Weather Eye

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August 5, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

TUESDAY’S thunderstorm produced monsoon-like downpours, with 42mm (1.6in) falling in one hour in London, not far off the average rainfall for the whole of August. The deluge flooded buildings, collapsed roofs and overwhelmed some roads, rail and Underground lines.

There was also a possible sighting of ball lightning in Beckenham, Kent, where two women saw “a thin sword of blue-white light” pass through their kitchen, followed by a bang which knocked out the fusebox.

Lightning struck five people, one of them fatally. The advice if you are caught in a thunderstorm is to try to get into a building or car and shut all doors and windows. Avoid trees because they can attract lightning and also pass current down their outsides — about 40 per cent of deaths by lightning in the US are caused by people sheltering under trees.

Avoid touching anything metal, including umbrellas with metal spokes, golf clubs and even telephones connected to outdoor cables. In the last resort, crouch as low as possible and stay wet: the water can help to pass electrical current around the outside of the body.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 6, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE five casualties of lightning strikes on Tuesday were a reminder of the danger from thunderstorms.

According to statistics from Torro, the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation, there are around 300,000 lightning strikes to the ground each year in Britain, and on average some between 30 and 60 people are hit, of whom three are killed.

Sports players suffer the greatest danger, particularly golfers. Last year one was struck twice in 30 minutes through the metal spokes on his umbrella and another was killed sheltering under a tree during a thunderstorm.

Nineteen football players were thrown to the ground during a match in Birmingham. One woman on the touchline needed emergency resuscitation after her heart stopped and another spectator was treated for burns.

Lightning was thought to have struck a man’s gold chain around his neck while he was jogging in a park in Liverpool, hurling him through the air. There were also four incidents of people receiving electric shocks while making phone calls during thunderstorms. The lightning had struck outdoor phone cables.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 7, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

BE WARNED: televisions and computers can be destroyed by thunderstorms. A member of staff at The Times got a shock last week when his house was struck by lightning, blowing up his TV set as well as damaging the house itself.

Often lightning strikes an outside TV aerial. Being the highest point on the house and made of metal, the aerial makes an ideal lightning conductor which sends a catastrophic surge of current down into the television set indoors. Lightning strikes are also proving very expensive for damage to computers.

Many people report computers and modems fried in thunderstorms, even when their properties were not directly hit.

Lightning can strike an outdoor phone cable and surge through into landline phones, modems and computers even when the computer is switched off. Or lightning hits an outside power line and punches voltage through circuits inside a house, often blowing up other electrical appliances as well.

You can buy surge protectors that connect to phone and power lines, but make sure they offer lightning protection. Or unplug equipment during thunderstorms.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 9, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

BAD news, I’m afraid — a vicious hurricane has boomeranged across the Atlantic from the United States and its remains have headed our way as a deep depression.

Ahead of the storm, hot sticky air has been drawn up from the Continent and sent temperatures soaring in Britain.

Apart from feeling like a Chinese laundry, the mass of hot air has added to the hellish instability in the atmosphere and could explode into what the Met Office is warning may be violent thunderstorms with torrential downpours of more than 60mm threatening severe local flooding as they deluge the country.

To add to the problem, the depression is moving at a slow speed, giving plenty of time to deliver its cargo of rain.

How long this misery lasts depends largely on how fast the storm crawls across the country.

This is incredibly bad luck as it had looked as though we were basking in a glorious spell of high pressure that was going to stick around for some time.

After such a tumultuous summer, let’s hope for some peace and calm after the big storm.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 10, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

HOT, steamy nights this week are making sleep very difficult. On Sunday many places in eastern regions had their hottest nights on record, with Marham, Norfolk, achieving a new night-time minimum of 22C (72F).

Conditions will stay sticky, thanks to a block of hot, humid subtropical air wrapped up in a huge depression crawling over Britain. That air came from balmy, warm seas off the coast of Florida, pumping up a hurricane called Alex, the first of the new hurricane season.

Hurricane Alex remained largely at sea, only grazing outlying islands off North Carolina before shooting across the ocean and dying out on Friday in mid-Atlantic. But its hot, humid air got caught up in another depression which then hit the British Isles.

