Weather Eye

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From The Times December 14, 2009

Halcyon Days

Paul Simons Weather Eye

A spell of peace and quiet in otherwise turbulent and difficult times.

Today marks the start of the Halcyon Days, a spell of peace and quiet in otherwise turbulent and difficult times. In fact, the UK is now taking a well-deserved rest from an extremely turbulent six weeks of wind and rain, with peace and calm restored thanks to a strong anti-cyclone over the country. This high-pressure system is strong enough to block the stream of Atlantic storms that have plagued us. Instead, the stormy weather has been sent on a detour farther south, sweeping through the Mediterranean and North Africa. Unfortunately, the downside of this is that the UK is left in the cold, and in the clear, calm nights we now face widespread frost and fog.

In Greek mythology, though, the Halcyon Days were a fortnight of not only tranquillity, but also unseasonally mild weather centred around the winter solstice. This was when Aeolus, keeper of the winds, commanded the sea and wind to be calm. In the Mediterranean this sunny and windless period was particularly welcome for the halcyon, an ancient name for the kingfisher of the Mediterranean, which breeds during late December in nests tunnelled into waterside banks. The Ancient Greeks, however, believed that the kingfishers built floating nests, and wherever these drifted the seas and winds were becalmed.

As John Milton wrote in On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity:

“Who now hath quite forgot to rave While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6955749.ece

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From The Times December 15, 2009

Optical illusions caused by fog

Paul Simons Weather Eye

December is the foggiest month of the year, when cold, wet, stagnant air creates a cloud on the groundPaul Simons Recommend? Many parts of Britain have been waking up to dense fog recently.

December is the foggiest month of the year, when cold, wet, stagnant air creates a cloud on the ground. And that fog can play tricks on the eyes, most notoriously in “motorway madness”, when drivers lose their sense of speed and distance. After a series of multiple pile-ups on foggy motorways, the 70mph speed limit was introduced in 1965 for motorways and all other unrestricted roads. However, the speed limit seems to have made little difference to drivers’ behaviour in fog.

The novel The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx goes some way to explain this phenomenon. As a thick fog hugs the coast of Newfoundland, “a rock loomed on the starboard bow, a great tower in the twisting vapour”. But the appearance of the rock is no surprise to the character Billy Pretty. “It’s fog-loom that makes it look so big to you. It’s an optical illusion, is the old fog-loom. Makes a dory look like an oil tanker.”

Leonardo da Vinci explained fog loom after spending many years in Milan, where fog often filled the valley of the Po river. “Objects seen through a fog will appear larger than they really are,” he wrote in his Treatise on Painting. “There is a great deception . . . the eye being accustomed to see an object diminished in size at a great distance supposes this to be farther off than it is, and consequently imagines it larger.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6956371.ece

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From The Times December 16, 2009

John Tyndall revealed gases that control climate

Paul Simons Weather Eye

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the discovery that carbon dioxide plays a key role in our climate.

In the mid-1800s the Irish physicist John Tyndall was working at the Royal Institution, London, where in 1859 he invented an instrument to measure the power of gases to absorb heat. He discovered that air could trap heat but that oxygen and nitrogen, the main gases in the atmosphere, had no effect. He then tried coal gas, used for lighting at the time and made up of carbon dioxide and several other gases, and found that it was as good as a block of wood at blocking heat. Then he found that carbon dioxide and water vapour were both superb at trapping heat, even in small quantities, and realised that they could control the Earth’s climate.

“The waves of heat speed from our Earth through our atmosphere towards space,” he wrote. “These waves dash in their passage against the atoms of oxygen and nitrogen, and against molecules of aqueous vapour. Thinly scattered as these latter are, we might naturally think of them meanly as barriers to the waves of heat.” Without this natural blanket, the climate would be unbearable: “The warmth of our fields and gardens would pour itself unrequited into space, and the Sun would rise upon an island held fast in the iron grip of frost.”

More than 50 years later it was realised that CO2 from human activities added to the natural greenhouse effect.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6957807.ece

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From The Times December 18, 2009

Why does it feel cold outside?

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Why does it feel much colder than the weather forecasts say it is?

“It cannot have escaped the attention of any person moderately conversant with natural philosophy that the index of a thermometer is a very imperfect measure of what I might call sensible cold,” wrote the physician William Heberden the Younger in 1826. “The sensations of the body depend altogether on the rapidity with which its own heat is carried off.” In other words, it feels much colder in the wind.

The wind removes warm air from around the body, and the faster the wind speed, the colder it usually feels — the basis of the windchill factor. When the thermometer reads 0C (32F) without any wind, the windchill is exactly the same. But with a 16km/h (10mph) wind it feels like minus 7C (19F), and a 32km/h (20mph) wind is like minus 13C (9F).

The term windchill factor was coined in 1939, by the polar explorer Paul Siple. On Antarctic expeditions Siple became concerned that the slightest breeze in the intense cold could make conditions unbearable. “Vapour from a man’s breath could freeze his eyelashes shut in an instant and make him believe that he had gone blind. The intense pain of the cold on fingers and toes could easily distract him, and even destroy his ability to reason clearly,” he wrote. And he used the idea to alert other polar explorers to the dangers of the cold, to prevent hypothermia and frostbite.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6960720.ece

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From The Times December 19, 2009

Arctic winds produce large snowfalls

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Europe is in the grip of a big freeze. Arctic winds have produced large snowfalls and even southern France has had outbreaks of snow. Temperatures have dropped to minus 20C (-4F) on high slopes in the Alps with plenty of fresh snow, and the skiing looks very good for the holiday season in most of the European ski resorts.

Big snowstorms in North America have boosted snow levels in eastern and western ski resorts. Some of the biggest snowfalls were around the Great Lakes, where extra moisture from the lakes beefed up stormclouds. Some parts of Michigan and New York State now have 60cm (2ft) snow on the ground.

The cold reached frightening lows in Canada, where temperatures dropped to minus 46C (-51F) in Edmonton, Alberta, equalling its all-time lowest record temperature. Ontario was hit by one of its worst ever snowstorms with about 100cm (39in) snow in three days, leaving 100,000 people stranded. While cold Arctic air swept over some northern US states, hurricane-force winds battered the Pacific North West. Heavy downpours of rain pounded southern California last weekend, setting off landslides that trapped drivers on blocked roads. Southern states also have been drenched in a barrage of storms this month and last week New Orleans was hit by record rainfall.

The cyclone season in the southern hemisphere has begun. Fiji was struck by a cyclone with winds gusting to 90mph and deluges of rain. Three people were killed and thousands of homes damaged. The first cyclone of the season in Australia skirted around the northwestern coast. Meanwhile, more than 100 wildfires raged in the south east of the country in a punishing drought that has lasted most of the past decade.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6961992.ece

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From The Times December 22, 2009

Furniture design improved after cold winter

Paul Simons Weather Eye

A harsh winter 300 years ago helped to change the course of British furniture making. Quality furniture from the late 1600s and early 1700s often used walnut wood, which was prized for its hardness, colour and intricate grain patterns. Much walnut wood was imported from France, but walnut gave way to mahogany.

Although the walnut tree grows as far north as Norway, it is killed by intense cold at about minus 20C (-4F). During the bitterly cold winter of 1709-10 many walnut trees died. The whole of France was frozen, as a chronicle in Burgundy recorded: “Travellers died in the countryside, livestock in the stables, wild animals in the woods; nearly all the birds died, wine froze in barrels and public fires were lit to warm the poor.” With roads and rivers blocked by ice, it was impossible to transport food to the cities and Paris waited three months for fresh supplies. Across Europe it was the coldest winter for 500 years. About two thirds of the walnut trees in Northern Europe perished. Timber supplies ran so low that in 1720 the French Government banned walnut exports.

Faced with the loss of their favourite wood, English furniture- makers turned instead to mahogany from British Honduras in Central America. The new wood was a sensation with a rich colour and resistance to rot and woodworm. With its fine grain, furniture design improved as individual parts could be cut more slender in shape and carved more intricately.

