Weather winter 2010/2011

[Casalima]

Lovely photos, Cliff!!

The weather here has changed amazingly! Wet and (southern) windy and the temperatures around the country rose so fast this morning that the national meteo site was overwhelmed and had to go into simple mode. Temperature at 22.00 this evening: 16 ºC!!! 18.7 ºC down in Faro in the Algarve. Much colder indoors than outdoors!

[cohan]

lovely area and shots, cliff!

stolen snowman? she's sure it didn't melt? you'd think they'd just take the silver (foolish)

[Roma]

What a surprise!  A council lorry with a snow scraper just drove past.  Up till now all we've seen on this road have been local farmers with diggers.  They must be catching up with the snow clearing.
My grandson is off school again today.  He normally goes on a school bus but if it is not running his mother is not allowed to take him to school.  She phoned today and was told she can take him tomorrow but must be able to pick him up within 15 minutes if the pupils are sent home.

[ChrisB]

Casa, you got a spare room?  I'm on my way....

[Anthony Darby]

I spent two hours this morning stuck on the M9 just outside Stirling trying to get to work in Falkirk! Managed to get off the motorway and back home, but one of my wife's colleagues left home from Glasgow at 7 a.m. and, nearly 13 hours later, is still stuck on the motorway at Stirling, not having even reached Dunblane!

[Casalima]

Casa, you got a spare room?  I'm on my way....

With the warm weather outside, the temperature in my study/bedroom has gone up from 7 ºC to a stunning 8 ºC! Not sure whether most northern Europeans would find the 14-16 ºC outdoors enough to compensate for the lack of central heating!

[mark smyth]

Today N Ireland came to a standstill. We had a massive of snow fall this afternoon 6 inches plus fell in a couple of hours.

Food I put out for the birds got covered in no time. Speaking to Anne tonight she had a great idea. Maybe she''ll post a photo

[Martin Baxendale]

I hope all those of you with continuing snow problems are coping okay. Starting to feel quite guilty about my almost total lack of snow (except for a short-lived cm or two of the stuff on Saturday night) here in comparatively balmy (-7c tonight) Gloucestershire. Stay warm and safe.

[johnw]

Today is the 93rd anniversary of the Halifax Explosion.

"The Halifax Explosion occurred on Thursday, December 6, 1917, when the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was devastated by the huge detonation of the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives, which accidentally collided with the Norwegian SS Imo in "The Narrows" section of the Halifax Harbour. About 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, or collapsed buildings and it is estimated that over 9,000 people were injured.[2] This is still the world's largest man-made accidental explosion.[3]
At 8:40 in the morning, the SS Mont-Blanc, chartered by the French government to carry munitions to Europe, collided with the unloaded Norwegian ship Imo, chartered by the Commission for Relief in Belgium to carry relief supplies. Mont-Blanc caught fire ten minutes after the collision and exploded about twenty-five minutes later (at 9:04:35 AM).[4] All buildings and structures covering nearly 2 square kilometres (500 acres) along the adjacent shore were obliterated, including those in the neighbouring communities of Richmond and Dartmouth.[2] The explosion caused a tsunami in the harbour and a pressure wave of air that snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels, and carried fragments of the Mont-Blanc for kilometres."

View of the mushroom cloud roughly 15-20 seconds after the blast, taken 21 km (13 miles) away from the Northwest Arm of Halifax Harbour.  Within hours the City of Boston sent a trainload of relief supplies, medical teams and pharmaceuticals and rebuilt a northern section of the city.  The next day the temperature plummeted and a severe blizzard struck.

The weather last night and today suited the ocassion, gusts to 150k/h and a huge amount of rain.  We wondered why the house was rocking throughout the night.

johnw

[cohan]

Casa, you got a spare room?  I'm on my way....

With the warm weather outside, the temperature in my study/bedroom has gone up from 7 ºC to a stunning 8 ºC! Not sure whether most northern Europeans would find the 14-16 ºC outdoors enough to compensate for the lack of central heating!

i think northern europeans might be tougher re:indoor temps than canadians, there are personal and probably regional variations of course, but we tend to like it warm indoors, and i certainly couldn't imagine living with 8C indoors (maybe overnight, though i'd prefer not)! (i have done it, and much worse, but only in very undesirable temporary situations...lol-an unheated apartment in montreal, a store/salon  in edmonton with very inadequate heating-i had to put a small heater in front of clients so the heat would go under the hairdressing cape!)..right now, my house is heated by a woodburning heater, heat spread with a ceiling fan and floor fans as needed, and the computer is quite near it, so its a very toasty, probably high 20's C sitting here (of course much cooler as you go farther away from the heater..)

[cohan]

john your weather--heavy winds and rain- has been on our news, as well as heavy snows in parts of ontario-some areas expecting 100cm by the time its done--thank goodness that amount of snow is unheard of here! (knock on wood)
when i lived in toronto, i was in the lucky zone near the lake where snowfall is much much less than other areas not far away...

[johnw]

i think northern europeans might be tougher re:indoor temps than canadians

I'll say. My friend in Numansdorf, Holland record +4c in her kitchen last week and had icicles hanging from the showerhead.  

johnw

[Tony Willis]

I know this weather has brought much misery and we have recorded our lowest ever temperature in 17 years of living here -9c but there are some moments of pure joy. This is the first time we have ever had bramblings in the garden,we have a small flock of a dozen and this morning two (I know others have dozens) waxwings.

[Paddy Tobin]

Tony,

We are enjoying nothing so exotic as the Waxwings - they have come about half-way down the country but have not reached the south coast.

However, I do enjoy the large flocks (50 - 100) of Corn Buntings which move along in front of us as we walk, just a little bit at a time and some allow you to approach quite closely before flying.

Paddy

[Armin]

Today is the 93rd anniversary of the Halifax Explosion.
johnw

John,
your anniversary induced me to investigate and to figure out the unbelieveable dimension of the ship tragedy.
'The powerful blast has shattered most of the windows within an 80-kilometre radius. The aftershock of the explosion is felt as far away as Sydney, Cape Breton; a distance of about 435 kilometres. An estimated 25,000 people from a population of less than 50,000 suddenly find themselves homeless.'

More details here: http://archives.cbc.ca/war_conflict/first_world_war/topics/971/