 1661 John Evelyn complained bitterly about a “hellish and dismall cloud of sea-coal” over the capital.

It was not until the 1950s, after a four-day fog in 1952 killed an estimated 12,000 Londoners, that any real reform was passed, with the Clean Air Act of 1956.

Link to Weather Eye source

[frogesque]

I was born and dragged down ( ) in Guildford, Surrey and I can remember the freezing greenish foul tasting tar that used to form at nights. Smog was so thick one night my dad came wheezing home from work hours late. He'd to walk from the train station pushing his bike and a que of cars had followed him up the road. He could only see the curb by their headlights and all the drivers could see was the outline in front of them. We all paid a heavy price for our toasted crumpets in front of the open grate. I was 9 years old in '56 and by the time I moved to Scotland in '68 things had improved dramatically.

If anyone doubts we can have an effect on the envionment they only have to investigate the smogs of the 50's

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

“A good October and a good blast, To blow the hog acorn and mast.”

OCTOBER is a month notorious for wild winds. The great storm of October 15, 1987, brought winds gusting to 185km/h (115mph), which tore through southern England, felled 19 million trees and killed 18 people.

It also spawned the famous Michael Fish quote: “Earlier today, a woman rang the BBC and said she had heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well, if you are watching, don’t worry, there isn’t.” To be fair, Fish did go on to say: “Actually the weather will be very windy.” And there lies a confusion. Meteorologists call a hurricane a revolving tropical storm with winds averaging more than 119km/h (74mph) on seas warmer than 26.5C (80F). Our seas are far too cold for hurricanes, but we do get violent storms with hurricane-force winds of the same speed.

This mix-up may explain a bizarre story in the Western Mail newspaper last week, that global warming will bring hurricanes to Britain. This is highly unlikely, at least in our lifetime. But we do get the remnants of dead hurricanes.

Long after a hurricane has died on land or cold seas, its huge cargo of warm, wet air is left lingering in the atmosphere. Sometimes those ghostly remnants get sucked into an ordinary Atlantic storm, boosting its power before it batters the UK.

Link to Weather Eye source

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

TORNADOS are devilish things to forecast accurately, as the residents of Birmingham found out when one tore through Moseley and King’s Heath on July 28 with such devastation.

But we can produce our own simple forecasts — using garden hoses. This may sound mad, but the idea was developed by the respected National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US.

An array of porous garden hoses used for irrigating plants was laid out over an area the size of a football field. The hoses collected sounds and funnelled them into a highly sensitive sensor that detects infrasound, very low-frequency sound waves well below the range of our hearing.

Tornados give out infrasound over long distances, and by filtering out other wind noises the hosepipes gave surprisingly good warnings. Alfred Bedard, one of the engineers involved in the project, said: “We have detected sounds using this system at ranges greater than 1,000 miles.” In practice, the garden hoses gave up to 30 minutes’ warning of an approaching tornado.

Another domestic tornado detector is a television set with an ordinary aerial. Tornados often come from extremely violent thunderstorms that explode with lightning and the radio waves from each lightning flash can interfere with TV reception. This does not work with cable television — though, to be fair, it is not terribly reliable with an ordinary television either.

Link to Weather Eye source

[johnholmes]

quite fascinating about porous hose pipes. Wonder if TORRO will start doing that?!

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

BE WARNED if you are a Scot and frightened of eight-legged creatures — a cousin of the black widow is crossing the border. Steatoda grossa is a dark-coloured spider from the Canary Islands, so closely related to the notorious black widow that it is known as a false widow. Although its bite is not fatal it can be as painful as a wasp sting.

Steatoda has been scampering through southern England for well over a decade and may have been imported in fruit. Exactly how it arrived and then survived in Scotland is uncertain, although climate change is strongly suspected. In fact, a warmer climate may be to blame for big spiders up to 9cm (3.5in) long invading Scottish homes over recent years.

Tegenaria domesticus, the common house spider, is well known in England and Wales but is a big surprise north of the Border, where spiders tend to be much more modest. The new house guests are seen hanging on walls, ceilings and, like their southern cousins, often end up trapped in the bath.

Another house spider setting up home in Scotland is Amaurobius fenestralis, a brown creature up to 12mm (0.5in) long.

The hairy Uloborus plumipes, commonly known as a garden centre spider, is now crawling into the central belt of Scotland. It appeared in England only about a decade ago, and is spreading rapidly northwards, often via deliveries made to garden centres.

Link to Weather Eye source

[shuggee]

Somebody tell Mrs Moo immediately!! LOL.

[highcliffe2]

BY PAUL SIMONS

A BLUE Moon is scarce enough, but even rarer is a Moon that seems to wink with a flash of red.

A remarkable photo of a lunar red flash was taken recently by an astronomer in Stuttgart. This shows an almost full moon coloured orange in the night sky, but at the bottom of the moon a thin slice of bright red appears magnified and distorted by the atmosphere (see it at antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050922.html).

This is similar to another fabulous sight, the green flash, a brilliant flash of emerald green beaming out from the top of a setting sun. Both sorts of optical effects are created by the atmosphere behaving like a huge glass prism. Layers of air of different temperatures can split the light of the sun or moon into the colours of the spectrum — blue is bent most, but becomes lost in the atmosphere, red light is refracted the least and green is somewhere in the middle.

As for a blue Moon, this is a different phenomenon. Tiny particles of ash or dust floating around in the atmosphere can scatter moonlight and make it appear blue. In autumn 1963 the Moon turned blue over much of Britain thanks to the eruption of a volcano on Bali, which produced huge amounts of dust and sulphur dioxide. Blue Moons and blue Suns were seen worldwide after the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883.

Link to Weather Eye source