Furniture design improved after cold winter A harsh winter 300 years ago helped to change the course of British furniture making. Quality furniture from the late 1600s and early 1700s often used walnut wood, which was prized for its hardness, colour and intricate grain patterns. Much walnut wood was imported from France, but walnut gave way to mahogany.

Although the walnut tree grows as far north as Norway, it is killed by intense cold at about minus 20C (-4F). During the bitterly cold winter of 1709-10 many walnut trees died. The whole of France was frozen, as a chronicle in Burgundy recorded: “Travellers died in the countryside, livestock in the stables, wild animals in the woods; nearly all the birds died, wine froze in barrels and public fires were lit to warm the poor.” With roads and rivers blocked by ice, it was impossible to transport food to the cities and Paris waited three months for fresh supplies. Across Europe it was the coldest winter for 500 years. About two thirds of the walnut trees in Northern Europe perished. Timber supplies ran so low that in 1720 the French Government banned walnut exports.

Faced with the loss of their favourite wood, English furniture- makers turned instead to mahogany from British Honduras in Central America. The new wood was a sensation with a rich colour and resistance to rot and woodworm. With its fine grain, furniture design improved as individual parts could be cut more slender in shape and carved more intricately.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6964325.ece

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From The Times December 24, 2009

The Big Freeze

Paul Simons Weather Eye

A bitterly cold winter 700 years age froze the Thames, and the first frost fair was begun. A breeze drawn out of higher regions so tightly bound the Earth that laden vehicles could cross the Thames, wrote the chronicler Matthew of Westminster. Although the Thames had frozen before, this was the first time that any mention was made of sports and diversions on the ice and the river froze so solidly, that bonfires could be lit on it. But the big freeze also caused problems. There was such cold and such masses and piles of ice on the Thames and everywhere else that the poor were overcome by excessive cold, recorded another journal.

In fact, this was the beginning of many bitter winters and cold, wet summers. The terrible weather led to crop failures that sent food prices sky-high, and by the spring of 1316 a famine had begun, accompanied by an epidemic, possibly of typhoid, that sent the death rate soaring.

The scale of the disaster was staggering. Between 1309 and 1327 the population of England fell from about six million to three million a fall even greater than that caused by the Black Death in 1348-50. The seismic shifts in population led to many villages being abandoned, and with acute shortages of labour the serfs became freemen. Some experts claim that this was the beginning of capitalism, as the old feudal order broke down and money became widely used instead of goods and services.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6966320.ece

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From The Times December 26, 2009

A year or wild weather

Paul Simons Weather Eye

The world experienced some wild weather this year. A brutal freeze in Europe in January brought out icebreakers to clear Rotterdam port of ice and Marseilles received a rare snowfall. In southern France, northern Spain and Italy, the worst storm for a decade caused damage estimated at $3.5 billion. But it was a vintage ski season across Europe as the cold and snow lasted well into March.

The US suffered a bitter winter that lingered on well into April in places, although some of California broke January temperature records, including 29C (85F) in Los Angeles. Japan had one of its warmest winters on record and the cherry blossom appeared a week earlier than average. Most worrying, the Arctic winter was not intense enough to produce extensive ice cover over the sea. This affected global temperatures by reflecting less solar energy into space and so helped the world to warm up.

In a blistering heat wave over the Indian sub-continent this spring, temperatures hit 48C (118F) before the monsoon broke. But India suffered its weakest monsoon for nearly 40 years, followed by intense rains in October that killed more than 200 people in floods in the south. In southern China and northern Vietnam, intense rain in July caused flooding and massive destruction that left more than 100 people dead and a million homeless.

West Africa was swamped by seasonal rains, affecting 600,000 people, while in East Africa a prolonged drought crippled Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia.

South-East Asia was battered by typhoons. More than 2,000 people were killed by four huge storms that hit Taiwan, China, Vietnam and the Philippines from August to October.

And 2009 will be the fifth warmest year in the 160-year record of world temperatures.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6966582.ece

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From The Times December 28, 2009

The worst train accident in British history

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Today marks the 130th anniversary of the worst engineering disaster in British history. December 1879 had been a bitterly cold month before a ferocious gale tore through Scotland on the 28th, with winds gusting over 80mph.

The storm slammed into the Tay Bridge then the longest bridge in the world at nearly two miles long which had opened 18 months previously. At 7.13pm a passenger train from Burntisland to Dundee crossed the bridge, wrought iron girders gave way and a half-mile section of the bridge collapsed. The train plunged into the Firth of Tay in a shower of sparks, but conditions were too atrocious to make any rescue attempts that night. No survivors were found the next day all 75 or so people on board the train died, the worst train accident in British history.

The disaster sent shock waves through Britain. A hastily convened inquiry concluded that the bridge failed because of poor engineering and bad quality materials, blaming the chief engineer, Sir Thomas Bouch. Since then, evidence has revealed that the bridge was badly constructed after the builders went over budget. Bouch was used as a convenient scapegoat.

The disaster led to improvements in engineering, with more attention paid to wind speeds in the design of large structures. A new instrument for measuring wind speed was invented, the Dines pressure tube anemometer, which became the standard instrument of its type.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6966600.ece

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From The Times December 29, 2009

The Little Ice Age

Paul Simons Weather Eye

This year marked the 800th anniversary of the old London Bridge. In its day the bridge was one of the great medieval wonders of the world 19 stone arches topped with shops and houses that towered over the traffic below.

The bridges structure had a dramatic effect on the flow of the Thames. The arches were so narrow that the river flow was considerably slower, making the Thames much more susceptible to freezing in cold winters. Ice floes could get jammed under the narrow arches and freeze over to create a dam that trapped more ice behind it, until the river completely froze into a thick sheet.

It was some time later that the Thames became a playground for London, when frost fairs were held on the ice with shops, bonfires and racing. This is sometimes taken to indicate how cold the climate was during the 1600s to 1800s, a period known as the Little Ice Age.

But the Thames had been freezing over well before then. And in the winter of 1281-82 the bridge actually broke up: There was such a frost and snow as no man living could remember the like: where, through five arches of London Bridge were borne downe and carried away by the streame.

When the old London Bridge was demolished in 1831, the replacement bridge was built with much wider arches, which allowed the Thames to flow faster beneath it. As a result the river never again froze in London, even in bitterly cold winters.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6969694.ece

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From The Times December 30, 2009

King tides take their toll in the Pacific

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Around this time of year many islands in the Pacific are hit by king tides exceptionally high tides. For the Carterets off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea, these tides are now proving to be their death knell, because these low-lying coral islands are sinking under the onslaught of rising seas.

On the face of it the Carterets look like picture-postcard Pacific islands with sandy beaches fringed by swaying palm trees. But in formidable king tides last December the sea ripped through the islands in a flood that was up to knee-high. The salt water poisoned trees, crops and drinking water, about 30m (100ft) of coastline was scoured away, and palm trees were felled or left leaning at crazy angles. Some of the islands were left permanently sliced up into smaller islands.

The king tides are natural events, but they are growing worse as sea levels rise. Faced with a shrinking land, and relying on emergency food supplies, the Carteret islanders are evacuating their homes. The plan is to move the entire 1,000-strong population to Bougainville, an island about 80km (50 miles) away. This will make the Carteret Islands the first lands to be abandoned because of rising sea levels.

And they serve as a warning of future catastrophes for other low-lying lands in the Pacific, as well as the coastlines of Bangladesh, Miami and Shanghai.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6970726.ece

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From The Times December 31, 2009

A wild year for Britain's weather

Paul Simons Weather Eye

This was a wild year for Britains weather. In February London was shocked to wake up to the heaviest snowfall for 18 years. The cold snowy weather continued for two weeks before a mild spell ushered in one of the warmest springs on record.

The Met Office forecast of a barbecue summer created huge excitement, as holidays at home in Britain seemed an enticing prospect. It was too good to be true. June blew hot and cold with Glastonbury rained out, lightning struck the Oval cricket ground in London, and snow fell on high ground in Co Durham.

A heatwave did arrive in late June and early July, when government health warnings were issued about the heat. But the warnings should also have included trench foot, as rains soon crashed down in the wettest July in England and Wales in records dating back almost a century.

However, the summer over the South East and East Anglia was drier than normal, and over the entire UK it was actually warmer than average.

