Stormy Weather II

[DracoM]

Interesting that no talk of 'Beast from East' anywhere, when at the mo, ALL our winds up here [Cumbrian fells] are right now from and predicted to remain from the east and burgeoning by the day.

Or is it only a 'Beast' when it's cold? Winds like this dry and dry and dry to tinder dryness, burn moorland and kill the garden.

[Petrushka]

Talk of hosepipe bans and drought makes me wonder if anyone actually remembers the weeks of heavy rain, floods and snow during the autumn, winter and early spring. Nature prepared us well for this summer so what have the water companies been playing at?

[vinteuil]

Interesting that no talk of 'Beast from East' anywhere, when at the mo, ALL our winds up here [Cumbrian fells] are right now from and predicted to remain from the east and burgeoning by the day.

Or is it only a 'Beast' when it's cold? Winds like this dry and dry and dry to tinder dryness, burn moorland and kill the garden.

... these northern softies! All they do is complain when the weather is (as is usual up there, apparently... ) cold / dreech / miserable/ windy / freezing / torrential rain / fog/ harr / fret / rain / cloud / horizontal rain / more rain / dreech / cold - and then - when they have a bit of balmy - whinge, whinge, whinge...

Northern softies!


.

[Serial_Apologist]

I caught my lovely Italian neighbours watering a plant pot containing a fuschia and surrounding mass of variegated laurel earlier. Ubnfortunately they don't speak English, being on a visit. "No no no no agua!" I proclaimed, wildly gesticulating emotionally in stereotyped pseudo-Italian mode, "Vietato agua sopra flora in tiempo caliente!" I know just individual arbitarary words in Italian, culled from recipe books, music scores and bootleg album liner notes. I'm not sure if "vietato" is Italian or Spanish for "forbidden" or if the Italian for warm/hot is "caliente". But you'd think Italians of all people would know NOT to water plants, especially containerised ones, in blistering midday sun heat, given that to do so will effectively cook them. No wonder the poor things have been turning yellow! I quickly poured cold water over the plants and into the soil, and brought the thing into the shade of my porch.

I see the temperature has now reached 28 C here, and that will probably be as high as it gets, now that altocumulus castellatus cloud is invading from the south aboard the "Spanish plume", which has been bringing elevated thunderstorms to south Devon so far, though how far east these are likely to spread remains to be seen, or how much of the rain on such storms manages to reach the ground. This will probably be the last chance of rain in the SE for another week - temps are expected to remain high in the trapped continental tropical air now over the country, if not quite as high as today, but nights will also be warmer than they were last week. As Petrushka says, it's ridiculous that we have hosepipe bans - all probably down to the privatised water companies' failure to keep up with repairs desperately needed to underground pipework.

[greenilex]

Has clouded over - we even had a few precious drops of warm rain - but although it feels very thundery no storm as yet.

[Serial_Apologist]

Has clouded over - we even had a few precious drops of warm rain - but although it feels very thundery no storm as yet.

Most of the energy has transferred SE and is now covering much of Britanny, where Lightningmaps shows spherics popping away continuously.

[BBMmk2]

Going to be 28C today! Practically everywhere! Keep fluids up, etc!

[BBMmk2]

We had quite a gale going of the IoW yesterday evening m through the night and early morning. Going to be cooler today, thankfully!

[oddoneout]

The continued cool wind is still making for odd contrasts. My max/min thermometer outside the back door settles at about 15 min and 35 max most days, give or take a couple of degrees upwards. The bottom of the garden is shady and a wind tunnel so stays cool(and the nearby veg plants have given up trying to grow vertically in the months of strong uni-directional wind), whereas the more enclosed patio by the house is too hot much of the time. Many are finding that being indoors is uncomfortable as it seems to be sticky as well as very hot - strange considering how dessicating the wind is.

[Serial_Apologist]

The continued cool wind is still making for odd contrasts. My max/min thermometer outside the back door settles at about 15 min and 35 max most days, give or take a couple of degrees upwards. The bottom of the garden is shady and a wind tunnel so stays cool(and the nearby veg plants have given up trying to grow vertically in the months of strong uni-directional wind), whereas the more enclosed patio by the house is too hot much of the time. Many are finding that being indoors is uncomfortable as it seems to be sticky as well as very hot - strange considering how dessicating the wind is.

Your humidity indoors may be down to condensation from any cooking you may have been doing? In this hot weather I just have two poached and one boiled egg per week, a toaster for my toast (3 mins each breakfast time hardly heats the place up), a fast-boiling electric kettle for tea/coffee, and otherwise live on salads.

Even the garden's too windy for any outdoor work on a book I'm trying to write - My table top is an equivalent of multiscreening on the computer, piled up paperwork at the ready for cross-referencing purposes, and you need more paperweights that I've got to stop it blowing away! On the other hand I'm getting fed up with staying indoors behind closed curtains until the evening's cool gets me out for the de rigueur daytime stroll. If tomorrow is cooler down here, as forecast, I might just make the most of the opportunity and spend the day cycling between favourite pubs between here and Hammersmith.

[BBMmk2]

Quite heavy gusts of wind yesterday afternoon in Ryde. I had to stop on my motorbility scooter because of the gusts!

[oddoneout]

Very chilly last night - the thermometer read 12, but that was with a warm house wall behind it. The Met Office observation station for my area showed below 8 at 5am. My poor toms, peppers etc will not have liked that - they are all outside rather than under cover(which I don't have). Today has been pleasantly warm, and fresher feeling than of late. The sky has been somewhat veiled by feathery wispy cloud(I think it's more than just dispersing contrails!), and there was quite a lot of small pretty cottage cheese type cloud lumps first thing this morning, tinted palest pink against the blue.

[Serial_Apologist]

Very chilly last night - the thermometer read 12, but that was with a warm house wall behind it. The Met Office observation station for my area showed below 8 at 5am. My poor toms, peppers etc will not have liked that - they are all outside rather than under cover(which I don't have). Today has been pleasantly warm, and fresher feeling than of late. The sky has been somewhat veiled by feathery wispy cloud(I think it's more than just dispersing contrails!), and there was quite a lot of small pretty cottage cheese type cloud lumps first thing this morning, tinted palest pink against the blue.

Ah, those would be altocumulus - which we had here too, but they've now been replaced by lower stuff, indicating higher levels of surface humidity for the first time in over a week. This is borne out by the more muggy feel to the air today. But the smoothed over tops to the clouds suggesting an inversion cap also suggests that a lot more "convecting" is gonna have to take place if we are to experience those much-wished for "occasional showers" earlier said to be threatening Wimbledon.

One more day like this, then it's hot, hot, hot again for a while.

[greenilex]

Nothing you could call rain...just minimalist precipitation in one street and not the next door road.

Gardens totally parched.

[BBMmk2]

Quite a humid day it turned to be, yesterday. I hope today will be better.