Stormy Weather II

[oddoneout]

It's noticeable how so many plants "prefer" actual rain to tap water. During the long dry spell I would be out at least every other evening with watering can. Several of my potted plants showed little if any " appreciation" for all my efforts. Then we had that thunderstorm last Tuesday, and the Eryngium's leaves, which had been spread prone, drooping over the edge of the pot, immediately sprang to attention, as if they'd had a fix, which they clearly had! A neighbour suggested that the plant must have received a positive charge!

You do have to wonder. Rainwater from the waterbutt is better than tapwater in terms of the effect on my plants(not surprising as the tapwater is pretty bad - excruciating hard and often over full of chlorine) but even a small amount of rain seems to have a disproportionate effect on the plants. It's the difference between simply staying alive and actually thriving.

[DracoM]

Non-stop rain up here, temp 9C. Humid? hot?
HUH!

[Joseph K]

A very pleasant 20 degrees and sunny here today.

[DracoM]

Lucky you!
HERE it is pouring from wall-to-wall grey low cloud and 8C.
But of course, I forget, this is Cumbria, and we don't exist up here, do we?

[Old Grumpy]

Lucky you!
HERE it is pouring from wall-to-wall grey low cloud and 8C.
But of course, I forget, this is Cumbria, and we don't exist up here, do we?

No, Cumbria exists to receive rain and store the product to service the worthy citizens of Cottonopolis!

[Serial_Apologist]

No, Cumbria exists to receive rain and store the product to service the worthy citizens of Cottonopolis!

And there was me thinking you were going to say, "To service the drought-prone areas by means of the wonderful nationally interconnected water supply system no government appears to have any intentions of building".

Meanwhile drizzle has just commenced here, and it is pleasantly cool and quite breezy.

[vinteuil]

Lucky you!
HERE it is pouring from wall-to-wall grey low cloud and 8C.
But of course, I forget, this is Cumbria, and we don't exist up here, do we?

... of course I understand that perhaps London-centric meteorologists don't seem to you to fully represent what's going on up in your Cumbrian fastnesses.

But I also presume that when you chose to live in them there parts you did due diligence on what the weather was likely to be - and offset that against the obvious joy of fells, landscapes, 'nature' ...

.

[Joseph K]

it is pleasantly cool and quite breezy.

Cool summer days are my favourite sort of weather.

[oddoneout]

... of course I understand that perhaps London-centric meteorologists don't seem to you to fully represent what's going on up in your Cumbrian fastnesses.

But I also presume that when you chose to live in them there parts you did due diligence on what the weather was likely to be - and offset that against the obvious joy of fells, landscapes, 'nature' ...

.

Well they got it right for once, but wrong for everyone else! https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...-due-to-glitch
Due diligence for something like general weather done sometime in the past won't have been able to help with the present day situation of nothing normal and the only thing that's certain is more extremes. Bit like having chosen a location for a new home based on thriving community and facilities and then finding that modern day trends mean change at speed - second homes so no community happenings and the facilities have been shut down/withdrawn due to lack of custom, changing service delivery etc.

[Serial_Apologist]

Cool summer days are my favourite sort of weather.

Strangely enough - well, perhaps not so strangely - next week's weather, dominated like in your usual standard "bad summer" by a "zonal" pattern, i.e. travelling latitudinally from west to east, will be giving the sorts of temperatures that one would always have expected in such summer weather régimes. Nothing much has been written about this particular aspect of climate change, possibly for fear of CC deniers having a field day, like "There you are, no evidence whatsoever for climate warming". What seems most probable to me is that whenever the weather patterns revert to what would once have been their default, at any given time of year temperatures will be back where they were, pre-accelerated global warming, for the following reason.

