Weather Eye

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From The Times June 7, 2008

Bets are on for a fine Derby at Epsom

Paul Simons Weather Eye

It looks as though the Derby at Epsom will have some decent weather today, but the race has had a chequered weather history since it first began in 1779.

Worst of all was 1911, when the Derby was held on May 31, just before the coronation of George V. It was an intensely hot and muggy day and as the afternoon wore on, the skies grew dark with thunderclouds. Soon after the race, a ferocious thunderstorm broke out, with an extraordinary downpour of rain and hail. Blinding flashes of lightning blazed at 30 strokes a minute. “It was an inferno of water, mud, thunder, lightning and hail,” the Daily Express reported. “Horses plunged with fright, confusing heaps of figures were inextricably jumbled together in narrow roadways, and half-drowned pedestrians, drenched cyclists, terrified women and children, and battalions of men were all helpless against the mighty powers of nature in one of her most savage moods.”

Thousands of racegoers were soaked as they rushed to the railway station while others sought shelter in marquees on ground that turned into a quagmire. One of the marquees was hit by lightning, hurling eight people to the ground. Outside, lightning struck a horse-drawn carriage, throwing passengers to the floor and leaving one young man dead.

Several other people were killed by lightning across Surrey and London in one of the worst thunderstorms on record.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4053594.ece

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From The TimesJune 9, 2008

High altitude temperatures encourage rapid acceleration

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Two weeks ago an attempt was made to break the world record for the highest-altitude parachute jump. Michel Fournier, a Frenchman, planned to ascend to about 39,600m (130,000ft) in a helium-filled balloon and jump out in a pressurised suit. Unfortunately, the balloon was accidentally released without him and the venture was scrapped.

So the parachute altitude record set in August 1960 by Joseph Kittinger remains. He rose to 31,333m (102,800ft), high enough in the stratosphere to see the curvature of the Earth and the blackness of space. Temperatures at this altitude are around minus 70C (-94F), and there is so little atmosphere that it is almost a vacuum, which means that acceleration is extremely rapid. Kittinger was in freefall for 4 minutes, 36 seconds and reached speeds up to 988km/h (614mph), approaching the speed of sound.

Asked what it felt like to fall at such high altitude and speed, Kittinger explained: “You feel kind of weightless. But you have no idea that you’re falling unless you can see something that tells you you’re falling, you’ve got nothing visual, you can’t see a tree rushing by, but you can feel the dynamic pressure on the body.”

Kittinger’s ascent and parachute jump was almost the first manned mission into space, and demonstrated that a human being could go all the way into space in a protective suit.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4092755.ece

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From The Times June 10, 2008

High noon display puts rainbows in the shade

Paul Simons Weather Eye

As we approach the summer solstice, the sun is climbing to its highest in the sky around noon, and this is when to watch out for a wonderful streak of rainbow colours in the sky. The colours can be even more vivid than a rainbow, and lie parallel and close to the horizon. The strangest thing is that this spectacle appears without a drop of rain falling from the sky, so it is not a rainbow. Instead, it is created by ice, and is called a circumhorizon arc, also known as a “fire rainbow”, although it is nothing to do with fire or rainbows.

The signs to look out for are wispy cirrus clouds, which are so high that their water is frozen into ice crystals. If the crystals are six-sided and shaped like flat plates facing the ground, they can bend and split sunlight up into the colours of the rainbow, beamed out into a broad arc. These are “pure, bright and well separated prismatic colours — purer than those of the rainbow,” said atmospheric optics expert Les Cowley. “The colours are at their best when the crystal tilts are smallest. Large crystal tilts produce more pastel hues,” he said.

Although the circumhorizon arc is actually a very large halo, you can usually only see a fragment of it, wherever there happen to be cirrus clouds.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4099713.ece

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From The TimesJune 11, 2008

Summer's fleeting visit to the June skies

Paul Simons Weather Eye

What happened to summer? No sooner had the sunglasses and sunblock come out than the hot sunshine vanished. A high-pressure system over Britain made only a fleeting visit before drifting off towards Iceland and Greenland with the fine weather. That departure opened the way for a chill wind straight from the Arctic, dragged down by a depression over Scandinavia. And with the jet stream, a ribbon of wind a few miles high, in a very sluggish mood, there is little to blow the bad weather away.