September and October were much better, though dry, warm and sunny in the third- warmest autumn on record in England. But it was also the wettest November on record and the UKs 24-hour rainfall record was broken with a phenomenal deluge at Seathwaite, Cumbria.

It carried on raining for six weeks until winter arrived in mid-December with a vicious spell of cold and snow.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6971835.ece

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From The Times January 1, 2010

Australia Suffers a year of weather disasters

Paul Simons Weather Eye

The worlds wildest weather of last year was in Australia, where every month brought disasters. The new year began with Melbourne withering under its worst recorded heatwave and the outskirts of Sydney facing wildfires. In February more than 200 people died in bush fires northeast of Melbourne, 48.8C (119.8F) was recorded in Victoria and floods hit Queensland.

In March bushfires hit Victoria, dust storms swept southern Australia and a powerful cyclone hit Queensland. For good measure, Melbourne was rocked by an earthquake. Storms in April and May unleashed flash floods across Queensland, forcing thousands of people to evacuate their homes. In May Melbourne recorded its coldest temperature for more than 50 years, and some places in southeast Australia had their coldest April day on record. In June snow swept southeast Australia.

By July Lake Eyre in the heart of the southern desert filled up with water as floodwaters from Queensland seeped through. It was the hottest August on record and some places recorded their highest temperatures of the year even though it was winter.

September brought wildfires to New South Wales, and a dust storm in October turned Sydney into a Martian landscape of red dust, while Queensland suffered wildfires. Clouds of dust returned to southeast Australia in November, followed by more wildfires, and the fires raged through December as well.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6972684.ece

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From The Times January 2, 2010

The Sun may have had the strangest weather of last year

Paul Simons Weather Eye

The strangest weather of last year was possibly not on Earth, but on the Sun. Every 11 years or so the Sun goes through a cycle of sunspots actually magnetic storms erupting across its surface. The number of sunspots reached its minimum in 2007 and should have increased soon afterwards, but the Sun has remained strangely quiet since then. Scientists have been baffled as weeks and sometimes months have gone by without a single sunspot, in what is thought to be the deepest solar minimum for almost 100 years.

This lack of solar activity means that cosmic rays reaching Earth from space have increased and the planets ionosphere in the upper atmosphere has sunk in height, giving less drag on satellites and making collisions between them and space junk more likely. The solar minimum could also be cooling the climate on Earth because of slightly dimished solar irradiance. In fact, the quiet spell on the Sun may be masking some of the warming effects of greenhouse gases, according to recent research by two US solar scientists. The solar minimum, their study suggests, accounts for the somewhat flat temperature trend of the past decade. But even if this solar minimum is offsetting global warming, scientists stress that the overall effect is relatively slight and certainly will not last.

The Sun has gone into long quiet spells before. From 1645 to 1715 few sunspots were seen during a period called the Little Ice Age, when short summers and savage winters often plagued Northern Europe. Scotland was hit particularly hard as harvests were ruined in cold, miserable summers, which led to famine, death, migration and huge depopulation. But whether the quiet Sun was entirely to blame for it remains highly uncertain.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6972591.ece

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From The Times January 4, 2010

A warning for skiers

Paul Simons Weather Eye

For anyone going skiing, a note of caution — the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays on mountains are easily underestimated, with a high risk of sunburn and ultimately skin cancer and eye cataracts.

Because the mountain air is so cool, it gives a false sense of security about the sunlight. But the higher the altitude, the greater the ultraviolet (UV) radiation, because there is less atmosphere to screen out the harmful rays.

The rule of thumb is that for every 300m (1,000ft) in altitude there is 4 per cent more UV. As most ski resorts lie at or above 1,500m (5,000 ft) they are exposed to 20 per cent more UV than at sea level. Worse still, the white surface of snow reflects UV, and a recent study by a team of Japanese scientists revealed that eyes can receive up to 2.5 times more UV on snow than on a beach. Even when the eyes are turned away from the sun, they can still get over 85 per cent more UV on snow. This can cause conditions such as snow blindness, which can lead to inflammation and cataracts. The cornea of the eye is more vulnerable to UV damage than the skin and the team’s lead scientist, Hiroshi Sasaki, recommends using goggles rather than sunglasses to protect eyes.

As for exposed skin, the best protection is to cover as much as possible with clothes, hat, gloves and high collar. Any skin still left exposed needs a regular application of sunblock cream.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6974597.ece

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From The Times January 5, 2010

A lesson for the British during the Boer War

Paul Simons Weather Eye

More than a hundred years ago, during the Boer War, the British troops were battered by the weather. “A storm, with the blackness of night in its eye, swept across the camp and blotted it out,” reported the Manchester Guardian in January 1900, writing about violent rains that fell on the British Army, led by General Buller, on the way to lift the Boers’ siege of Ladysmith in South Africa. The downpours lasted for days and Buller’s immense naval guns and supply wagons sank into mud. Steam tractors were used to drag the supplies out of the mire, but they bogged down too, while soldiers were left drenched in rain and mud, and many succumbed to exposure. The well-prepared Boers then ambushed and defeated Buller, and continued to lay siege to Ladysmith for six months before relief finally got through.

At the beginning of the conflict the year before, the British had been hopelessly unprepared and outmanoeuvred by the Boers in a number of decisive battles, leaving the key garrison towns of Ladysmith, Mafeking and Kimberley under siege. Huge numbers of British reinforcements were rushed to South Africa. But after three years of war the British were almost defeated by South Africa’s savage climate of freezing weather, storms and blistering heat as much as the fighting. It was Britain’s worst military experience since the Napoleonic wars. As Rudyard Kipling wrote: “It taught the British no end of a lesson.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6975656.ece

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From The Times January 6, 2010

Avalanches lead to winter of terror

Paul Simons Weather Eye

They can reach speeds of 320km/h (200mph) and blast buildings to smithereens simply from the shockwave charging ahead of them.

These are avalanches, and they carry anything up to a million tonnes of snow before grinding to a halt in a solid bulge that can set into something akin to white concrete, suffocating anyone caught inside them.

Already this is turning into a winter of terror, as three people have died in avalanches that struck the mountains of Scotland just before the new year, and there have been several deaths in the Alps.

The threat of more avalanches remains extremely high.

Usually snow crystals lock together in a tight bond, but during calm conditions in extreme cold the snow can change into very smooth crystals that are so slippery that they behave almost like ball bearings. In fact, you can see these crystals tumbling down mountain slopes like sugar grains in a breeze. The big problem is when further snow falls on top of this weak, slippery layer, it can give way, taking the hard layers of snow with it.

Even skiing on lower slopes can trigger an avalanche higher up, although it’s a myth that loud noise starts an avalanche. The best avalanche prevention is blowing up vulnerable areas of snow, but even this is not foolproof, as heavy, dense snow can be hard to dislodge before it avalanches.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6976829.ece

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From The Times January 7, 2010

The great freeze

Paul Simons Weather Eye

How bad is this winter? We are still some way off the coldest winter in living memory, the great freeze of 1962-63. That winter turned so cold that the sea froze around the South Coast, icebreakers were used to keep ports open and ice floes floated down the Channel.

Several trains were abandoned in snowdrifts, and buses stopped working when their fuel froze. On January 22 a car drove across the frozen Thames at Oxford, and even Central London was snowed under with a 4.6m (15ft) snowdrift at Oxford Circus.

On January 20 a dramatic rescue mission was launched to free 283 workers marooned at Fylingdales early warning station on the North Yorkshire Moors, which had been snowbound for several days. “In one of the biggest airlifts ever to take place in Britain, workers were ferried in batches of seven or eight, in wind gusts up to 80 miles an hour,” The Times reported. They were flown to Whitby, 12 miles away, but many were still marooned there by snowdrifts.

Mains water supplies burst from deep frost in many places — Liverpool lost eight million gallons of water each day. Thousands of people across the country had to rely on tankers or street standpipes for their water supplies, although the standpipes had to be kept unfrozen using bonfires.

