Weather Eye

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July 3, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

NINE hundred and fifty years ago, on July 4, 1054, the sky lit up with a wondrous sight. “I humbly observe that a guest star has appeared,” a Chinese astronomer wrote. “It was visible in the daytime, like Venus.

“It had pointed rays in the four directions and its colour was reddish-white. Altogether, it was visible in daytime for 23 days.” It took almost two years for the phenomenon to disappear from the night sky.

This was the first report of a supernova, a violently exploding star that collapses in a spectacular storm of heat, matter and cosmic rays. Today all that remains of that immense eruption is the Crab Nebula, a cloud of gas about 6,000 light years away.

The supernova of 1054 would have had little impact on Earth, but another such event two million years ago was far closer and would have bombarded us with cosmic rays. Those highly charged particles would have set off a chain reaction in the atmosphere and destroyed large parts of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, flooding Earth with lethal ultraviolet rays.

That radiation would have destroyed plankton and resulted in a massive famine in the oceans.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 5, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

TODAY at midday is aphelion, when the Earth is farthest away from the Sun during the year.

Because the Earth goes around the Sun in a slightly oval-shaped orbit, its distance from the Sun varies during the year: at aphelion it lies about 94.6 million miles away, compared with a yearly average of 93 million miles.

That means that the Sun today is 7 per cent less bright on Earth than when at its closest, in January. This makes our summers in the northern hemisphere slightly cooler, although we hardly notice the difference.

The dates of aphelion and perihelion change in a cycle lasting about 22,000 years, as the Earth’s axis wobbles like a spinning top. That makes a big difference to the climate.

About 10,000 years ago, aphelion was in winter and northern hemisphere summers were hotter. That helped to drive the African monsoon belt north, turning the Sahara wet and creating a grassland over which elephants and other wildlife roamed, hunted by tribes of Stone Age people.

About 5,000 years ago the cycle had turned enough for the rains to vanish, and for the Sahara to become a desert.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 8, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

STORMS in July are fairly unusual. There are plenty of thunderstorms, but a full-blown low-pressure system is not something you expect in mid-summer, so this week’s monster is a surprise.

But an even worse storm struck in 1956. After a spell of warm weather, an Atlantic depression exploded on July 29 as it swung in towards southwest Britain, smashing into the Lizard, Cornwall, with winds gusting at up to 93mph. Central London was hit by a gust of 69mph.

There was mayhem in a cross-Channel yacht race as boats fought monstrous waves and lifeboats repeatedly launched rescue missions. Thousands of trees were brought down, blocking roads and killing several people.

Campsites were abandoned as winds ripped tents apart and sent them flying, and in Brighton a huge marquee for a concert was torn to shreds and hundreds of deckchairs hurled into the sea.

Power lines were brought down and sea spray whipped into such a frenzy that salt was blasted miles inland. Crops were pulverised and orchards lost nearly all their fruit. People then blamed it on nuclear bomb tests.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 9, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE remarkable thing about this week’s storm was its sharp contrast across the UK. While the South was getting lashed by ferocious winds and rain, much of Northern Ireland and Scotland enjoyed a mostly dry and sunny day. Tiree, in the Inner Hebrides, had more than 14 hours of sunshine on Wednesday.

The cause of this topsy-turvy picture was high pressure hugging the western flank of the storm, bringing clear, calm skies. But that high pressure also helped to stoke up the winds in the storm.

Isobars on a weather map are lines of equal atmospheric pressure, and the more tightly they are packed, the faster the wind flows. It conjures up a picture of an Ordnance Survey map, with tightly packed contours marking out steep slopes.

In the same way, high pressure stands like a hill and low pressure is the valley, which is why you often hear of “ridges” of high pressure and “troughs” of low pressure in weather forecasts.

In this week’s storm, wind was rushing along a steep pressure gradient from the ridge of high pressure into the low pressure, spiralling up into the eye of the storm, where the pressure was at its most intense.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 10, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

WAS Agatha Christie inspired to write Murder on the Orient Express by a real weather disaster?

In a new book, The 8.55 to Baghdad, the author Andrew Eames retraces a journey that Christie made on the Orient Express, and reveals how several years previously the train suffered a dramatic ordeal when it disappeared into a snowdrift.

In January 1929, snow and bitter cold swept Central Europe and, shortly after crossing into Turkey, the Orient Express became stuck in a huge drift.

For the next three days, the snow fell so heavily that the train was entombed and conditions for the 28 passengers and crew grew desperate.