June can indeed turn surprisingly chilly, and even have snow. The Scottish Highlands often see a June snowfall, and in June 2002, Arctic winds delivered three days of snow over the highest mountains. But snowfalls in the lowlands are much rarer in June.

However, in 1903 the weather in June was dire, with lashings of rain leading to widespread flooding. On June 13, rain fell non-stop in London for 58.5 hours, a new UK record for the longest period of continuous rain. It was also bitterly cold, and The Times reported atrocious conditions around Newmarket, Suffolk, on June 15: “The weather was very cold last night, snow and hail accompanying the rain. Much of the hay already cut in the district has been spoiled and fruit crops ruined.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4106803.ece

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From The Times June 12, 2008

Waterspout phenomenon in Florida

Paul Simons Weather Eye

A spectacular weather phenomenon in Florida was shown on the BBC and Sky News on Tuesday. It was a waterspout, a vortex stretching from the sea to a dark cloud above, and looked like an elephant’s trunk.

Waterspouts are sometimes tornados that pass over water, and can be extremely destructive. But the type seen this week was slightly less violent, and rises up from very warm seas through extremely humid air: a vortex develops with a cloud above and usually moves rather slowly. The Florida Keys are probably the world’s capital for waterspouts, with perhaps some 500 seen each year. The shallow sea is warm, the air extremely humid, and the regular trade winds also help their development.

Waterspouts are usually weaker than strong tornados, but they can sink boats. According to the waterspout expert Joseph Golden, a significant number of so-called Bermuda Triangle incidents, when boats seem to mysteriously disappear, may actually be casualties of waterspouts. Certainly the pirate William Dampier had a close shave with one in 1674. “The fury of the wind still lasted, and took the ship on the starboard bow with such violence that it snapt off the boltsprit and foremast both at once,” he wrote.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4115887.ece

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From The Times June 13, 2008

Floods in Midwest push prices

Paul Simon Weather Eye

Frozen pizzas, cornflakes, wallpaper paste, shoe polish and lipstick could all cost more because of floods in the Midwest region of the US. Relentless rains have hit plantings of maize, a key crop used in a bewildering array of different products, and particularly popular now for producing ethanol for fuel. The trouble is that world supplies of maize are so stretched that a bad harvest in any leading growing region will have big repercussions on world food prices.

In the Midwest, a long run of wet weather through spring and now summer has left fields waterlogged and rivers at bursting point. Iowa is already experiencing record levels of flooding, and the danger is expected to spread over a much wider area of the Midwest as stormy weather continues. Especially worrying is an alarming rise in the level of the Mississippi river.

This is a picture alarmingly similar to devastating floods in 1993, when the Mississippi burst its banks and left widespread devastation across the Midwest that cost about $15 billion.

Forecasters have given warning that the Mississippi, north of St Louis, may soon reach the levels of the 1993 flood, and have expressed fears that the city could be flooded by the weekend.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4123997.ece

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From The Times June 14, 2008

Parade of clouds makes for drama in the sky

Paul Simons Weather Eye

There have been some fabulous clouds this past week. Not that everyone enjoyed seeing great towering cauliflower heads of cumulus congestus, the largest type of cumulus cloud. Like its name suggests, these clouds are heaped up as they climb high into an unstable airmass, and can develop into thunderclouds.

On Thursday a cold weather front swept through and brought cumulonimbus calvus, a thundercloud with a brilliant clear-cut, shiny cloudtop, which is how it got its name “calvus”, meaning bald. Cumulonimbus calvus is made up mainly of water droplets, and often showers with rain, but the water at the top of the cloud also begins to freeze into ice crystals. If the cloud goes even higher, more ice crystals develop at the top, and these reflect sunlight so brilliantly that the cloud seems to sparkle. At this stage the top of the cloud also loses its sharp outline and becomes fuzzier. It is then called cumulonimbus capillatus, which can erupt with thunder and lightning, and possibly hail as well.

Another interesting cloud seen on Thursday was a low and very dark cloud, stratofractus, which often forms beneath cumulonimbus. It dangles ragged shreds of cloud like bits of loose cotton wool, and generally scuds across the sky in a hurry, rapidly changing shape as it goes – a type of cloud known as a scud.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4134858.ece

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From The Times June 16, 2008

Storm forecasters predict a busy hurricane season

Paul Simons Weather Eye

June 1 marked the official start of the hurricane season in the Atlantic and Caribbean, and storm forecasters are predicting a busy few months to come. Around two to five big hurricanes are expected, although when and where they could strike is too difficult to predict.