Over the winter 49 people died outdoors from the cold, many trapped in cars during blizzards. It was reckoned to be the coldest winter since 1740.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6978369.ece

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From The Times January 8, 2010

Winds from the east will make winter turn colder

Paul Simons Weather Eye

The winter is about to turn even colder this weekend. The winds are sweeping bitterly cold air from the east into England and Wales. And with temperatures around freezing during the day and winds up to about 25mph the windchill will make it feel about minus 25C (-13F). As the old saying goes:

When the wind is from the East,

Tis neither good for man nor beast.

The winds are being driven by a squeeze between high pressure over Scandinavia and Scotland and low pressure over most of Europe. As for Scotland, the conditions will be calm, dry and sunny but intensely cold down to minus 20C (-4F) at night in sheltered valleys and glens.

One place that often experiences terrifying cold is Braemar, in the Cairngorms of Aberdeenshire. It is the highest, most mountainous and coldest parish in the UK, and lies in a natural bowl in the mountains. The village and surrounding mountains were a favourite holiday retreat for Queen Victoria, who liked it so much that she had Balmoral Castle built a few miles away. And in 1855 Prince Albert donated a weather station to Braemar, which has given an invaluable record of winters ever since. On clear, calm winter nights, cold air slides down the mountain slopes, filling the valley below with frigid air, and on February 11, 1895, Braemar broke the record for Britains lowest temperature, -27.2C (-17F). Braemar equalled its own record on January 10, 1982.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6979754.ece

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From The Times January 9, 2010

Cold Arctic weather sweeps across Europe and Asia

Paul Simons Weather Eye

The big story this week has been a wave of cold Arctic weather sweeping across Europe, Asia and North America. Heavy snow and thick ice hit northern China, the Koreas and India. Beijing had its heaviest snowfall for 59 years. A freeze in northern and eastern India killed about 200 people, although milder weather has arrived since.

In the US, new low temperature records were set in many regions, including many southern states. This weekend it could even snow in northern parts of Florida and there are fears of the freeze reaching the big orchard groves in the southern part of the state.

Europe is gripped by a severe freeze. Temperatures as low as minus 22C (-8F) have left 122 dead in Poland this winter, while in central Norway temperatures plummeted to minus 41C (-42F) on Wednesday. Temperatures in England dropped to minus 17C (1F) on Thursday and virtually the whole of the UK is covered in snow. This is becoming a vintage ski season, although several people have already died in avalanches in the Swiss Alps.

Much of this upheaval is caused by unusually cold temperatures over the surface of the North Atlantic that have upset the normal balance of pressure systems. High-altitude jet stream winds have been shunted farther south than usual, leaving much of the northern hemisphere in the cold.

While one part of the globe shivers, other regions are basking in the sun. The Mediterranean, Alaska and northern Canada are unseasonably warm, and heatwaves are roasting Australia. Parts of the Pacific are 3C above average.

There is a redistribution of warm and cold air around different parts of the world but the overall global temperature is staying much the same.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6980935.ece

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From The Times January 11, 2010

The overlooked deep freeze of 1982

Paul Simons Weather Eye

In the hunt to find the last time Britain suffered a great freeze, one winter has got somewhat overlooked January 1982. At one stage Scotland was colder than the South Pole, and fishermen found their catches of fish freezing instantly as their nets were hauled in. A new record low temperature was set for England minus 26.1C (-15.0F) at Newport, Shropshire, on January 10. And one of the worst blizzards of the century raked the Midlands and South, leaving snowdrifts up to 20ft high. Dozens of cars were abandoned along the M4, mountain rescue teams were brought in to save people trapped in their vehicles, and police rolled giant snowballs on to motorway slip roads to stop motorists who had ignored the motorway closed signs.

And the snow was the worst in living memory in Wales. Hundreds of schools were closed for days, and bread, milk and other basic food supplies ran out. Territorial and regular Army units mounted Operation Snowman to help communities marooned by huge snowdrifts.

South Wales was hit particularly badly, and 500 steelworkers were stranded for five days at Port Talbot and Llanwern steelworks, although they worked round the clock to keep the fires burning and protect furnaces from cooling down. In Cardiff blizzards made streets almost impassable, and one of the citys most famous buildings, the Sophia Pavilion, was destroyed when its roof collapsed.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6982849.ece

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From The Times January 12, 2010

Skating in the Fens is an historic sport

Paul Simons Weather Eye

The years first speed ice-skating races were held on the frozen Fens on Saturday. A quarter-mile track was laid out on the frozen shallow waters of Bury Fen, Cambridgeshire, as 200 spectators watched the One Mile open race won in 3min 3sec. And with more freezing weather expected, the British and Fenland Skating Championships could be held soon, an event that needs such a hard freeze that the races were last held in 1997.

Skating in the Fens is a historic sport, dating back to 1660, when Charles II introduced ice skating from his exile in the Netherlands, just in time for some extremely cold winters. As Samuel Pepys wrote in 1663 of people skating on the ice in St Jamess Park, London: I first in my life, it being a great frost, did see people sliding with their skeates, which is a very pretty art.

Ice skating became so popular in Britain that the worlds first skating club was formed in Edinburgh in 1742, and the worlds first organised ice-skating competition was a 15-mile (24km) race on frozen canals in East Anglia in February 1763.

But the dangers of skating on ice were exposed in January 1867, when hundreds of people went skating on the frozen boating lake in Regents Park, London. The ice on the lake cracked and more than 200 people plunged into the icy waters, leaving 40 people drowned in one of the worst cold-weather disasters in UK history.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6983889.ece

[grab my graupel]

From The Times January 12, 2010

Farmers seem to have avoided the huge losses of past hard winters

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Farmers seem to have avoided the huge losses of past hard winters This snowy winter has caused some quite unexpected damage. In Scotland the sheer weight of snow has caused roofs to collapse. Last Saturday the roof of a house in Pathhead, Midlothian, began collapsing under the weight of snow, and fortunately the two people inside managed to escape. Farmers are having to cope with the collapse of barn roofs. One farmer near Huntly, Aberdeenshire, was lucky to escape with his life when the roof of his cowshed collapsed and trapped him under buckled metal and snow; he escaped probably thanks to the animal manure on the barn floor.

Fifteen farm buildings collapsed in the area in just over a day, as snows reached 1.5m (5ft) deep. Ive been here 30-odd years and weve never had a problem like this before, because every time weve had snow it was usually followed by wind, a local farmer, Tom Jonston, explained. But although wind in previous winters helped to blow snow off roofs, it also buried sheep under snowdrifts. This winter there has been little drifting, but sheep cannot move across the deep snow to reach their feed, and many have died.

However, farmers seem to have avoided the huge losses of past hard winters. In the winter of 1947 about four million sheep and lambs died, almost a quarter of the national total. And many farmers were so badly affected that they gave up sheep farming and sold their land to the Forestry Commission.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6985240.ece

[grab my graupel]

From The Times January 14, 2010

False hopes of an early end to the cold

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Temperatures across the UK are creeping upwards, but cold air lies near by in Europe and could easily return.

Hard winters are often punctuated with brief mild spells, raising false hopes of an early end to the cold. The worst thaws were during the winter of 1947 — the snowiest winter in living memory and the coldest February on record. Brief thaws proved to be false alarms during a freeze that largely lasted seven weeks. But the biggest surprise came in early March, when the most intense blizzard of the century was followed just a few days later by a huge thaw that triggered a national disaster.

The ground was frozen so hard that melting snow ran off into raging torrents of floodwaters just as a storm dropped huge rainfalls. It was, in fact, the wettest March on record in England and Wales. Floodwaters broke the dykes in the Fens, houses collapsed and a vast inland sea formed. Across Britain, floods left 100,000 buildings damaged and over 2,500 sq km (1,000 sq miles) of land flooded across 40 counties. Fleets of boats and army amphibious craft were used to evacuate people from their marooned homes and bring essential supplies; Australia and Canada even sent food parcels.

The damage was estimated to be close to £4.5bn in today’s prices. It is difficult to imagine a more disastrous run of weather at a worse time in history, when the nation was already bankrupt from the war.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6986680.ece

[grab my graupel]

From The Times January 15, 2010

Icicle Peril

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Beware of thaws. Even though rain is beginning to fall in many places, if night-time temperatures stay below freezing a new threat can appear, as melt waters freeze into icicles.

