It was bucketing down at 11 pm as we left The Vortex in Dalston last night, and we had to make our way back to the Overground walking into a full gale. So it was surprising to find the sky completely clear on arrival at Crystal Palace, with not even a scrap of cloud sub-illuminated from the lights of London. 4 degrees Celsius, I estimated. I wonder how many share my near-ability to tell what air temperature it is. On getting home I checked my outside thermometer, and it showed bang on 4 degrees C. I find it more difficult the further outside our usual temperature range it happens to be. Anothing below say minus 3 C just feels bloody cold!
Brummie Simon's weather analysis is interesting right now. Apparently for some time we have had to our west an area of colder than normal Atlantic waters, stretching across to Canada. To the south of that, stretching right down the eastern US seaboard, is a large area of warmer than normal waters. Simon says this latter is helping maintain the huge high pressure area that is keeping a westerly type of weather regime going on this side of the Atlantic. What he doesn't mention is that what accounts for the area of cold Atlantic water to the east of Canada is that it is being kept cold by the exceptionally cold air that has been coming off the American continent ever since the beginning of the year - people may have seen the frozen Niagara Falls and Hudson River - and this in turn is feeding the huge temperature differences that are stoking up deeper than usual Atlantic depressions, thus accounting for how windy this winter has turned out to be. Normally one finds high pressure dominating over the North Pole in the winter half of the year, surrounded by circulating low pressure systems, but the pattern now seems to have reversed. As yet, nobody seems to have come up with an explanation of why we find this huge area of extremely cold air over Canada, and for the second year running, too.
Brummie Simon's weather analysis is interesting right now. Apparently for some time we have had to our west an area of colder than normal Atlantic waters, stretching across to Canada. To the south of that, stretching right down the eastern US seaboard, is a large area of warmer than normal waters. Simon says this latter is helping maintain the huge high pressure area that is keeping a westerly type of weather regime going on this side of the Atlantic. What he doesn't mention is that what accounts for the area of cold Atlantic water to the east of Canada is that it is being kept cold by the exceptionally cold air that has been coming off the American continent ever since the beginning of the year - people may have seen the frozen Niagara Falls and Hudson River - and this in turn is feeding the huge temperature differences that are stoking up deeper than usual Atlantic depressions, thus accounting for how windy this winter has turned out to be. Normally one finds high pressure dominating over the North Pole in the winter half of the year, surrounded by circulating low pressure systems, but the pattern now seems to have reversed. As yet, nobody seems to have come up with an explanation of why we find this huge area of extremely cold air over Canada, and for the second year running, too.
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