However, a team of scientists at the University of Florida is trying to find ways of protecting homes from hurricane damage. They have developed the world’s most powerful portable wind and rain machine to re-create hurricane winds over 190km/h (120mph), a Category 3 hurricane, in lashings of rain. They will blast empty homes with eight huge industrial fans powered by four marine diesel engines that together produce 2,800 horsepower, the power of a train engine. And high-pressure water jets will mimic wind-driven torrential rain at the rate of some 90cm (35in) an hour.

A hurricane’s force can smash a house to smithereens, but the key to protecting houses is to prevent the roof blowing off and sealing up all openings. Windows are often broken open by debris flying through the air like missiles, letting the wind rush inside and literally lifting the roof off. One form of protection currently recommended is to fit a special harness that straps down the roof to the walls.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4143619.ece

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From The Times June 17, 2008

When death struck at Royal Ascot

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Racegoers with very long memories will be hoping that Royal Ascot, which starts today, does not have to endure a repetition of the chaos which the weather brought in 1930. On June 18, the second day of the races, a thunderstorm broke out just as the winning horse crossed the line in the Royal Hunt Cup. Torrential rain fell, and racegoers ran for shelter.

“Terrified women in mad rush” exclaimed The Daily Herald’s headline. “In some of the tents women fainted. Four collapsed together in one small tent. Word sped that a man had been killed by lightning in Tattersall’s. The real terror showed then. Men went pale. Women gazed at the storm with fascinated horror, deadly white.”

The victim of the lightning was Walter Holbem, a former football player and a bookmaker. However, the Daily Herald seemed more concerned with the ladies’ attire in the mayhem: “Women pinned up their frocks in the manner of charwomen and trooped out. It was almost impossible to find their motor cars. Once smart men and women jostled, ran, searched. Those who set off down the tunnel to the station found two feet of water. They went across the field ankle deep in mud. Their clothes? They were past caring for them.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4151405.ece

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From The Times June 18, 2008

Who says pigs can't fly?

Paul Simons Weather Eye

A real-life version of Dorothy’s dog Toto in The Wizard of Oz almost came to life last Saturday when a dog was picked up in a tornado and flew through the air. The rottweiler, called Chase, was plucked up from his garden in a suburb of Chicago and was seen flying through the air. He was found a block away in woods, dazed and shocked, but otherwise unharmed.

Even larger animals can go for a whirlwind tour in a tornado’s funnel. In August 1835 the author Orlando Whistlecraft described a storm he saw in Suffolk. “A furious tornado burst over a field, where it was vertical, levelling the stubble as if by a heavy roll in a long narrow course, and removing large clods of earth, and some pigs in its passage.”

Flying pigs are, of course, rare, but another case was reported when a tornado struck the village of Cromwell, Nottinghamshire, on August 31, 2003. One witness saw metal pigpens from a farm hurled up to half a mile with some 40 pigs inside. Pigs are not alone in tornado flights. In July 1993 a flock of sheep was reportedly plucked up by a tornado in Pantydwr, Carmarthenshire, and flung several hundred feet away, over stone walls and a river, before landing in another field. Not quite as adventurous as The Wizard of Oz, though.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4160443.ece

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From The Times June 19, 2008

Crop circles are nothing new

Paul Simons Weather Eye

This is the season for crop circles, and each year their designs seem to grow more elaborate. But they have been around for centuriesPaul Simons

This is the season for crop circles, and each year their designs seem to grow more elaborate. One recent circle in Wiltshire is so sophisticated it depicts the mathematical formula pi (News, June 17). The circles first hit the headlines in 1980, but eventually they were revealed as hoaxes.

However, crop circles have been around for centuries. One was clearly illustrated in a woodcut from 1678 inscribed: “The Mowing-Devil: Or, Strange News Out Of Hartford-Shire,” in which a field of oats was reportedly scythed down by the Devil during the night. “The Crop of Oats hew’d as if it had been all of a flame: but next Morning appear’d so neatly mow’d by the Devil or some Infernal Spirit, that no Mortal Man was able to do the like.”

In 1880 the science journal Nature carried a report of crop circles in Guildford, Surrey, after a thunderstorm. “We found a field of standing wheat considerably knocked about, not as an entirety, but in patches forming, as viewed from a distance, circular spots,” the correspondent wrote.