In the freeze of 1963 a brief mild spell in January meant that huge icicles formed across the UK. Power cables in South Wales were so thick with them that they caused a power failure to 60,000 customers; RAF helicopters were used to airlift engineers to hilltops to free the cables of ice. In the West Country, The Times reported sheep “walking about for weeks with icicles tinkling on their fleeces”.

Several railway lines were forced to close as giant icicles hung over the entrances to railway tunnels. Some of these plunged down in fearsome barrages whenever trains passed below, causing injury to engine crews in their open cabs.

Buildings in towns and cities were festooned with menacing icicles hanging down like spears, some of which were about 1m (3ft) long, and pedestrians walked below in fear of their lives. But perhaps the largest one of all was about 18m (60ft) long hanging off Hardraw Force, in the Yorkshire Dales, the highest waterfall in England, when it became completely frozen.

Icicles even featured in a criminal case. A man near Taunton, Somerset, was charged after using two large pieces of ice as offensive weapons against a restaurant owner. Unfortunately, the evidence melted before the case was heard in court.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6988525.ece

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From The Times January 15, 2010

The big thaw

Paul Simons Weather Eye

At long last the northern hemisphere is beginning to thaw out after a desperately cold spell. From Beijing to Miami, the northern continents are breathing a sigh of relief as the big freeze releases its grip, at least for the time being. As everyday life returns to near normality, oil and gas prices are easing — energy use had soared during the cold period. However, new problems could emerge this weekend in the US as a severe storm sweeps the Gulf states and threatens to disrupt oil production.

The lurch in the winter weather across these vast land masses is caused by a seesawing of pressure systems between them and the Arctic. Mild temperatures across the Arctic created far less sea ice than usual this winter. But waves of frigid Arctic air swept farther south than normal, leading to intense cold, snow and ice across temperate regions.

In spite of the current thaw, northern countries should not be lulled into a false sense of security — the pressure could easily swing back again. Severe winters in the past were often punctuated by brief milder spells, followed by more intense cold. The cold weather has not all been bad news. The deep snow has been an unexpected boost for ski resorts in Scotland, where snow has been in short supply in recent years. Even the handful of ski slopes in northern England are enjoying a vintage season.

Those who believe the cold winter signals the end of global warming should cast an eye over the southern hemisphere. Much of Australia is enduring an intense heat wave. Bushfires have swept through large areas of southern Australia and Melbourne recorded its equal hottest night on Monday, with temperatures reaching 34C (93F).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6990157.ece

[grab my graupel]

From The Times January 18, 2010

Seasonal forecasts under the spotlight

Paul Simons Weather Eye

The Met Office has been attacked for its seasonal forecast this winter. John Hirst, its chief executive, admitted that our recent seasonal forecasts have been disappointing (Comment, Jan 15).

But this is not the whole story. In November the forecasters had warned there were signs of cold weather this winter, adding that the chances of this cold weather were twice as likely as in recent winters. The crucial word was chances, because seasonal forecasts give a probability, not a certainty, of what is going to happen in the months ahead. However, we have got so used to accurate daily forecasts about conditions the following day that we are not used to dealing with probabilities in weather forecasting. Yet we deal with probabilities in so many other things in life the chances of winning the National Lottery, of being hit by lightning, of living to a ripe old age, and so on.

The fiasco of last years forecast of a barbecue summer is a good example. The seasonal forecast said there was a high chance of above-average temperatures during the summer, which proved to be correct. The forecasters also explained that they had no clear indication of what the rainfall would be. It was the summer rains that ruined the barbecues, not the temperatures. Seasonal forecasting is exciting, cutting-edge science, but it is far from foolproof and needs to be used with caution.

The Met Office is asking the public about using probabilities in forecasting at: http://bit.ly/6Tuynb

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6991623.ece

[Methuselah]

I just filled-in the MetO's questionnaire...I asked them to bring back the old-style forecasts made famous by the likes of the late Bert Foord...I'm sick of dumbing down!

[grab my graupel]

From The Times January 18, 2010

Hard times for the Met Office

Paul Simons Weather Eye

If the Met Office loses its contract with the BBC (News, Jan 18), it would be a huge blow, one of many rocking the organisation. The Government is keen to privatise it, it is losing commercial contracts to other weather forecasting organisations and the accuracy of its forecasts has been criticised.

Weather forecasting is a perilous business, though. Everyone remembers the mistakes and forgets the successes the Met Office will never live down its disastrous storm forecast in October 1987. In fact, the vast majority of Met Office forecasts these days are accurate, and they are improving. A modern three-day forecast is better than a one-day forecast 30 years ago, and now we get five-day forecasts, which were unheard of in those days.

Unfortunately, there is no single standard for comparing the Met Office forecast results with other organisations. The crucial difference, though, is that the Met Office is exposed to public criticism, and when the weather turns bad everyone loves to blame it. But this is a dangerous game because it is undermining a world-class institution. We need its warnings of disasters, from floods, blizzards and storms, to some of its less well-known work, such as forecasting diseases and air pollution. National planning depends on its predictions of future climate. Without confidence in the Met Office we might as well go back to forecasting with bits of seaweed. We denigrate it at our peril.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6992636.ece

[Thundery wintry showers]

I just filled-in the MetO's questionnaire...I asked them to bring back the old-style forecasts made famous by the likes of the late Bert Foord...I'm sick of dumbing down!

I filled it in too- I didn't refer to the old-style forecasts as I'm pretty sure the dumbing down of those is more down to the BBC than the MetO, but I did mention that probabilities should not replace background information/context but should complement it, and that giving the minimum of info can perpetuate lack of understanding in a vicious circle (which is a point that can also apply to TV forecasts as well as online presentations).

On that topic, a good article by Philip Eden here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/7023899/Ever-wished-you-could-fire-the-Met-Office.html

For instance the Winter 2009/10 forecast from the Met Office would've appeared far less inaccurate if they'd made a specific reference to the fact that they expected a colder than average winter over eastern Europe (as displayed by the probability temperature maps for the globe). Giving just probabilities gave the impression that their forecast was completely wrong, whereas giving that info would have suggested that they merely underestimated the western penetration of the frigid airmass that they correctly expected to develop over eastern Europe and western Asia. Still wrong as far as the UK is concerned- but more understandably so.

Some good points from Paul Simons. I know the MetO haven't covered themselves in glory but a lot of this MetO-bashing is very one-sided and we really need to see the other side of the argument represented as well.

[grab my graupel]

From The Times January 20, 2010

Early signs of another serious freeze

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Just as it seemed safe to go outside again after the big freeze, winter is bursting forth on to the scene today, taking the starring role. Heavy snowfall is expected in Wales, the south Midlands and some central southern areas, as moist, mild Atlantic air drives into colder air. The snowfall will be heaviest on higher ground where it is colder, but even some lowland areas will see snow on the ground, although it will be wet and probably quickly turn to slush.

On Thursday another band of very wet and windy weather will come rushing in from the Atlantic, with chances of snow in Scotland and northern England.

The brief return of snow is a warning shot across our bows — winter is not over yet. A stubborn block of frigid air remains stuck over Scandinavia and Russia and may launch fresh bouts of harsh weather on Britain.

There are early signs that another serious freeze could return in the next week or so. At the moment, the weather patterns over Europe are stuck in something of a rut. There is, however, enough movement to make Britain the battleground between warm Atlantic air clashing with cold northern air. All it will take is for the high pressure that is over Scandinavia to slip farther west, and we will be back to sub-zero cold again.

This pattern is typical of some of our hardest winters in the past, during which the temperature flipped between mild and freezing cold.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6993875.ece

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From The Times January 21, 2010

The coldest winter in thirty years?

Paul Simons Weather Eye

We are about halfway through winter, but how cold has it been so far? Met Office figures show that the first two weeks of January were very cold: 4.9C (8.8F) below average for the UK. But December was not quite as severe, only 2.1C (3.8F) below normal, thanks to a reasonably mild start to the month. And with the current spell of weather not quite so cold, the average temperature for January will rise slightly.