Food was rationed to one meal a day and the heating stopped when the coal ran out.

Eventually they dug a tunnel through the snow to the outside world and got food from the nearest village.

The train finally arrived in Istanbul 11 days late, possibly a world record for a train delayed by the weather, and extreme even by British standards.

But for Agatha Christie, the story made an ideal setting for Hercule Poirot to solve a murder on a train trapped in deep snow.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 12, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS summer may be tumultuous, but 20 years ago today Munich was devastated by one of the worst hailstorms on record.

The sky over Munich on July 12, 1984, started off sunny and hot, but by the afternoon that heat helped to set off billowing cumulonimbus clouds. It was a pleasant summery evening and the parks and street bars were teeming with people.

Suddenly at 8Pm, and without any warning, the skies opened up and huge hailstones weighing up to 300g (more than 10oz) crashed down with a terminal velocity of 150km/h (93mph).

Gales fired the hailstones almost horizontally, smashing windows and roofs, stripping leaves and bark off trees and pulverising crops and green- houses in the surrounding countryside. Some 400 people were injured, mostly from blows to the head, shoulders and arms, although no one was killed.

About 70,000 buildings were damaged and a quarter of a million cars smashed and cratered. Aircraft at Munich international airport were so badly hit that many had holes bored right through fuselages and wings. The total damage caused by the hailstorm was esti-mated at £1 billion.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 13, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE weather may have been atrocious here last week, but much of continental Europe has been thrown into turmoil as the ferocious storm that bashed Britain pushed across the North Sea over Friday and the weekend.

Germany was hit by floods, power cuts and temperatures plunging so low that snow fell across the Bavarian Alps; Germany’s highest mountain, Zugspitze, was covered in 2m (more than 6ft) of snow in temperatures sinking to -6C (21F).

In Poland, the storm brought down trees and damaged buildings, and southern Sweden had a weekend of torrential rain that set off flooding.

Brutal thunderstorms swept Central Europe, and Locarno in Switzerland received more than half its entire month’s average rainfall in only 12 hours. Snow fell as far south as the Italian Alps.

In sharp contrast, southeastern Europe has been roasting in a heatwave, although Romania’s heat came to a terrifying end when thunderstorms crashed in with fierce winds, hailstorms and lightning. Meanwhile, Athens has hit 40C (104F), serving a warning that if conditions carry on like this, they could make the Olympics a very torrid time next month.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 14, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

IT WAS depressing reading that British Gas has puts its winter supplies plan into operation to cope with a surge in demand from people switching on their home heating.

When the temperature dips below 15C (59F) the British tend to switch on heating, and we have just seen a 13 per cent surge in gas consumption compared with July last year.

However, the cold, wet and cloudy weather this month is not so extraordinary. July 1988 was throughly miserable, plagued by Atlantic depressions bringing dull skies and so cold that many places struggled to reach 20C (68F).

It was so wet that the men’s singles final at Wimbledon had to be carried through into a third week.

The Royal Agricultural Show at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, was left in a sea of mud and the Open Golf Championship at Royal St Lythams had to be suspended for a time because of flooded greens.

Scotland suffered its wettest July of the century, and it rained every day in Cumbria.

To cap it all, a storm blew through on July 25 across northern parts with winds gusting up to 78mph, bringing down trees and blocking roads.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 15, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

A NEW world record for raindrop size may have been discovered. Raindrop specialists believed that the biggest a drop could get was 5mm (0.2in) across, the diameter of an average hole punch in a sheet of paper. But now researchers have discovered raindrops 8mm (0.3in) and possibly 1cm (0.4in) across in two different clouds.

The scientists had flown through puffy cumulus clouds billowing up from a forest fire in the Amazon in Brazil, and cumulus clouds over the Marshall Islands in the Pacific. The giant drops in the smoky air could have formed around particles of ash blown up from the forest fire. Normally smoke helps to create small raindrops, but as these bump into each other they can join up into much larger drops, snowballing into something quite monstrous.

In contrast, the Marshall Islands rain formed in pristine air possibly on specks of salt thrown up from the sea; because there were few of these particles the drops grew huge. But this does not fully explain how the drops grew so huge. Usually giant drops rip themselves apart as they fall through the air, or crash into other raindrops.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 16, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

AS IF the weather wasn’t strange enough this month, reports have surfaced of bizarre bangs and balls of light during last week’s storm on Wednesday night.

During the ferocious rains and winds, lightning lit up the sky. But a large red-orange ball was also falling over Plumstead, southeast London, and an orange flash blasted a room in nearby Eltham, “like a camera flash but stronger”.