Research shows that we need to get used to these conditions, because sweltering summer nights are likely to grow even worse in the future, because of global warming. Cities will suffer the worst effects, as heat absorbed by buildings and roads during the day is released at night like a radiator. As temperatures rise, this effect will grow.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 11, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

IT MAY may feel like a monsoon is battering Britain, but for large parts of Asia the real monsoons have caused devastation on an unimaginable scale.

Weeks of monsoon rains have caused the worst floods for years in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, killing more than 2,000 people. Two thirds of Bangladesh has been swamped, leaving more than 20 million people homeless and devastating the economy. Although the flood waters are retreating, the threat of disease and starvation is now widespread, while in western and northern India the rains continue to fall.

The driving force behind the monsoon is a strong wind, a bigger version of a seaside breeze. On hot, sunny days the land heats up more quickly than the sea and as warm air rises from the land it sucks in cooler air from the water.

In Asia, the huge landmass roasts under a burning sun from April onwards in temperatures up to 50C (122F). As this hot air rises it gradually draws in cooler, moist air off the surrounding Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, eventually forming enormous rainclouds from June onwards.

Information thanks to the BBC Weather Website

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August 12, 2004

PAUL SIMONS

TREES in many parts of the country have been shedding their leaves as if autumn had arrived early (The Times, letters July 28, 31, August 3, 5).

Some reports suggest that the storms of June and July caused “windburn”, making leaves turn brown and fall off. But only certain types of trees seem to be affected and only in some areas.

Even though the summer storms were some of the worst in living memory, many tree leaves have remained healthy.

It seems that the leaf fall struck trees that were already under stress. London plane and ornamental crab apple trees have had fungal diseases, sycamores and some maples have laboured under huge infestations of aphids and beeches have been fighting aphids and fungus.

These trees have been living on a knife-edge and, when the winds tore through, it proved to be a stress too far — enough to make them shed their leaves.

The only exception was around Brighton, where the storm on July 7 was so violent that winds off the sea covered the countryside with a salt spray that killed the leaves.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 13, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE beginning of this week saw some completely miserable weather as low pressure tangled up with the remnants of Hurricane Alex and brought torrential rain across Britain. Parts of northern England and southern Scotland were swamped.

It was a different story in the northern North Sea. High pressure standing firm across Scandinavia managed to keep the band of rain away from the Shetlands and an impressive 14 hours of sunshine were logged on Monday and Tuesday.

Despite all the sunshine, temperatures were disappointing. On Monday, even with the rain in southeast England, temperatures peaked at 25C (77F). but the Shetlands could manage only 20C (68F).

The North Sea surrounds the Shetlands with its frigid waters and any warm air crossing it will rapidly cool. In the summer, it is here where the lowest daytime temperatures are often recorded in Britain. Nevertheless, it can still get hot in the Northern Isles. On August 6, 1910, the temperature rose to an extraordinarily high 28C (82F).

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 14, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

WITH all the showery weather around at the moment, it might not be a bad time to be thinking about sunshine.

The sunniest place in the UK is along the South Coast, more specifically the Kent and Sussex coasts, where, in an average year, about 1,750 hours of sunshine can be expected.

July 1911 was the sunniest month, when 383.9 hours of sunshine were logged at Eastbourne. On the hills in the North of England annual totals of sunshine are closer to 1,000 hours.

It tends to be sunnier in the South East for a number of reasons: the first is the presence of the English Channel, the relatively cool waters of which inhibit the development of cumulus cloud. The proximity of the South East to cloud-free summer high-pressure systems that waft in from the near-Continent also brings more blue sky than elsewhere.

The South East is also well protected by the Welsh hills and the West Country moors. Cloud associated with weather fronts approaching from the west will also be broken up by these hills, resulting in more sunshine for Kent and Sussex.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 16, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

ALTHOUGH the magnificent main stadium in Athens appeared to have been flooded during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, it was not rainfall that swamped it. August rain is pretty rare in Greece, even over the mountains.

That’s not to say that it never rains there in August — a quick check of the forecast charts suggests that there is a slim chance of a thunderstorm at the beginning of this week. At this stage forecasters suggest that the main focus of any rain should be to the east, in the Aegean Sea.

As the week continues, increasing amounts of sunshine are expected, with some suggestions of high temperatures later in the week. If temperatures do get high, it will certainly test the athletes to the absolute limit, especially in those events where stamina plays a large part.