So the headlines that this has been the coldest winter for 30 years were not quite on the ball. A fairer comparison might be the winter of 1981-82. Its most famous incident came in December 1981, when a snowstorm blocked roads in the Cotswolds just as the Queen was travelling to Windsor from the Princess Royal’s home at Gatcombe Park. The royal entourage was trapped 100 yards from the Cross Hands Hotel, Old Sodbury, Gloucestershire, and was forced to take shelter. “The Queen had to clamber out and hurry, head down, through the storm to the hotel,” The Times reported. “The manager of the Cross Hands, Mr Roberto Cadei, hastily swept snow from an outdoor staircase to show the Queen to the best bedroom in his hotel, complete with bath, shower and colour television, normal price £27.80 a night for two.” However, a few hours later the weather cleared and the Queen made her way back to Windsor.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6995591.ece

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From The Times January 22, 2010

Increase in the UK's cold-weather death rates

Paul Simons Weather Eye

One shocking fact from this winter’s big freeze is that the death rate across Britain soared. Figures from the National Office for Statistics show that in the bitterly cold first week of January the death rate rose to 13,000, roughly 10,000 more than during milder weeks in early winter. But rather than hypothermia, these deaths were caused largely by heart attacks, strokes and respiratory diseases.

The UK has one of the worst cold-weather mortality rates in Europe — even the Netherlands has about half our cold-winter death rate, although it has a similar climate. In fact, the weather in Britain has such a big impact that for every 1C (1.8F) drop in temperature the death rate goes up by nearly 1.5 per cent.

The British simply don’t take the cold seriously enough. Many homes are badly heated and people often don’t dress properly for going out — many not wearing hats, gloves, scarves, or suitable footwear. One survey found that only about 40 per cent of people wear well-insulated clothes. “People wear more clothes in countries such as Finland and Germany, even at the same temperature,” explained Gavin Donaldson, of University College London. We also need better protected bus and train shelters to protect people standing in the cold. “Reducing outdoor cold stress has been largely ignored in official campaigns to control winter deaths,” added Dr Donaldson.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6997359.ece

[Methuselah]

I filled it in too- I didn't refer to the old-style forecasts as I'm pretty sure the dumbing down of those is more down to the BBC than the MetO, but I did mention that probabilities should not replace background information/context but should complement it, and that giving the minimum of info can perpetuate lack of understanding in a vicious circle (which is a point that can also apply to TV forecasts as well as online presentations).

On that topic, a good article by Philip Eden here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/7023899/Ever-wished-you-could-fire-the-Met-Office.html

For instance the Winter 2009/10 forecast from the Met Office would've appeared far less inaccurate if they'd made a specific reference to the fact that they expected a colder than average winter over eastern Europe (as displayed by the probability temperature maps for the globe). Giving just probabilities gave the impression that their forecast was completely wrong, whereas giving that info would have suggested that they merely underestimated the western penetration of the frigid airmass that they correctly expected to develop over eastern Europe and western Asia. Still wrong as far as the UK is concerned- but more understandably so.

Some good points from Paul Simons. I know the MetO haven't covered themselves in glory but a lot of this MetO-bashing is very one-sided and we really need to see the other side of the argument represented as well.

Another good post, mate!

The other thing I suggested, was that the general public has very little comprehension of probability...I know it's nigh-on impossible to predict 'one shower, 3 rumbles of thunder and 19mm of rain, between 2:02 and 2:34pm' three months' in advance - but, IMO, that's how Joe Public's mind seems to work...

[grab my graupel]

From The Times January 23, 2010

California hit by storms

Paul Simons Weather Eye

California was hit by four big storms this week, setting off flash floods in Los Angeles and sending 6m (20ft) waves crashing into the coastline. The onslaught also buried mountains in several feet of snow and drenched the Arizona desert, where Yuma, one of the driest, sunniest and hottest cities in the US, received more than 50mm (2in) of rain, two thirds of its yearly average. But farmers in California enjoyed a boost to their water supplies after years of chronic drought. This is typical El Niño weather, when tropical seas in the Pacific warm up. Another impact of El Niño is this winter’s unusually mild weather in Alaska and western Canada. And there are concerns that the Winter Olympics, due to open in Vancouver on February 12, will be short of snow — the forecast is for continued mild weather and artificial snow-making guns are being used to boost snow supplies.

The impacts of El Niño have been felt across many other parts of the globe. Tanzania has suffered weeks of torrential rains that have washed away buildings, crops and roads, and left ten people dead and 28,000 homeless.

The northern hemisphere winter continues to be unusually severe. Northern India is in the grip of a brutal cold spell that has killed more than 450 people. Last week the cold weather in Delhi also caused the heaviest fog there for several years, which brought chaos to rail, road and air traffic. And an unusually powerful storm struck the Middle East. Parts of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel were drenched in heavy rain. Homes and power lines were washed away, and 15 people died in Egypt.

Correction to Friday’s Weather Eye: the death toll in early January’s freezing weather in the UK rose by 3,000, not by 10,000.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article6998926.ece

[grab my graupel]

From The Times January 27, 2010

A rare and terrifying phenomenon

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Ice storms are a rare and terrifying phenomenon in Britain, when freezing rain turns to sheets of ice the instant it touches anything on the ground. The countrys worst ice storm struck 70 years ago during the Second World War. The lowest temperature record for Wales was broken, minus 23.3C (-9.9F) at Rhayader, Powys, on January 21, 1940, and the British Expeditionary Force leaving for France found their vehicles seized up when the anti-freeze froze. On January 27, an ice storm swept much of southern Britain for two days. The landscape looked as if the world had turned to glass: everything was encased in thick, translucent ice. Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary: The grass is brittle, all the twigs are cased in clear, brown cases and look thick, but slippery, crystallised as if they were twigs of fruit as dessert.

The ice was so thick that it brought down power, phone and telegraph lines. Beech trees could be heard crashing down all night, reported one witness in Hampshire. The splintering of the ice casing made even more noise than the rending of the wood, like broken glass. The iced leaves of evergreen shrubs made a noise like castanets as they rattled in the wind.

Another witness wrote: Birds froze on the boughs of the trees, which looked peculiar, and hens in henhouses froze on their perch.

Car drivers found themselves trapped inside their frozen vehicles, and umbrellas were useless as the freezing rain instantly turned

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7003421.ece

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From The Times January 29, 2010

A piece of very foolish chymical philosophy

Paul Simons Weather Eye

The nights are turning bitterly cold again, and the danger of ice on the roads has returned. But is salt the best answer to slippery roads?

Paths and roads have been salted for centuries. The salt melts snow and ice by making it freeze at lower temperatures, and although it is the cheapest way of de-icing it also causes huge corrosion damage. In Victorian days, though, the big fear was that the cold slush left behind would penetrate boots, making feet cold and damp and leading to illness. The scientist Michael Faraday gave warning in 1838 that salt on the roads was a piece of very foolish chymical philosophy . . . the injurious effect of damp upon feet at this excessive degree of cold is likely to be extreme, reported The Times.

These days salt is piled on to roads in staggering amounts, thousands of tonnes of it used so far this winter. But it has led to some strange effects. The salt that has washed off the roads is turning roadsides so salty that seaside plants are spreading far inland. One particular coastal plant, Danish scurvygrass, began to spread in the 1970s from the coast of Cornwall along the A30, and eventually spread across much of the road network of England and Wales, all thanks to the salty conditions. And a recent study in the US found that salt run-off from roads also built up in lakes and is threatening the wildlife.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7006840.ece

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From The Times January 30, 2010

Winter still grips much of Europe

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Winter still holds a grip over much of Europe, where an Arctic blast is due this weekend. Snow continues to fall across the Alps in what has been an outstanding ski season, and Scottish ski slopes will be replenished with snow this weekend. But this has also been a deadly winter, and about 40 people died in severe cold across Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania last week during severe snowstorms.

China also has endured an unusually harsh winter, with heavy snows across vast stretches of the north and west. The Xinjiang region in central Asia was blasted with a snowstorm said to be the worst for 60 years. And in Mongolia, more than a million livestock have died in temperatures down to minus 40C (-40F).