This was followed by a huge explosion. It was probably ball lightning, a mysterious and rare form of lightning.

Ball lightning appeared during an intense thunderstorm on April 28, when a glowing pink ball bigger than a football was reported in Hertford, and a lorry driver travelling south on the A23 in mid-Sussex saw a fireball descending on the South Downs.

Most terrifying of all, a ball of light tore through the centre of Brecon, South Wales, blasting computers throughout the town and shaking the ground.

If you have seen ball lightning, or any other weather phenomena, The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation collects reports. Contact: peter.vandoorn@torro.org.uk

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 17, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

TORNADOS have been cropping up in some surprising places across Britain. On June 27 a twister appeared during a thunderstorm near Watten, Caithness, in the far north of Scotland, where tornados are rare.

On June 1 a spectacular waterspout tore across the Lake of Menteith, west of Stirling. It startled passengers on a ferry who were going to an island in the lake, and and it ripped down branches from trees as it came ashore.

Another unusual tornado sighting was in Co Down, Northern Ireland, where a greenhouse at a garden centre was badly smashed.

British tornados are usually fairly timid compared with the brutal ones in America.

But on October 27, 1913, a ferocious tornado smashed through Edwardsville in South Wales.

Sounding like “an express locomotive”, it wrecked houses and hurled roofs for miles around; stones and timbers were shot through the air and trees uprooted.

“Men were lifted from their feet and dashed to the ground,” one press report said.

Six people died, with more than 100 injured, making it the deadliest known tornado in British history.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 19, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

A TERRIFIC hailstorm battered Ocean Springs on the Mississippi coast of the Gulf of Mexico last Tuesday.

Two rangers from the nearby Gulf Islands national park were taking shelter on a pier, and during a brief lull in the storm they rushed to rescue some equipment which had been left out.

Then fish suddenly fell from the sky and one actually hit a ranger. She described it as “incredibly cold”. The fish were small, about 3in (7.6 cm) long, but the species was not identified.

They had probably been sucked into the updraft of a waterspout and got carried high up into the thundercloud above — explaining why they felt icy cold — before falling like hailstones.

One of the biggest “fish falls” in Britain was in February 1859, when a lumberman was showered by dozens of fish in a timber yard at Mountain Ash, South Wales.

“I was startled by something falling all over me, down my neck, on my head, and on my back,” he reported in a letter to The Times.

Buckets of the fish were collected, alive and jumping, and were later identified as mostly sticklebacks and minnows.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 20, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

“The English winter — ending in July,

To recommence in August.”

Lord Byron

THERE is still a messy look to the weather forecast charts this week, as titanic battles are fought between depressions and anticyclones over the United Kingdom.

Wet and windy depressions are barging in from the Atlantic, while fingers of high pressure are trying to making forays into the South with warm temperatures and sunshine.

But before we write off this summer as a complete loss, this week may help to redeem the situation with slightly warmer and sunnier conditions over much of the country.

In fact, July may well turn out to be warmer than average. Despite some parts of England having had their coldest July day on record, and everywhere battered by wind, rain and cold, the temperatures so far are only about a degree below the seasonal average.

With a warmer spell in prospect this week and possibly next, the average temperatures for the month may end up being quite respectable, especially in England and Wales. As for rainfall figures, it doesn’t look as if we need to worry about a drought this summer.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 21, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS summer has had its dramatic moments, but far worse has happened in the past.

In 1897 a tremendous storm struck during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, on June 25.

The day had started off hot and sunny, with the Queen at Windsor Castle receiving admirals and senior officers of foreign navies for a grand lunch.

The party was being entertained by the German Emperor’s band when a deafening thunderstorm drowned out the music. Later a grand parade of carriages and the “vehicle of the future”, the motor car, was ruined by torrential rain.

Further up the Thames, the genteel town of Marlow was being battered by rain, hail and a tornado. The streets were flooded 2ft deep in places, trees torn up or torn to ribbons.

“Two pinnacles of the church steeple fell and one crashed through the roof of the church where a service was being held,” reported The Times.

“Slates from roofs of houses were carried 60ft away and many windows in the town were blown in or smashed by the hail. On the river, boats were blown upside down and swamped.”

The British summer can be full of surprises.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 23, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

AS THIS summer’s fickle weather blows hot and cold, you may feel like heading to the Mediterranean for some decent sunshine. But there is some good news — summer is making a big return to Britain.