Greece is no stranger to heatwaves, which are usually triggered when very hot air spills north from the Sahara. Only a year ago excessive heat sparked widespread brush fires across Greece, and the summers of 1988 and 1998 brought many deaths after people were overwhelmed by the heat.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 17, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

COWES WEEK was battered by atrocious gusts of wind on Friday, sinking boats, ripping sails and giving lifeboats a busy time.

In Greece, Olympic sailors are battling their own wind, the Meltemi. This flexes its muscles in August as it charges down from the mountains far inland. The mountains squeeze the Meltemi into a raging, turbulent wind and, by the time that it reaches the sea, it can tear up to around 40mph, swirling around the Greek islands and making very choppy waters.

The Meltemi is created by two big pressure systems — high pressure sitting over the Balkans and low pressure over Turkey, partly caused by the massive Asian monsoon system, which stretches a hot arm over Turkey’s Anatolian plateau. The wind blows from the high pressure towards a trough of low pressure reaching out to sea.

The Meltemi can blow for up to two weeks, although four days is normal, and just about the only good thing is that it gives dry conditions and good visibility. The sailors will have a tough job coping with it and sea breezes blowing along the coast.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 18, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE devastating flashflood in Boscastle, Cornwall was caused by a collision of winds.

The day had been very warm, drawing in sea breezes along the coast.

When they joined forces with a wet southwesterly airflow they shot upwards with a dangerous mix of warm, moist, highly unstable air.

Nearby Bodmin Moor thrust up the airmass even higher.

A line of thunderclouds rocketed over 10km (6 miles) high, their tops streaming into anvil shapes as high-level winds swept air away from the storm, helping suck up more air from below.

The thunderclouds grew so tall that they created intense downpours, and radar estimates indicate that more than 130mm (more than 5in) of rain fell around Boscastle in several hours, and possibly more over higher ground. With the ground already saturated from recent rains, the storm waters were funnelled down steep river valleys and burst the riverbanks.

Perhaps the only saving grace was that the disaster struck during the day when people were awake and could be rescued by the emergency services.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 19, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

ONLY a day after the flashflood in Boscastle, an intense burst of rain from thunderstorms flooded Londonderry, Northern Ireland, overloading drains, trapping motorists in their cars and flooding buildings.

Earlier this month, London was hit by rain which overwhelmed parts of the Underground system, drains and sewers; a week later Glasgow and much of western Scotland was lashed by storms which flooded many parts.

In fact, flashfloods are nothing unusual in a British summer, but what made Boscastle so devastating was the topography of the area. As water thundered down steep river valleys it was funnelled into a torrent with nowhere to escape except through the village.

The force of flashfloods is awesome. It takes only about 6in (15cm) depth of rapidly running water to knock a person over, cars can be easily swept away in just 2ft of moving water, and water moving at only 8mph can push a car off the road.

This is why flashfloods are the biggest weatherrelated killer in the United States and cause about $3 billion (£1.6 billion) damage each year.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 20, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THE UK has already had close to its entire average August rainfall this month, and there is plenty more rain to come.

Part of the cause is the succession of hurricanes and tropical storms that has raged across the Atlantic.

Originally these violent storms picked up masses of heat and moisture from warm tropical waters before charging across the ocean.

Once they reached colder North Atlantic waters, their energy supply was cut off by the cold currents and they died, but any remaining hot, humid air has been left in the atmosphere and has played havoc with our weather.

When warm air clashes with colder air from the north it sets the battleground for depressions and weather fronts lashing the British Isles.

Added to that, the jet stream — a river of strong winds several miles high — has been very vigorous and has headed our way, helping to steer and intensify Atlantic depressions.

The outlook is for more of the same kind of weather. A deep depression is heading for us over Sunday and Monday and could again drench the western side of Britain.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 21, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

AFTER a week of diabolical weather it makes a change to report a wonderful phenomenon seen recently.

On Sunday, August 8 the Coastguard at Southampton received reports of a flashing light seen out at sea from the coast of the Isle of Wight.

It seemed as though a ship were in distress — possibly on fire — but the light was flashing in such a regular pattern that it made no sense as a distress call.

The Coastguard called vessels in the area but the only flashing light they could see was the lighthouse at Barfleur, near Cherbourg, on the French coast.