One clue to how crop circles might be made by natural forces was seen in July 2002 in Canada. During a thunderstorm, several small vortices were seen landing in a wheat field and leaving circular patterns behind.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4167359.ece

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From The Times June 20, 2008

Now's the time for the Moon illusion

Paul Simons Weather Eye

If you looked at the full Moon this week and thought that it looked surprisingly large, fear not, what you were seeing was the “Moon illusion”, a phenomenon known about for thousands of years. The Moon is still its usual size, but we think it looks so much larger because it is so low in the sky, skirting the horizon. The inflated size is all in our brains. We know that the Moon is its normal size in photographs, and if you view the Moon through, say, a cardboard tube it also looks perfectly ordinary.

There is some debate about what causes the illusion, though. One suggestion is that when the Moon hugs the horizon, objects in the foreground trick the brain into seeing the Moon as bigger than it really is. Another explanation is that we tend to misjudge distances in the sky – we see planes flying overhead as closer than planes on the horizon, for example – and so it is with the position and size of the Moon.

Whatever the explanation, this is the best time of year to see the Moon illusion as the summer solstice approaches. The Moon and Sun seesaw over the sky – when one is at its highest, the other is lowest. And at the summer solstice, the Sun reaches its highest point for the year, and the Moon is at it lowest.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4175016.ece

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From The Times June 23, 2008

Wimbledon nerve-racking fortnight of weather watching

Paul Simons Weather Eye

The start of Wimbledon today signals another nerve-racking fortnight of weather watching. The outlook for the UK is for plenty of sunshine and showers, but will Wimbledon dodge the downpours, or are the rain covers going to be brought out with regular monotony? All we can say is that southeast England should escape the worst of the rain.

Of course, rain has been a key player throughout the history of Wimbledon. When the championship moved to its current grounds at Church Road, in 1922, play was interrupted every day of the fortnight. Only the Centre Court had tarpaulins to keep the rain off, so all the other courts turned into quagmires. By the second week there was such a backlog of matches that the tournament was extended into a third week, and finished only on Wednesday July 12. Even today, this ranks as the most disrupted tournament in Wimbledon’s history.

But Wimbledon is not all dark clouds and showers. On July 1, 1968, a record 550 spectators needed treatment for heat exhaustion and dehydration in searing temperatures delivered by hot air from the Sahara. And in the famous heatwave of 1976 the temperature hit 31C (88F) every day of the tournament.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4193261.ece

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From The Times June 24, 2008

Sunny Midsummer's Day bodes well for the harvest

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Today is Midsummer’s Day, which is often confused with the summer solstice, and this prompted Brian Moore, of Barry, Glamorgan, to ask: “How is the 24th of June calculated as Midsummer’s Day?”

The summer solstice usually falls on June 21 and is an astronomical event, the longest hours of daylight in the year when the Sun is highest in our sky at noon. However, Midsummer’s Day marks the halfway point in the calendar year and was one of the old Quarter Days: Lady Day (March 25), Midsummer’s Day (June 24), Michaelmas (September 29) and Christmas (December 25). Generally speaking, these were not hugely popular dates as they were often when rents, rates and taxes were due — and our tax year still starts on Lady Day, although the new Gregorian calendar shifted the date from March 25 to April 6.

The eve of Midsummer’s Day used to be celebrated with fires lit on hilltops in praise of the Sun. The medieval church translated this pagan festival into St John’s Day, and in folklore this was a day for a long-range forecast, when it was said that rain falling on St John’s Day gave warning of a wet harvest to come. All the more reason to hope that today turns out dry and sunny.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4200089.ece

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From The Times June 25, 2008

Rollercoaster which shapes the nation

Paul Simons Weather Eye

It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather,” wrote Samuel Johnson 250 years ago in The Idler.

Little has changed in the English obsession with weather since Johnson’s famous line. These islands are stuck on the edge of a vast continent, battered by Atlantic wind and rain, frozen from the Arctic, roasted by European heat waves or basking in mild breezes from the Azores. This rollercoaster weather has shaped the nation: repelling invaders, inspiring the skies of Constable and Turner and the writings of Shakespeare and Dickens.