The villain of much of this summer’s misery has been the jet stream, a racetrack of wind several miles high which tears eastwards along a battleground between cold polar air to the north and warm air in the south.

It has been our bad luck that the jet stream has shot almost directly over Britain for much of the past few weeks.

Now the jet stream is slipping northwards, allowing high pressure to build up over Britain and leaving us basking in luscious warm air.

The hot spell begins in southern and central regions but is spreading northwards and by tomorrow should cover almost the entire country, although northern areas may catch belts of bad weather draped down on weather fronts.

The chances are that if the high pressure builds up gradually it will dig in for a good few days and bring back a decent taste of summer. Certainly it looks like July will end up close to, or even above, its average temperature.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 24, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

TEN years ago today, one of Britain’s worst lightning strikes set off a terrifying industrial disaster.

At about 8am on Sunday, July 24, 1994, lightning hit the oil refinery at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, sending the power controls across the site into turmoil.

Alarms triggered off every two to three seconds in such chaotic scenes that it was impossible to read any information, let alone act on it.

As the pandemonium raged for five hours, no one detected that a key valve had became stuck. At 1.23 pm, the valve failure led to a pipe rupturing and twenty tonnes of liquid hydrocarbon exploded into a gigantic fireball with a force equivalent to four tonnes of high explosive.

Shops in Milford Haven about two miles (three kilometres) away had their windows blown in, fires were set off all over the refinery and flames shot 100 ft (30m) high.

Had it not happened on a Sunday, the list of casualties would have been far greater than 26 minor injuries. It took more than two days to put the fires out, and damage to the plant was substantial.

The refinery rebuilding costs were estimated at £48 million.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 26, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

BRITAIN’S has been a rollercoaster ride of weather this summer, but we’re having an easy time compared with many places.

In the worst flooding for 15 years, more than 800 people have been killed and more than eight million marooned or left homeless in India, Nepal and Bangladesh since the monsoon rains broke last month. Millions of people have suffered torrential rain in Vietnam and central and northern China.

Beijing is wilting in a heatwave, and in Tokyo temperatures soared to a record 39.5C (103F), while other parts of Japan have had severe flooding.

Heat and drought have helped to set off wildfires across the western United States, from California to Alaska.

On the Continent, a fierce storm two weeks ago dumped snow across the Alps and was followed by another, which hit Germany with floods and winds and tornados that ripped up trees and roofs.

New Zealand’s North Island has suffered landslides during a terrific rainstorm, followed by a series of earthquakes, while a cold snap in southeastern Australia has brought rare snow and ice, although much farmland remains in the grip of drought.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 27, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

TONIGHT an aurora may light up the skies over Britain. The Sun is carrying a huge sunspot as large as Jupiter, and this has blasted out a massive shower of electrical particles into space.

When these particles smash into the Earth’s magnetic field they flood down towards the magnetic poles and light up gases in the upper atmosphere, rather like turning on a fluorescent light.

On Sunday night a fabulous aurora blazed across Canada and northern parts of the United States, and more solar eruptions should keep the auroral activity high.

It is incredibly difficult to predict auroras, which depend on the angle at which the solar particles hit the Earth’s magnetic field, the strength of the particles and the time — auroras are too faint to see during the day.

The weather is also crucial because clouds blot out the view, and although conditions in Britain are improving, the best chance of a clear night will probably be in the eastern skies.

The huge solar eruption also could have an impact on satellites, shortwave radio communications, aircraft and power grids. These industries may need to prepare.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 28, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

A MAN who was hit by lightning last week says he feels ten years younger and full of beans.

John Corson, 56, from Madison, Maine, was struck outside his home by a lightning bolt which shot through his body.

“I was paralysed. It was like my whole body was just vibrating,” he recounted. Mr Corson was taken to hospital but several hours later was released feeling incredibly well even though he has a history of heart problems and has had three cardiac operations.

This was not a unique case. Mary Clamser, of Oklahoma, had been paralysed for years by multiple sclerosis. In January 1994 she was struck by lightning inside her bungalow and flung across the bathroom floor.

She was in shock, suffered burns to her hands and legs and had a severe headache. She was rushed to hospital but during a medical examination realised that she could feel her legs for the first time in years. Even though doctors warned her that it was only temporary, several weeks later she began moving her feet and walked three steps; a year later she was walking properly.

These cases have baffled medical experts.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 29, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

IN TURNER’S haunting painting Buttermere Lake with Part of Cromack- water, Cumberland, a Shower in Tate Britain, a rainbow arcs across a dark, threatening sky and mountains. What makes the picture particularly spooky is that the rainbow is ghostly white. A similar phenomenon happened last week in Melbourne, when a white bow shone out against an inky-black sky.