The El Niño warming of the tropical Pacific is in full swing, sending storms crashing into California. The impact is also being felt in Peru, where downpours have flooded vast areas of farmland and destroyed thousands of homes. And about 2,000 tourists were marooned at the Inca ruins at Machu Picchu, after floods and landslides cut the vital rail link to the site.

Australia escaped disaster when Cyclone Olga landed in northern Queensland with weaker winds than expected, even though it produced heavy rains and floods. However, the remnants of the storm re-emerged in the seas farther west and are expected to become a cyclone again this weekend.

A new world record for wind speed has been announced by the World Meteorological Organisation. After a review of extreme weather events, 408 km/h (253mph) was measured during a tropical cyclone on April 10, 1996, at Barrow Island, Australia. The previous record was 372km/h (231mph), in April 1934 on Mount Washington, US.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7008692.ece

[grab my graupel]

From The Times February 5, 2010

The mystery of the falling ice block

Paul Simons Weather Eye

A man in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, had a nasty surprise on Monday. Sam Cappelman was leaving his aunts house when a large chunk of ice crashed down on to the road a few feet away from him, shattering into pieces several inches thick. Luckily no one was hurt and there was no damage.

The mystery is where the ice came from. All the snow and ice in the area had melted away, so it does not appear to have been some sort of giant icicle falling from a height. There was also no storm in the area, so it is highly unlikely to have been hail and in any case the ice was far too large for a hailstone.

There have been other incidents similar to this. In 2008 a chunk of ice weighing about 2.7kg (6lb) crashed into a house in York, Pennsylvania. It struck a woman while she was asleep, leaving her with a black eye and a lump on her head. The ice chunk was found to be made up of balls of ice, ranging from the size of golfballs to oranges.

Another explanation is that chunks of ice can occasionally fall off aircraft, but this cannot explain all the incidents of large pieces of ice falling from the sky. The largest recorded fall of ice was reported by The Times at Ord, Scotland it was about 20ft across and weighed an estimated half a ton. And it happened in 1849, well before aircraft were invented.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7015453.ece

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From The Times February 6, 2010

Fire and Ice

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Tuesday was Groundhog Day in the US, and when the groundhog emerged from his burrow and saw his shadow it meant, according to legend, that winter would last another six weeks.

Sure enough, a vicious storm hit Philadelphia, Washington and much of the US East Coast yesterday and continues today, with up to 60cm (2ft) of snowfall expected. This will be the third big snowstorm across the region this winter, which has had far heavier snowfalls than usual. Last week in Oklahoma thousands of homes were left without power after a winter storm brought ice and snow. The cold has even reached Florida, where shallow corals off the southern islands have been killed by unusually cold seas.

Europe has also endured a hard winter, and last week blizzards in northern Germany caused chaos on the roads. But worse is to come over the next few days, as colder air drives through Europe into the UK, bringing another freeze and more snow. Anyone who hoped to escape the dire weather by escaping to the Canary Islands would have been disappointed when a huge storm struck on Tuesday and set off flash floods, landslides and power cuts.

The widespread winter freeze has been caused by cold air, which normally stays pinned down in the Arctic, slipping south over much of Europe, Asia and North America. However, this process is just a redistribution of the worlds heat Greenland, Alaska and much of the rest of the Arctic have been relatively mild, and so has a large part of the Mediterranean and southern Asia. This is one of the vagaries of the worlds climate. To emphasise the point, in the southern hemisphere, Rio de Janeiro and most of southern Brazil have roasted in a heatwave, the hottest for February in 90 years.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7016909.ece

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From Times February 8, 2010

Van Gogh and the mistral

Paul Simons Weather Eye

When Vincent Van Gogh began painting in Arles, southern France, in February 1888, the weather took him by surprise. I find painting hard work because of the wind, but I fasten my easel to pegs driven into the ground and work in spite of it, it is too lovely, he wrote. Van Gogh was caught by the mistral, a cold, dry wind that tears down the Rhône Valley and often hits the region around Marseilles and Avignon. The town of Arles, as Van Gogh discovered, is directly in its path. The wind is cold and so dry that it gives you gooseflesh, he wrote, and he found what many local people feared that the mistral got on his nerves.

Early spring is a particularly bad season for the mistral. At this time of year, it is driven by high pressure over the mountains far inland, and a low-pressure area over the Mediterranean. Cold mountain air bursts downhill, accelerating as it squeezes through the Rhône Valley before it hits the south coast.

But Van Gogh was inspired by the crystal-clear skies as the mistral swept the clouds away with its desiccating air. The sky is hard blue with a great bright sun which has melted almost all the snow, he wrote. Perhaps it was the gusting blasts of the mistral that also inspired Van Goghs iconic paintings of turbulent eddies in the sky.

The Real Van Gogh: the Artist and his Letters is at the Royal Academy until April 18.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7018414.ece

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From The Times February 9, 2010

What year did Britain have it's worst winter?

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Cold winds are raking the UK, and could make this winter as bad as the Winter of Discontent in 1978-79 (report, Feb 8. However, Steve Cooke has written to say that he disagrees that 1978-79 was one of the worst winters of the 20th century and that 1947 and 1962-63 were far worse.

While it may be true that the winter of 1979 was not as severe, it still ranks as the fourth-coldest of the 20th century in the UK. It is also the 28th coldest winter in records dating back 351 years for Central England 1963 was third and 1947 was thirteenth coldest.

Severe cold and blizzards set in at the end of December 1978, and the snow fell thick and fast through January. There was a blizzard in the Channel Islands, and the temperature fell to minus 24.6C (-12.3F) in Carnwrath, Strathclyde, on January 13, colder than anything this winter. On February 14 that year a blizzard of Arctic proportions caused a whiteout and snowdrifts cut off villages and towns. Even cities such as Sheffield, Leeds and Norwich were completely isolated. Troops in tracked vehicles were used to ferry emergency supplies and engineers to fix power supplies. Thousands of commuters were stranded and forced to stay in railway stations. On the M62 hundreds of drivers abandoned their vehicles and struggled to reach shelter at a service station.

However, the winter of 1979 tends to be remembered now for political strife rather than the bitter cold.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7019572.ece

[grab my graupel]

From The Times February 10, 2010

Kent could catch the worst of the snow

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Winter has returned with a wicked cold wind but, with a strong block of high pressure sitting over the UK, most places are staying largely dry.

The exception is the East Coast and the far tip of southeastern England, where the air is colliding with a low-pressure system from Europe and producing showers of sleet and snow.

Worst hit is Kent, which, because of its geography, sticks out towards Europe and could catch the worst of the snow, with 10cm (2in) or more in northern and eastern parts of the county possible today and tomorrow.

Kent often lies in the path of bad weather from Europe, and one of its worst bouts of snow struck only a few years ago. In 2005 at the end of February and beginning of March, much of the UK was in the grip of a freeze. On March 4 the temperature dropped to minus 11.5C (11.3F) near Canterbury, the coldest for the month in the UK, and the lowest temperature in the South for 35 years. Snow fell so thick it piled up to around 30cm (1ft) deep, 464 schools were closed, and the M2, M20 and M26 were closed in parts. The Army was brought in to help ambulance crews, ferry patients and transport staff to hospitals with four-wheel-drive vehicles in the heavy snow.

It was the worst winter that Kent had experienced in a decade — even though March is supposed to be the start of spring.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7020952.ece

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From The Times February 11, 2010

Breath stayed suspended in the air

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Mark Twain once remarked: “Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we’d all have frozen to death.” On February 3, 1947, the temperature at an airfield in Snag, Yukon, northwest Canada, fell below the lowest reading on the thermometer, -80F. Weather observers marked the thermometer and sent it away for analysis, which revealed a temperature of minus 63C (-81.4F), the lowest ever recorded in North America.

Staff at the airfield described tossing water into the air and watching it freeze into solid pellets before hitting the ground. Breath instantly froze with a hissing noise, and stayed suspended in the air at head height in long streaks up to 500m (1,640ft) long like miniature condensation trails from a jet aircraft, before falling to the ground as powdery ice crystals.

Ice on a nearby river cracked like the sound of gunfire and sounds were amplified by a cap of warmer air lying over intensely cold air on the ground, bouncing sound waves across great distances. “When a plane flew over at 10,000ft, it sounded as if it was in your bedroom,” one of the weather observers, Wilfred Blezard, said.