As for Johnson, he may have been inspired to write his famous line during appalling weather in June 1758. “The rainy weather, which has continued the last month, is said to have given great disturbance to the inspectors of barometers,” he wrote. “Many coats have lost their gloss and many curls have been moistened to flaccidity.” Perhaps it was no coincidence that at this time the umbrella was becoming popular for gentlemen; when Dr John Shebbeare was placed in a pillory that summer for seditious political writings, his servant stood beside him with an umbrella to protect him from the rain.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4207141.ece

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From The Times June 26, 2008

The drowned town of Winchelsea

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Winchelsea is a magnificent town overlooking the Sussex coast, but it is not the original town. Old Winchelsea was a great port built on a huge shingle bank, a strategic gateway to Normandy and a leading importer of French wine. But from 1233 a series of storms devastated the town. The chronicler Raphael Holinshed described one great tempest in October 1250, when “the sea appeared in the dark of night to burn, as if it had been on fire . . . bridges, mills, breaks, and banks, there were 300 houses and some churches drowned”.

Only two years later, the writer Matthew Paris recorded another storm that “drove ships from their anchorages, raised the roofs of houses many of which were thrown down”. Edward I was so concerned with Winchelsea’s destruction that soon after his coronation he visited the town and realised it had to be rebuilt on another site. Plans were drawn up for a new town on a nearby hill, but before the work could be completed another devastating storm struck in 1287. This was so violent that the coastline was reshaped, rivers took new courses, and Old Winchelsea was wiped off the map, although its ruins appeared at low tide for years afterwards. Today the site of the old town is roughly where Pontins holiday camp lies at Camber Sands.

Winchelsea History Week runs until June 29, www.winchelsea.net

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4214716.ece

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From The Times June 27, 2008

The dangers of decrepit dams

Paul Simons Weather Eye

This time last year about 1,000 people were evacuated in Rotherham in Yorkshire and a section of the M1 closed because it was feared that, after huge rainfalls, the nearby Ulley dam might fail. Now a new report highlights how millions of people in England and Wales are unaware of the danger they could face if a dam were to burst in their area (report, June 26 ). Many of our dams were built in Victorian times, and there have been some spectacular failures.

One of the worst, in 1852, befell the Bilberry dam, built in the hills about three miles above Holmfirth, Yorkshire, now best known as the setting for Last of the Summer Wine. The reservoir was badly constructed and suffered leakages. On February 4 a huge rainfall filled the dam until water spilled over the sides. People near by were evacuated, but no one raised the alarm in Holmfirth and a few hours later the dam collapsed. “The whole mass of earthwork gave way with a loud thundering crash and the pent-up waters rushed with fearful velocity,” reported The Halifax Guardian. Eyewitnesses described rolling waves sweeping away cottages, mills and bridges. The torrent burst through Holmfirth, killing 81 people in their homes. It took decades, however, before new legislation improved the safety of large dams and reservoirs.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4221682.ece

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From The Times June 28, 2008

Electric blue waves light up the night sky

Paul Simons Weather Eye

When Krakatoa erupted in August 1883 it was the loudest explosion in history, heard 3,000 miles away, and barometers in London registered the shockwave. Vast clouds of volcanic dust were shot into the stratosphere and swept around the globe.

Months afterwards the landscape artist William Ascroft stood on the banks of the Thames at Chelsea and made a series of stunning pictures of blood-red twilights, created by the volcanic dust scattering sunlight high in the atmosphere. The following July Ascroft also noted another sort of light that “was much prolonged” after the Sun had set, and made “bright lights on clouds very late at night”. His pictures show waves of silvery-blue threads of clouds, the unmistakeable sign of noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds.

They are the highest clouds in the sky that lie on the edge of space in the mesosphere, about 80km (50 miles) high. No one had seen such clouds before, and it is not certain how the Krakatoa eruption created them. For a long time noctilucent clouds remained a curious oddity, but in recent years they have grown more frequent, possibly caused by increasingly cold temperatures in the upper atmosphere. In the past week there has been an upsurge in noctilucent clouds across much of Britain. Watch out for what look like electric-blue waves in the sky about an hour or so after sunset.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4228664.ece

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From The Times June 30, 2008

Meteorite helps farmers harvest hay

Paul Simons Weather Eye

A remote region of Siberia was rocked by a phenomenal explosion exactly 100 years ago. A fireball streaked across the sky, possibly at about 100,000km/h (62,000mph), and exploded high in the atmosphere.

It is believed to have been a large meteorite. It exploded in a blast equivalent to about 15 one-megaton atomic bombs, smashing flat 60 million trees over an area of more than 2,000 sq km (770 sq miles) in forest near the Tunguska river.