Usually a rainbow is multicoloured because each raindrop behaves like a miniature glass prism, bending light into the colours of the spectrum. A white bow is made by smaller droplets, large enough to bounce light into an arch, but small enough so that the bands of different colours overlap into a white arc.

Such a white rainbow is called a fogbow, cloudbow or a ghost of a rainbow. They are broader than ordinary rainbows and are rare, sometimes seen in the fog on hillsides and mountains. The Melbourne incident was especially interesting because it came from drizzle which evaporated before reaching the ground.

Turner’s fogbow is narrower and smaller than might be expected — it seems that he knew his meteorology but also used his artistic licence.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 30, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS week the Sun has been very active from a huge sunspot, erupting masses of highly charged solar rubbish into space and creating magnificent auroras on Earth.

Now scientists at Durham and Warwick universities have pieced together the earliest connection between sunspots and an aurora, more 800 years ago.

John of Worcester, a medieval monk, wrote a chronicle of Anglo-Saxon affairs. A keen astronomer, he included observations of celestial events and on December 8, 1128, made the first known report and drawing of a sunspot. “From morning to evening, appeared something like two black circles within the disk of the Sun,” he wrote.

Although there are Chinese records of sunspots dating back more than 2,000 years, John’s observation was the first picture of a sunspot. Scientists have been astounded by his accuracy, which may have been possible because the sunspots were unusually large and he observed the Sun directly through a haze. Five days later and 9,000 miles away, a Korean astronomer recorded a red light in the night-time sky — creating the ear-liest link between solar and auroral activity.

Link to Weather Eye source

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July 31, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE pressure is high and forecasts point to hot, barbecue weather for many places in Britain this weekend.

The heatwave may stretch well into next week because of an anticyclone sitting over the UK — while the jet stream that gave us such miserable conditions earlier this month is now skirting around the country in a rather sluggish current of wind.

With remarkably good timing, the Met Office and Government have set up a heatwave alert service about the health risks of hot weather. Alerts will be issued at key temperatures in different regions, from 32C (90F) in London and 28C (82F) in the North East, with advice on how to keep cool and healthy.

The British are vulnerable to hot weather because we are not acclimatised to it. About 24 hours after a heatwave begins, the death rate soars: the severe heatwave in August last year was blamed for more than 2,000 deaths in England.

Those most vulnerable are elderly people and those with heart and respiratory problems, for whom heat can cause a change in blood that can make it more likely to clot and set off strokes, heart attacks and other life-threatening conditions.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 2, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

IS THE Sun to blame for global warming? According to a recent study, the Sun is more active now than it has been for a thousand years, helping to make the Earth’s climate warmer.

Evidence from a core of ice drilled from a glacier in Greenland points to some vigorous solar activity over the past 60 years.

This has been jumped on by critics of the greenhouse effect theory, who say that it proves that the world’s climate is heating up entirely for natural reasons, caused by the Sun’s own capricious behaviour.

But this is a smokescreen. Over the past 30 years solar activity has not been unusual and yet temperatures are not only rising, they are accelerating. True, the solar effect has added to global warming, but most estimates of its impact on world temperatures range from only about 4 to 20 per cent.

That leaves greenhouse pollution from carbon dioxide, methane and other gases making up the vast bulk of global warming. Not only that, but some experts estimate that solar activity is set to decline over the next 100 years, so the Sun’s influence on climate will wane.

It will probably take decades to settle the argument, by which time it will be academic.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 4, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

AS SOMEONE who lived through exceptionally turbulent times, Charles II was well aware of the volatile nature of the English weather, which may be why he is credited with a shrewd observation that the English summer consists of three fine days and a thunderstorm.

This week is living up to the reputation, as days of increasing heat and humidity are breaking down into thunderstorms.

A mass of warm, moist air at low levels has drifted up from the Mediterranean, making conditions feel like a sauna, while cold air is riding miles high overhead.

This is the classic recipe for summer thunderstorms: the hot, steamy air rises from the warm ground, rather like soup bubbling up in a saucepan. The bubbles smash into the cold air above, and as long as they stay warmer than the surrounding air, they keep rising.

Eventually they cool and their cargo of water vapour condenses into puffy cumulus clouds, which in turn release vast amounts of heat. That energy kicks the clouds even higher until huge thunderclouds form, typically carrying about a million tons of water — enough to fill a small reservoir.

Link to Weather Eye source