By comparison, the chill winds sweeping the UK this week are positively balmy. But like Snag, some unusually low temperatures can be recorded in calm conditions at night in valleys and hollows, as cold air slips down surrounding slopes like running water to collect in pools of bitterly cold air.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7022245.ece

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From The Times February 12, 2010

The Flood Tablet at the British Museum

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Some 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) poets told stories of a great flood sent to destroy the world. One man, Utnapishtim, built a huge vessel to save his family and every type of animal. Eventually the story was written down on a clay tablet, the Flood Tablet, in about 700-600BC: “Build a boat! Abandon wealth and seek survival. Spurn property, save life. Take on board all living things’ seed!”

This might sound like the biblical story of Noah, but the Flood Tablet was created 400 years before the oldest surviving version of the Bible. In fact, stories of a great flood are told by many cultures. That flood may have been triggered when the icesheets melted at the end of the last Ice Age. Lake Agassiz in North America burst and an immense flood of freshwater tore into the Atlantic. That led to a catastrophic rise in global sea levels, including the flooding of the Black Sea from the Mediterranean.

“People living in what is now southeast Europe must have felt as though the whole world had flooded. This could well have been the origin of the Noah’s Ark story,” said Chris Turney of the University of Exeter. “Entire coastal communities must have been displaced . . . they would have taken farming with them across Europe. It was a revolutionary time.”

The Flood Tablet is at the British Museum and features in the BBC Radio 4 series A History of the World in 100 Objects

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7023693.ece

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From The Times February 13, 2010

Winter returns with a vengeance

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Winter has returned with a vengeance across much of the world. The eastern US was paralysed by a ferocious blizzard dubbed “snowmageddon”. Millions of people were trapped in their homes, and the federal Government shut down as winds up to 55mph drove huge snowfalls that left drifts 2.4m (8ft) high. Records for snowfall have been broken in Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore and many other cities — and more snowstorms are on the way.

Bitter cold has left Europe gripped once again in a Siberian freeze. The far south of Portugal, Spain and much of the Mediterranean are feeling the cold, while northern countries have had heavy snow. But the skiing across European ski resorts is reported to be fantastic.

Last Monday heavy snow in Afghanistan set off avalanches that crashed down on to hundreds of vehicles along a stretch of highway in the mountains to the north of Kabul, and more than 170 people were killed.

The big freeze over much of North America, Europe and Asia makes little difference to the overall global temperature, though. The warm air has simply been shunted to other areas, including Alaska and British Columbia, where the winter has been remarkably mild. This is bad news for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, which opened to rainy, mild weather after the warmest January on record in the city.

El Niño is to blame for much of the current weather. Warming of the tropical Pacific delivers mild, moist air to the coasts of the Americas. Last week huge storms and floods struck southern California and Mexico. As El Niño reaches its peak this month more storms are expected.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7025289.ece

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From The Times February 15, 2010

The outlook for half term

Paul Simons Weather Eye

The weather during school half-term holidays this week will remain cold, with the threat of sleet or snow for some places late today and into tomorrow. But predicting exactly where any snow falls, and how heavy it will be, remains very difficult.

The problem concerns a depression dropping down from Iceland, loaded with moisture and drawing in cold air. Forecasters have had a tough time trying to decide the exact path of that low-pressure system, which has made it difficult to predict where any sleet or snow will fall.

In fact, forecasting sleet and snow can be one of the most challenging jobs for a forecaster in this country. There has to be the right amount of water and at the right temperature. Usually the air needs to be below 3 or 4C (37-39F), and at slightly higher temperatures the snow melts and can fall as sleet.

But at temperatures just above freezing all sorts of things can fall from the sky freezing rain, sleet, hail, snow, ice pellets or a mixture of some or all of these. A shower can start with one sort of precipitation and end with something else. And then we have to look at whether the showers fall on lowlands, hills or mountains, because the temperature usually grows colder the higher the elevation. So, it can easily snow on the mountains while rain falls in the valleys below. Small wonder that snow is often forecast as late as possible.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7026725.ece

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From The Times February 16, 2010

Multicoloured weather phenomenon destroyed at lift-off

Paul Simons Weather Eye

Something strange happened at the launch of a satellite from the Kennedy Space Centre, Florida, on Thursday. Just after lift-off, the rocket carrying the satellite flew through a sundog — a multicoloured smudge of light alongside the Sun.

Sundogs are created by sunlight shining through a thin veil of ice crystals in high cirrus clouds. When these tiny, six-sided ice crystals line up with their flat faces pointing downwards, they bend the sunlight like glass prisms, splitting it up into the colours of the rainbow and beaming into a spot of light alongside the Sun.

Sometimes the coloured light flicks upwards like a tail, hence the name sun dog. With a wide spread of cirrus clouds, a pair of sundogs can appear at equal distances on either side of the Sun, which is why they are also called mock suns.

As the Nasa rocket shot through the clouds it blasted the ice crystals, disrupting their alignment and destroying the sundog. In an ironic twist, the satellite is called the Solar Dynamics Observatory. It will study storms that erupt from the surface of the Sun and blast violent electrical winds into space.

When solar winds smash into the Earth’s upper atmosphere, they create mayhem for satellites and electrical equipment on Earth, but they also generate fabulous auroras in the night sky.

Thanks to spaceweather.com, a video of the sundog event can be seen here: http://bit.ly/9aIVnd

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7028147.ece

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From Times Online February 17, 2010

West wind brings rain

Paul Simons Weather Eye

This winter has been dominated by winds from the east and north, bringing cold but dry weather, but the wind has changed direction. This weeks half-term school holidays are cold, and for much of southern and eastern England also wet, with snow on the hills, and very heavy snow in northern Scotland. But there has been a big change in the weather. This winter has been dominated by winds from the east and north, bringing cold but dry weather the first half of February was -1.2C (2.2F) colder and 27 per cent drier than average for the UK. But now the wind is from the west and the weather is turning much wetter, as an old saying notes:

February fill the dyke, be it black or be it white;

But if it be white, its the better to like.

White snow is better than black rain, maybe because it signals a good growing season to follow. Snow cover in February is good for insulating plants and also drip-feeding water deep down to tree roots, ready to boost their water supplies in spring.

The Victorian artist Benjamin Williams Leader caught the mood of the month in his bleak midwinter landscape painting February Fill Dyke, in 1881. Leader had experienced a brutal winter, and January had the second worst snowstorm of the 19th century, believed to have killed about 100 people. Another snowstorm in February caused the most notable casualty, when the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, slipped on ice as he got out of his carriage at Downing Street, fell and cut his head, although he soon recovered.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7029342.ece

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From The Times February 19, 2010

Centenary of the great flood of Paris

Paul Simons Weather Eye

During la grande inondation, stinking mud and debris burst through the city as the streets became like Venetian canals Recommend? A hundred years ago Paris suffered La grande inondation (great flood). Heavy rain pummelled the city, suburbs and surrounding towns, and by the end of January the Seine had risen 8.62m (28ft 3in) and burst its banks. The floods lasted through February.

Sandbags, embankments and pumps were used to defend the city, but the floodwaters pushed upwards through the sewers and the new Métro tunnels. Stinking mud and debris burst through the city, water was unsafe to drink and gas and electricity supplies were cut. Troops were deployed to prevent looting.

Streets became like Venetian canals, criss-crossed with ferries and walkways. Yet there were no outbreaks of disease, and, incredibly, only 13 deaths were reported. With 20,000 buildings wrecked and 200,000 people made homeless, the cost of the flood damage was estimated at 400 million francs — more than £900 million at modern prices. By March the floods receded and in April the Métro reopened.

Today the flood defences of Paris use dams and reservoirs around the Seine river basin. But developments on the floodplain have left the city vulnerable: ten times as many people live in the flood zones, and a weather event like 1910 would flood Paris again. In the worst-case scenario it is estimated that a flood would hit 850,000 people directly and cost £15 billion.

An exhibition about the flood is at the Historical Library of Paris (BHVP) until March 28:

http://inondation1910.paris.fr/

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/weather/article7032462.ece