Soon afterwards a strange glow was reported across Europe after sunset. A letter to The Times from Mr Holcombe Ingleby in Brancaster, Norfolk, described how he woke up at 1.15am on July 1, 1908, when the night sky grew incredibly bright. “So strong was the light at this hour that I could read a book by it in my chamber quite comfortably,” he wrote. “The sky was a delicate salmon pink, and the birds began their matutinal song.”

In fact, there were reports that the sky was bright enough for some farmers to work through the night to harvest their hay.

The glow may have been caused by dust left over from the meteorite’s explosion reflecting light high in the upper atmosphere. Terrific afterglows in the twilight sky were also reported after the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, when masses of volcanic ash were thrown up into the stratosphere.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4237520.ece

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From The Times July 1, 2008

California's purple haze

Paul Simons weather Eye

The Sun turned purple in California last week. The fantastic sight came from the smoke of hundreds of wildfires that broke out in tinder-dry conditions across the state. The tiny bits of soot that filled the air were just the right size to scatter the red colours of sunlight and let through shades of purple.

Scotland witnessed its own surreal spectacle on September 26, 1950, when the Sun turned blue. “All over the city people stopped to gaze at the sapphire sphere,” described The Scotsman in Edinburgh. The newspaper’s switchboard was jammed with callers, some of whom thought the end of the world was coming. And later that night the country was treated to the sight of a blue Moon.

An RAF jet fighter was sent up to investigate and reported that the Sun was a vivid blue up to a few miles high, where a layer of smoky brown haze was hanging. Above that the Sun looked normal. The smoke had come from massive wildfires in Alberta that turned the Sun purple or orange across much of North America. The smoke was then blown across the Atlantic.

Wildfires are not that unusual, so why is the proverbial Blue Moon, or Blue Sun, not seen more often? The smoke particles from the fires have to be the same specific size and that is quite rare.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4244584.ece

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From The Times July 2, 2008

Multi-coloured showers from Africa

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Red showers of rain fell over much of England 40 years ago, a spectacle of almost biblical drama. It was even more surreal to have a blistering heatwave beforehand that had left the country sweltering. But the heat suddenly broke and down came huge downpours of rain, which came in an assortment of red, yellow and pink colours.

The next day, July 2, people woke up to an amazing sight — everything outside was covered in an amazing coat of red, orange or yellow sandy powder. Washing left outside was stained, windows were streaked, plants were coated, and so many cars were covered in dirt that water suppliers reported a big surge in demand as people washed everything clean. Frantic callers to the police and councils worried about possible safety risks from what looked like a distinctly unhealthy substance of some sort.

The crisis was actually a heavy shower of Saharan sand. Storms had swept up huge clouds of desert dust from the Sahara, which was swept over Spain on very hot air until it reached the UK and washed down in showers of extremely large raindrops. In fact, the UK gets showered with Saharan sand a few times a year but the evidence left behind is often mistaken for ordinary, humdrum dirt.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4251206.ece

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From The Times July 3, 2008

The first weather report for England

Paul Simons Weather Eye

When Caesar invaded England in 55BC he gave us our first weather report for this country. He tells how his fleet of 100 ships sailed across the Channel in fair weather, and when the cliffs of Dover came into sight the English warriors were waiting on the clifftops ready for the invaders. So the Romans sailed farther up the coast looking for a safe landing place. They found flat open beaches near Deal or Walmer on a falling tide and established a camp on August 26-27.

A team of astronomers re-enacted the landings in August 2007, in a rare opportunity when the lunar cycle and alignment of the Sun and Moon gave tidal conditions that coincided closely with those that Caesar had experienced – such an alignment would not occur again until 2140. But they found that the Channel was flowing the wrong way on those dates. However, exactly the right conditions for the safe landing happened four days earlier, on August 22-23, giving a revised date for the Roman invasion.

The safe landing did not help Caesar, though. Four days later, “such storms ensued that the task [of fighting the English] was of necessity interrupted”, he wrote. In a high tide and a storm surge the Roman ships were battered, and Caesar brought his army back to Gaul.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4258197.ece

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From The Times July 4, 2008

Earth's oval-shaped orbit creates strange effect

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Today the Earth is at aphelion, its farthest distance from the Sun during the whole year, and this year the Earth will be at its second farthest aphelion of the century. Not that it will feel much different though.