To add to the mystery, other, smaller lights began to shine as the sun set.

David Butler, an auxillary coastguard at Ventnor, climbed up on to high ground and, with binoculars, could see clearly not only Barfleur lighthouse, but also the houses and harbour walls of Cherbourg, which he knows well.

Cherbourg is well over 60 miles away and usually hidden under the horizon. But it was revealed by a mirage, created by layers of air at different temperatures which were bending light over the horizon like a glass prism.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 23, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THUNDERSTORMS act as important electrical generators, driving charge upwards. A new type of lightning was discovered recently shooting out from the tops of thunderclouds like gigantic carrots up to about 90km (55 miles) high and reaching into the charged region of the upper atmosphere called the ionosphere.

The powerful electrical discharges inject huge amounts of current into the lower ionosphere, reducing the huge differences in charges that build up between the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere, and helping to balance the global electrical circuit encircling the Earth.

The mass of warm air that is also fired upwards in thunderstorms from the Earth’s surface bursts so high into the atmosphere that it acts as a safety valve for dumping excessive heat, especially important in the tropics.

Down on Earth, lightning helps to fertilise the soil. The intense heat of lightning — it is five times hotter than the surface of the Sun — forces nitrogen to bond to oxygen in the air and produces nitrogen oxides that are washed to ground and help to fertilise the soil with nitrogen fertilisers.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 24, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

TODAY is St Bartholomew’s Day, exactly 40 days after St Swithun’s predictions for daily rain or dry weather has expired.

In fact, St Bartholomew also had his own long-range forecast: “If the 24th August be fair and clear, then hope for a prosperous autumn that year.”

But if it rains on this day, then watch out for a wet autumn.

Unfortunately the weather forecast today looks atrocious, so what sort of autumn can we expect? Long-range forecasts indicate some sunny, dry weather next month, but the rains could return and make a very soggy October.

So far this August, 112mm (4.4in) of rain has fallen in England and Wales, well over the month’s average rainfall, but short of a record.

The wettest August was in 1912, when 192.7mm rain fell. It was a thoughly miserable month, the dullest and coldest August of the century and some places even had frost on August 3.

A fierce storm on August 26 flooded East Anglia and Norwich was cut off for two days, with three people killed and more than 40 bridges destroyed.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 25, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

AFTER rains, flashfloods, landslides, lightning and hail, what else could go wrong with this month’s weather? In fact, there has been another menace: the storms that brought ferocious downpours also spawned a dozen or more tornados across England and Wales.

One of the most dramatic incidents was on Monday in Southwold, Suffolk, when the top of a circus tent was ripped apart by a tornado. Performers were rehearsing when a thunderstorm erupted with swirling clouds, heavy rains and lightning bolts before the tornado struck. They escaped unhurt.

These tornados were created in thunderstorms carrying violent winds ripping up and down inside the clouds. The other key ingredient was wind shear, where winds of different speeds or travelling in different directions send a column of air spinning, rather like whirling a toy spinning top.

The rotating air gradually drops from the bottom of the cloud in a funnel shape, before touching the ground. The whirling winds then rip through trees, although British tornados rarely cause serious damage to buildings or injure people.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 26, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

LAST Saturday was a breath of fresh air — plenty of sunshine and not a drop of rain all day long. The evening was warm and the sky peppered with small clouds, and then I saw something quite magical. As the setting sun dived behind a puffy cumulus cloud, a glorious beam of sunshine soared upwards.

At first it looked like a crepuscular ray, a sunbeam streaming through a gap in the clouds, but these rays fan outwards, which is probably how they got their common name “Rays of Buddha”.

However, this sunbeam was a single, wide shaft of light streaking upwards with an almost glittering quality. It was a sun pillar.

The rays from the sun shone through a veil of thin cirrus clouds, which are so high that their water is frozen into countless ice crystals. The flat faces of those crystals behaved like tiny mirrors, reflecting the sunlight up into a column.

It wasn’t long before the sun pillar was blotted out by more cumulus clouds, but if the light show had continued it would have changed colour as the sun turned red.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 27, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

AS AUGUST squelches on with British rainfall records, spare a thought for the other side of the world, where the supertyphoon Aere has battered Japan, Taiwan and China.