The main symptom of global warming, ice melting at the poles, has been deceleration of the main engine of weather system momentum - the earth's upper jet stream systems. Past text book explanations of the four great global jet stream systems - two per latitudal hemisphere - would always depict the jets as either straight or slightly bendy. Some would be one, others the other at any given point, according to season and atmospheric energy distribution, which, in turn, depends on the differences in surface temperatures between Equator and poles. The less the difference - as a consequence of the warming up of the poles - the weaker the jet streams; the weaker the jet streams, the more their tendency to meander - much like a river does as it becomes an estuary. Rivers meander in their lower reaches and sometimes create cut off ox-bow lakes. On approaching the sea the main flow often subdivides into deltas; so do weakened jet streams, with bendy pathways becoming elongated well beyond designated climate zones and brief hiatuses in the flow. Whenever this widened reach happens to the atmospheric flow, high pressure tends to form in the gaps. High level outflow from tropical convergence zones, cooled at altitude, is able to "use" these high pressure zones as auxiliaries to the "great" systemic high pressure zones, such as the Azores High and the Antarctic High, to drain away massed air originating from tropical storm outflows, thereby intensifying these anticyclonic "interventions". Now, in the atmospheric cycle, high pressure systems are "the kings of the castle": they can impose themselves in any one location for as long as they are maintained by the overall global pattern of wind energy distribution, and are known as the "blocking highs" - normal in the subtropical zones where their dry descending air maintains the great subtropical deserts of the world, less so beyond these regions. The main characteristic of these high pressure blocks is their persistence and strength, blowing out winds that bring the weather conditions pertaining where they are settled to other areas on their periphery, which can then become prone to drought, and either extremes of heat or cold, depending on season and location. The second thing to note is that low pressure systems trapped while jet streams falter, before finding routes around these highs, tend correspondingly to deepen in situ, creating gigantic air flows in their circulation which can transport air of either very high or very low temperatures to regions which are not ecologically set up to be able to sustain water levels, established biodiversity and so on. When the atmosphere is "held up" in this way - which as previously stated is a consequence of the slowing down of the jet stream's propulsive power - temperatures can continue to build up, sometimes to record levels, until such time as the pattern breaks and balance is restored. The warming or cooling effect can happen either way, depending on where one happens to be in relation to prevailing wind sources, but given overall global warming the balance will tend towards the former end of the temperature spectrum.

The balance will be restored, whenever the weather patterns resume courses which were once "the norm", as is now the case, and temperatures, and rainfall patterns, will revert to what we were all used to when it was "common knowledge" that what made the British climate so equable was the fact that our weather came in off the relatively warm North Atlantic, and just the odd hot summer occurring when anticyclonic break-aways from the Azores high spread subtropical air across us, or the seasonal Siberian High extended further west than usual in winter to give us "the beast from the east". The problem now, for all the aforementioned reasons, is that this old pattern of relative regularity is now constantly subject to displacement and can no longer be relied on.

[DracoM]

Cumbria is geologically and thus meteorologically tricky to do weather for, I accept, BUT it often seems to us here that we are in BBC weather forecast terms 'the North West' - clumsy, convenient - yes, BUT yet in that phrase the BBC lumps together Atlantic Ocean coasts > Morecambe Bay > Fylde Coast, and then Manchester, Liverpool, awkward mountains and big lakes, plus Carlisle - i.e. decent sized cities, much battered coasts, wild fells, testing mountains, sweeping pastures etc. ALL in a pretty concentrated area, that the BBC still shrugs off as 'the North West'.

Cumbria alone is a major international and UK holiday destination, a major walking/climbing/farming area, v.small settlements and largish suburbs and cities.

Is it any wonder that many in land-centred occupations up here do not care much for, or even note much the BBC forecasts, but plug into the Norwegian forecasts - which by and large are more accurate!

https://www.yr.no/en/forecast/hourly-table/2-7293221/United%20Kingdom/England/Cumbria/

[Joseph K]

Strangely enough - well, perhaps not so strangely - next week's weather, dominated like in your usual standard "bad summer" by a "zonal" pattern, i.e. travelling latitudinally from west to east, will be giving the sorts of temperatures that one would always have expected in such summer weather régimes. Nothing much has been written about this particular aspect of climate change, possibly for fear of CC deniers having a field day, like "There you are, no evidence whatsoever for climate warming". What seems most probable to me is that whenever the weather patterns revert to what would once have been their default, at any given time of year temperatures will be back where they were, pre-accelerated global warming, for the following reason.

