Heatwave Lucifer

[dinosaw]

Has given Wales a miss.

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/two-year-old-boy-suffered-13432073

 

[Minorcafan]

So pleased it missed us up here too. We would all die of heatstroke....

 

[bigyetiman]

Down here to, glad we have missed the heatwave. Can I put in a request for good weather for Eastbourne air show in a fortnight please.
The dunes at Newborough Warren go on for miles and just when you think you are at the beach another dune appears in front of you, another place easy to get lost in. Amazing flora in there though. Must have been quite scary for the child

 

[rick]

Got stuck on a cliff with the dog once at Aberystwyth - at sunset as the tide was coming in. Our terrier was running up and down the scree cliff face like a mountain goat but the whippet lurcher got stuck. Like an idiot I went up for her and we both got stuck.
The life guard were fast and excellent (absailed down from the top) and we got a suitable ticking off. I think 'Lady' really would have been stranded up their for the night but it was only me getting stuck also that swung the A- team into action - embarrassing! It was a spectacular sunset though - tinged with anxiety.
Just goes to show how an afternoon walk on the beach can turn into an unexpected drama.

 

[bigjim]

The red arrows flew over my house yesterday, loud and low.

 

[dinosaw]

I think we've all been guilty of being a bit daft with the weather at times. Me and Mrs Dino decided to visit Kranji war cemetery one time when we were in Singapore despite looking at the sky and seeing that one of those afternoon convective storms was brewing. We thought we would be finished before it started but boy were we wrong. It started chucking it down and we went to shelter under the concrete memorial and it just got worse and worse, and then the lightning started!. We were counting the seconds between the flash and the thunder and it kept getting closer, 4 seconds, 3 seconds, 2, 1 and then BANG!, right on top of us, absolutely ear splitting. We could see the sparks which was bad enough, but the worst thing was hearing that horrible low hum and crackle of of electricity all around us. Fair to say we nearly crapped ourselves. We had another two direct hits right above us, just as bad, before it started to move away. All we could do was hunker down in the driest spot we could find. When we thought the lightning was far enough away we made a run for it to the metro station and got completely soacked head to toe, locals looking at us like 'what a pair of plonkers', quite right too. I bought a cheap t-shirt at the station to change into which I still have as a souvenir. It was Mrs D's birthday so we were already booked to go out, but we got absolutely hammered that night. We were so happy to be alive and kicking it was about 3am when we decided that it might be time to call it a night, think the barman wanted to go home.

 

[bigyetiman]

The red arrows flew over my house yesterday, loud and low.

We have those on the "over the house list". Noisiest has to be the Typhoon, and the Sally B impressive, we were lucky enough to have the Vulcan go over on her final flight, we all stood in the cornfield out the front with a huge Union Jack on top of a tractor. One advantage on being on a direct line from Duxford-Biggin Hill we get a lot of good stuff on a regular basis.

 

[Margaid]

We used to go to Merthyr Mawr occasionally when I was a child and had to be careful not to get lost - the aerial footage doesn't seem to show the huge dunes system but maybe it's changed in the last 50 years.

Where I used to live was reasonably close to RAF Cosford and hearing some odd aeroplane noises went outside to look. The Vulcan was carrying out in-flight stall and re-stars tests right above our heads. It was at a considerable height but amazing to watch especially as a lot of people who had pre-booked for the air show to see the Vulcan didn't even manage to get there because of the traffic congestion.

When I lived in Suffolk we had practically all of the WW2 aircraft fly overhead having got into formation ready to fly over Buckingham Palace - fantastic sight!

 

[Hen-Gen]

We have had an exceptionally good summer. In fact the Met Office announced that in July we had more hours of sunshine than Cornwall. Though the temperatures are mild by English standards we have basked in tee shirt weather. More brown faces and red shoulders than I've seen since I went to Majorca.
Of course the doom mongers are saying we'll pay for it in the winter but that would be fine too. But we paid in advance. Last winters gales were challenging. Remember storm Abigail? To be honest I only remember the name because it's my god daughters name. But I'll never forget the fear!

(And later came Gertrude. The whole community knew fear when it touched 110mph.)

 

[dinosaw]

Have to say I don't care for anything much above 60mph wind wise, 110 must be very noisy and scary.