Television has shown raging floodwaters somewhat like those at Boscastle in Cornwall recently, but on a vast scale. As the typhoon crawled at almost walking pace over Taiwan it had time to drop vast amounts of rain.

Some mountainous parts are said to have had nearly 1.5m, almost 5ft, of rain in two days this week, triggering landslides and sending rivers of mud through towns. Roads, buildings and power lines have been ripped up, with winds of 100mph adding to the nightmare.

As the storm headed towards southern China, more than half a million people were moved before it struck on Wednesday, although the winds had weakened.

Typhoons are the Asian equivalent of hurricanes, highly organised storms rotating around an eye, which fuel their strength from warm tropical waters. The energy output of an average typhoon equals 200 times that of electrical-generating capacity worldwide.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 28, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

THIS month’s weather has been appalling, but so far the wettest August on record belongs to 1912.

That summer was dogged by gales, thunderstorms and huge cloudbursts. Nerves were jittery already with the huge military build-up in Germany, when army manoeuvres on Salisbury Plain became bogged down on waterlogged ground — a frightening omen of things to come.

At the end of the month rain had been falling for several days before a gigantic deluge fell on August 25 and 26, swamping Norfolk, in particular. More than 7in fell in one day on Norwich and the results were catastrophic. Rivers burst their banks, drains clogged up with debris and floodwaters surged through the city. Thousands of people were trapped in their homes and men heroically carried out rescue operations in rowing boats. About 2,000 people were left homeless and four people died.

Norfolk became cut off from the rest of the country as bridges collapsed and roads and railways vanished under water. The damage to crops was enormous and the “new-fangled” tractors proved useless in waterlogged fields..

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 30, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

GIVEN the recent weather, should we be referring to the postulated climatic trend as global wetting rather than global warming? (Letters The Times, August 27).

This brilliant question focuses on a key issue in global warming.

Imagine the world’s climate is like a saucepan of hot water. When you turn up the heat, more water evaporates, the steam hits the lid and falls back down as drops of water. Basically this is how water cycles around the globe: more heat evaporates more water from seas and lakes, which makes more clouds, and so more rain falls down. Also, more moisture is carried in warmer air, so rainfall is even greater.

Events are proving this water cycle true because the world is growing warmer and wetter, on average, although it is difficult to say exactly where, when and how much of that rain will fall.

This is especially so for Britain, sitting at a crossroads where two giant armies of air, cold polar air and warm sub-tropical air, battle for dominance and make our weather so unpredictable. What is clear, though, is that our climate is growing more extreme.

Link to Weather Eye source

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August 31, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

BRITAIN is indisputably world class at sailing. The Olympics tally of two gold, one silver and two bronze medals was the best of any sailing nation.

One of the secrets of that success is a team of professional meteorologists and their meticulous preparations for the Olympic Games.

Over three years ago, they staked out the sailing venue at Athens with automatic weather stations, collecting daily year-round data on local weather conditions.

Not only were the big weather patterns recorded, but also the effects of hills, valleys, headlands and coves, which are all vital to understanding the local wind patterns.

On the day of a race, the weather forecasters try to predict the winds to within a few minutes of the specific time during the day because even a small shift in wind can have huge impacts on a race.

The Olympics meteorologist Fiona Campbell explains: “A variable day can allow for those far behind to catch a good gust and catch the front-runners — and those in the front can never let their guard down.”

Link to Weather Eye source

[Matty M]

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September 1, 2004

BY PAUL SIMONS

AUGUST was incredibly wet, but it did not alter the record books.

Even though the month’s data is not yet complete, it looks like this was the wettest August since 1956 and possibly 1917, scoring more than 150mm (almost 6in), about double the month’s average. But this pales beside the staggering August rainfall record total of 192.9 mm (7.59 in) in 1912.

This August was also a very thundery month, with record numbers of thunderstorms for August in places such as Heathrow and Manchester Ringway airports.

Together with that thundery activity, the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation logged 16 tornados, three waterspouts and seven reports of ball lightning, a sphere of light that can glide through the air and explode in a shower of sparks.

This August felt like a throwback to the wet and windy summers of the 1950s and 1960s, except for something very strange: the month was surprisingly sunny, close to the August norm, and very warm — about 17.7 C (63.9 F), which is 1.9C above average.

Link to Weather Eye source