Stormy Weather

[Anna]

saly, we had a family funeral in March and catering was courtesty of Sainsburys party platters, absolutely delicious and pricewise a fraction of the equivalent from M&S or Waitrose. Enjoy your day and remember to take lots of photos to treasure afterwards.

Did anyone see the meteor display last night? (although reading reports now it's being dismissed as 'space junk' burning up!) It was a beautiful clear evening and then such a starry, starry, night. I think those in Scotland got the best of the display - did you see it mangerton?

[salymap]

Anna, you are lucky to be able to star-gaze or even see space -junk. Here the street lights are on all night. I can sometimes see Orion from my back bedroom window near Christmas and that's about it.

[mangerton]

Unfortunately not, Anna. Living in a city on a main road as I do means I have a very restricted view of the sky, and in addition bright street lights do not help.

[BBMmk2]

Oh I hope it wasn't space junk burning up! I would've loved to have seen!

Well althoUgh started up ok , lovely bright sunshine, it's clouded up now! Drat! Suposed to get rain tomorrow!

[greenilex]

Smells like rain here just now.

'Bout time too.

[BBMmk2]

Really autumnal weathyer today.

We suppoosed to get gales! Just rain at the moment though!

[Serial_Apologist]

Really autumnal weathyer today.

We suppoosed to get gales! Just rain at the moment though!

I shall have to check back for the last time the midday temperature was only 10 C in London, in September.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Sunny day yesterday, but very cold first thing. Plenty of Butterflies on the Buddleia.

Began nicely today, but it's just started drizzling and the Pennines have 36 hours of heavy rain forecast from tonight. Meanwhile, in the garden there are primroses and cyclamens thinking it's Spring!

[Anna]

Started to rain about half-ten, steady but so far, so good and no wind, not too warm at 10.3C but, it's OK, perhaps Met Office just erring on the side of caution? I had a cyclamen last Winter, indoors, finally it died, put it to one side for months and I was just about to chuck it out about 10 days ago when I decided to water it - and Lo, and Behold, it now has two healthy looking leaves! Unfortunately I cannot breathe life into my two orchids. You win some, you lose some.

[marthe]

Anna, I'd take the cyclamen over the orchids any time. My house is too cold and dark for orchids but cyclamen do quite well. Weather report from SE New England: sunny, warm and far too dry.

[Petrushka]

Here we go again. It's been fairly dry here for several weeks then a couple of hours of heavy persistent rain this morning and we have floods, trains cancelled, people rescued from trapped cars, usual nonsense. This cannot be right. I can remember when we used to have several days of solid rain without all this palaver. What is going wrong?

You had to laugh at the poor reporter on TV this morning trying to make a story out of nothing. The river looked reasonably normal, the trees weren't flapping around and traffic was proceeding on its normal way. Typical September day really.

[salymap]

It's rained on and off for several days now, just enough to spoil plans for a house/garden party. Still it was cosy indoors and all went well.
Now it's sunny but chilly, it got dark here at 6.40 last night and autumn is well advanced.

I hope my Scottish friends on the MB and antongould, hovering between the two countries, are not flooded out.

[mangerton]

It's rained on and off for several days now, just enough to spoil plans for a house/garden party. Still it was cosy indoors and all went well.
Now it's sunny but chilly, it got dark here at 6.40 last night and autumn is well advanced.

I hope my Scottish friends on the MB and antongould, hovering between the two countries, are not flooded out.

Glad to hear the day went well, salymap.

No flooding here, but further up-river things may not be so good. There are strong winds and reports of fallen trees there, and also in Fife. When I looked out of the window half an hour ago the wind was so strong that the rain appeared not to be hitting the ground.... perhaps that's why there are no floods here.

[Serial_Apologist]

Here we go again. It's been fairly dry here for several weeks then a couple of hours of heavy persistent rain this morning and we have floods, trains cancelled, people rescued from trapped cars, usual nonsense. This cannot be right. I can remember when we used to have several days of solid rain without all this palaver. What is going wrong?

One reason being that, in fact, our usual weather systems, when they arrive, are considerably more powerful than they used to be, apart from in exceptional circumstances, and the associated rain belts heavier and more extensive. Depressions appear to be dragging in airflows of markedly different contrasts in temperature all year round, rather than just in the winter half of the year, and this tends to accentuate their barometric depth - 956 mb being commonplace these days, when it rarely if ever happened when I started keeping records in the '50s - and moisture capacity. At the same time the jet stream seems more persistently set on erratic, zig-zagging courses than used to be the case. Sure, in days of old you'd get the odd blocking high - either a westward extension of the Siberian high in winter, to give us persistent easterlies, or temporary arctic plunges of northerlies behind a "family" of lows - but the more regular west-east movement of the jet stream, while it produced our famous pattern of wet day > showery day > fine day > wet day, at least allowed the northward displacement of the Azores high between May and September to give us the odd week-long warm spell from passing breakaway highs. One odd feature of the past 3 years has been the almost complete failure of the Azores high to move north with the seasonal migration of the sun; this is being put down to the unprecedented release of meltwater from the Polar ice cap.

The other reason being appalling planning decisions which have increasingly permitted building on flood plains, and the tarmacing over of former front gardens, thus removing large areas where the soil was able to absorb "excess" rainfalls and causing rapid runoff into streams and drainage systems incapable of coping with the sheer volume. And to all this we have to add deforestation - now thankfully largely at a standstill and in some areas being reversed - given that trees absorb a larger proportion of groundwater than any other plants.

[salymap]

At Sidcup Station years ago the waiting crowd, [train was late as usual on the Southern Railway], were often amused by bizzare announcements like 'the wrong kind of leaves on the line', 'the relief driver has not arrived at Dartford' and worst of all'attention on the up,the next train will have four carriages' - we were all spread out expecting twelve.