The main symptom of global warming, ice melting at the poles, has been deceleration of the main engine of weather system momentum - the earth's upper jet stream systems. Past text book explanations of the four great global jet stream systems - two per latitudal hemisphere - would always depict the jets as either straight or slightly bendy. Some would be one, others the other at any given point, according to season and atmospheric energy distribution, which, in turn, depends on the differences in surface temperatures between Equator and poles. The less the difference - as a consequence of the warming up of the poles - the weaker the jet streams; the weaker the jet streams, the more their tendency to meander - much like a river does as it becomes an estuary. Rivers meander in their lower reaches and sometimes create cut off ox-bow lakes. On approaching the sea the main flow often subdivides into deltas; so do weakened jet streams, with bendy pathways becoming elongated well beyond designated climate zones and brief hiatuses in the flow. Whenever this widened reach happens to the atmospheric flow, high pressure tends to form in the gaps. High level outflow from tropical convergence zones, cooled at altitude, is able to "use" these high pressure zones as auxiliaries to the "great" systemic high pressure zones, such as the Azores High and the Antarctic High, to drain away massed air originating from tropical storm outflows, thereby intensifying these anticyclonic "interventions". Now, in the atmospheric cycle, high pressure systems are "the kings of the castle": they can impose themselves in any one location for as long as they are maintained by the overall global pattern of wind energy distribution, and are known as the "blocking highs" - normal in the subtropical zones where their dry descending air maintains the great subtropical deserts of the world, less so beyond these regions. The main characteristic of these high pressure blocks is their persistence and strength, blowing out winds that bring the weather conditions pertaining where they are settled to other areas on their periphery, which can then become prone to drought, and either extremes of heat or cold, depending on season and location. The second thing to note is that low pressure systems trapped while jet streams falter, before finding routes around these highs, tend correspondingly to deepen in situ, creating gigantic air flows in their circulation which can transport air of either very high or very low temperatures to regions which are not ecologically set up to be able to sustain water levels, established biodiversity and so on. When the atmosphere is "held up" in this way - which as previously stated is a consequence of the slowing down of the jet stream's propulsive power - temperatures can continue to build up, sometimes to record levels, until such time as the pattern breaks and balance is restored. The warming or cooling effect can happen either way, depending on where one happens to be in relation to prevailing wind sources, but given overall global warming the balance will tend towards the former end of the temperature spectrum.

The balance will be restored, whenever the weather patterns resume courses which were once "the norm", as is now the case, and temperatures, and rainfall patterns, will revert to what we were all used to when it was "common knowledge" that what made the British climate so equable was the fact that our weather came in off the relatively warm North Atlantic, and just the odd hot summer occurring when anticyclonic break-aways from the Azores high spread subtropical air across us, or the seasonal Siberian High extended further west than usual in winter to give us "the beast from the east". The problem now, for all the aforementioned reasons, is that this old pattern of relative regularity is now constantly subject to displacement and can no longer be relied on.

Thanks for the explanation.

[vinteuil]

Is it any wonder that many in land-centred occupations up here do not care much for, or even note much the BBC forecasts, but plug into the Norwegian forecasts - which by and large are more accurate!

... yes, I agree - I think it was you who recommended yr.no here, and I'm very grateful for that : we now use it a lot.
I grew up in west Wiltshire, which was similarly 'poorly served' by the BBC - neither 'south west' nor 'central southern'.

But surely the dramatic weather is part of 'experience' of Cumbria?

[DracoM]

Yes, but it would be nicer and even more 'dramatic' if the forecasting was more accurate esp for visitors.

[cloughie]

Decent drop of rain today!