The reason for aphelion is the slightly oval-shaped orbit of the Earth around the Sun, with the Sun slightly off-centre. So at this aphelion the Earth lies about 152 million km (94.5 million miles) away from the Sun, roughly 2.4 million km (1.5 million miles) more than average.

That means that the Sun will appear 1.7 per cent smaller in the sky and 7 per cent less bright at aphelion than at perihelion, its closest distance to the Sun, which happened in early January. This makes our summers slightly cooler in the northern hemisphere, but the difference is hardly noticeable.

Another strange effect at aphelion is that the Earth travels most slowly in its yearly orbit – an illustration of this can be seen at www.analemma.com. This slowing down stretches out the summer in the northern hemisphere by almost five days.

The elliptical orbit, as well as the tilt of the Earth, can also add up to 15 minutes’ difference between sundial and clock time. This is called the equation of time.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4265315.ece

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From The Times July 5, 2008

Wimbledon is not a washout but a heatwave is not a safe bet

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Rain stopped play at Wimbledon on Thursday with a short, sharp thunderstorm. More bad weather is forecast this weekend, but it is far from a washout of a tournament. In fact, losing a whole day’s play to rain has happened 30 times in Wimbledon’s history since 1922.

In 1985 rain stopped play every day of the first week. On the opening day a thunderstorm rocked Wimbledon with a huge clap of thunder and a lightning strike that blasted a huge chunk of masonry off the main building. In the second week the Met Office’s newly installed rainfall radar revealed an approaching cloudburst. The forecaster Bill Giles phoned the tournament referee to give him warning, and although at the time the sky was cloudless, the courts were covered. A short while later a black cloud dropped a deluge of some 40mm (1.5in) rain in just 20 minutes, flooding the spectators’ and players’ tunnels on Centre Court with two feet of water.

This weekend a depression is aimed directly at the UK, but how much play will be rained off is not certain. This July, however, looks likely to remain unsettled at least until the middle of the month. And do not hold your breath waiting for a sustained heatwave — the year’s high of 28C (82F) recorded on Tuesday looks likely to remain unsurpassed for some time yet.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4273659.ece

[grab my graupel]

From The Times July 7, 2008

fish are diving deeper to seek cooler temperatures

Paul Simons Weather Eye

As hill walkers and mountain climbers know so well, the higher you climb, the cooler the weather. The same happens to plants and animals that are migrating up mountains in search of cooler temperatures as climate change makes life too warm for them lower down the slopes. A recent study of forest plants in Western Europe shows that on average most of them have climbed nearly 30m (98ft) each decade for the past century as they seek out colder refuges. Eventually many plants will run out of slopes to climb, and then they will face extinction or somehow have to move further north.

Something remarkably similar is happening in the sea: fish are diving deeper to seek cooler temperatures. A new study has revealed that over the last quarter of a century North Sea fish have dived deeper by an average of 9m (30ft), and some species have sunk far deeper than that.

The problem they face is similar to the mountain plants. Sooner or later the fish will run out of deep sea, especially in the southern parts of the North Sea, which are quite shallow. The only alternative then is for them to seek out colder waters further north. But then they will run into problems of different habitats they may not be able to adjust to.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4282072.ece

[grab my graupel]

From The Times August 8, 2007

River of wind steers rain our way

Paul Simons Weather Eye

After another weekend of wind, rain and clouds you might think we had skipped summer and plunged straight into autumn. As John Keats lamented in 1818, “It is impossible to live in a country which is continually under hatches . . . Rain! Rain Rain!”

So, how long is this wet weather going to last? Normally at this time of year a large area of high pressure sits near the Azores and extends a ridge northwards, bringing a spell of warm, sunny weather. But this summer, like last year, the Azores High has struggled to get a toehold over Britain. Instead, Atlantic depressions are being steered here by the jet stream, a river of wind a few miles high in the atmosphere. Usually the jet stream swings north of Britain in the summer, but for the past several weeks it has been taking a more southerly track near the UK.

And like last summer, the jet stream has developed a kink, or trough, in our vicinity. Depressions coming under the influence of a trough often stall for a time, executing graceful pirouettes, and giving them more time to drop their rain.

Unfortunately the jet stream has dug in and shows little sign of budging, so largely unsettled conditions look like staying around, at least for the next several days.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weat...icle4289258.ece