 

[bigyetiman]

I don't like high winds either. Can cope with rain, snow etc but 60mph gusts scary, although that is tame for you up on Fetlar Hen-Gen, I did smile when I saw on news that you had more sun than Cornwall. you will have all the grockles booking hols in Shetland next year
Best doom mongers going are the Daily Express, always look at the front page when passing a news stand and see their predictions, August was going to be so hot, last winter was going to be the coldest ever, or we are all going to drown when we get a months worth of rain in ten minutes from a cloud shaped like Diana.

 

[Marigold]

Trump has now censored the language which the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) must use.
'Climate change' is now forbidden, and the government now has to talk about 'extreme weather events.'
Some employees are worried that they may get this wrong.
Have they read 1984 over there, do you suppose?
See
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/07/usda-climate-change-language-censorship-emails

 

[dinosaw]

Whether the government ought to be meddling is debatable but climate change is a pretty naff term though. The climate has always changed throughout human history and before, it would actually be odd if it wasn't changing. This is a good little piece from Cambridge University

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/climate-change-its-all-happened-before

Closer to home there was a very marked temperature rise in Europe known as the medieval warm period from 950-1250 followed by a cool down called the the little ice age which lasted till circa 1800 with fluctuations within this. It was bad enough to cause widespread famine and population decline across the continent. In this country it had quite severe consequences that helped contribute to the political upheaval of the middle ages.

 

[Hen-Gen]

I don't like high winds either. Can cope with rain, snow etc but 60mph gusts scary, although that is tame for you up on Fetlar Hen-Gen, I did smile when I saw on news that you had more sun than Cornwall. you will have all the grockles booking hols in Shetland next year
.

Quite right. I've already ordered a candy floss machine and a thousand 'kiss me quick' hats from Amazon.

(It doesn't take a lot for me to revert to typical Southern snobbery! )

 

[bigyetiman]

O M G Hen-Gen, don't forget sticks of rock and ornaments made out of shells. My ex mother in law had a whole frog orchestra made of cockle shells from "Sarfend on Sea" bought on day trips. She always said we could have that when she died. Now you know why I got divorced.
Buckets and spades to Hen-Gen. You might need to buy yourself a guide to "estuary English" to cope with any Southerners from the aforementioned area

 

[Hen-Gen]

Stop, stop!!! You're taking me back to childhood holidays in Bognor which were great when I was 8yo but definitely do not appeal now.
Yesterday I had a trip to Lerwick and I feel that that was enough excitement for the rest of this year. The check out girl asked me if using my card by contact was OK. She might as well have been talking Swahili.
Bought a new phone on Monday. All sorts of set up procedures. One stage I couldn't make it work. Rang the BT helpline. 'Ah, you have to press the red button at this stage'. But nowhere in the guide does it say that. Not opposed to new technology, just the brainless numpties associated with it!

 

[Marigold]

Yes, one needs access to a teenager when embarking on a new phone or laptop. Every time my youngest granddaughter comes to stay, she does effortless things with my laptop that I never knew existed. Trouble is, I can't usually remember how to do them once she goes home and I have to ring her up for another tutorial.

 

[Margaid]

Dr. Judith Bunbury wrote "It’s fiction to think climate change doesn’t happen – it’s just a question of how it happens, when, and how fast.”
Note that she doesn't ask WHY.

Politicians wring their hands and tinker with renewable energy (it takes HUGE amounts of energy and resources to build and erect a wind turbine) thinking that like King Canute they can halt climate change in it's tracks ...

I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't try and cut carbon emissions (or remove plastic from the oceans or lots of other sensible environmental stuff) but maybe we should be looking at HOW to cope with changing weather patterns. In the 12th and 13th centuries the harvests failed - that's harvests of grain, vegetables and fruit, so what are we going to eat if harvests fail and there's no winter feed for cattle and sheep, never mind our direct consumption? Maybe we'll become less wasteful; if the sugar cane or sugar beet harvests fail it may perhaps solve the "obesity epidemic"! Few people have

I nearly fell off my chair laughing BYM. Definitely a case of unreasonable behaviour!

Hen-Gen I once worked at the BT Research Labs in Suffolk: volunteering for "experiments" with the Human Factors group was always good for a skive. I caused havoc with some of their experiments/tests because they had no real idea how the "normal" mind worked. So why am I not surprised?

 

[bigyetiman]

Glad I made you laugh, and the Guide to Estuary English is a real book (innit) just in case anyone is wondering.
So glad you caused havoc Margaid with the experiments just what they needed a sane sensible person in there.

 

[Margaid]

Sane? Sensible? Moi?????