Tag Archives: Weather

And So Into Summer

Posted on by
Reply

Every year, when the days start to heat up, it feels like a lib­er­a­tion that some strange part of me wor­ries might never come. But it’s here now, as inevitable as any sea­son. May turns into June with barely a sec­ond thought. The wind swings around to the south, blow­ing hot from for­eign lands. It rises, too, tick­ling the tops of trees but bring­ing no relief to those on the ground under the scorch­ing sun.

Field and Farmhouse

Tem­per­a­tures drift inex­orably towards the thir­ties. The gorse flow­ers have faded and gone, pass­ing their torch to the but­ter­cups in the mead­ows and the cow pars­ley that crowds every hedgerow and riverbank.

Win­ter and Spring have had their day. Now it is time for Sum­mer; king of sea­sons, our sea­son. It is time for deep blue skies and end­less green fields. It is time for the smell of bar­be­cues and the salty sea. It is time for the sound of parched heath under­foot and the calls of swal­lows in the cool evening air.

House and Brick Wall

It is time to run, and play, and swim, and laugh, and dance between the hot sand and the blaz­ing sky.

Sum­mer is here.

Easter’s Approach

Posted on by
4

Not too many years ago, Easter fell early in the month of April. I spent it camp­ing in a bliz­zard some­where near Birm­ing­ham, pack­ing in as many peo­ple as our tent would hold so that we wouldn’t freeze overnight. My choice to spend the day­light hours run­ning around a frozen muddy field in a hakama was also, with hind­sight, not the best of all pos­si­ble choices.

Years have passed, and this time around, Easter falls late. The lilac trees are already in bloom, while cherry blos­soms and dan­de­lion seeds tum­ble in the wind.

image

Even at eight in the morn­ing, the sun is high in the sky and the mist is boil­ing away. Blue skies over­head promise a beau­ti­ful day, hot and cloud­less, just like dozens more to come.

image

It’s April, then it will be May. The hol­i­days are here, the tourists are here to pack the beaches. Slowly but surely, Spring is becom­ing Sum­mer once more.

Cobb’s Quay Weather

Posted on by
Reply

Cobb’s Quay in Poole Har­bour has a crappy Flash-only front-end to its weather sta­tion. My “Cobb’s Quay Weather” page grabs the data files behind the Flash, and dis­plays the impor­tant bits with min­i­mal for­mat­ting, e.g. for mobile browsers.

Made for a friend of mine who couldn’t get the Flash inter­face to work from his phone.

Note: Tem­per­a­ture read­ings seem to be bro­ken at the moment (April 2011). This is an issue with the source data, not my script.

You can:

A Day Snowbound

Posted on by
Reply

The weather, like the best of muses, is capri­cious and arbitrary.

Snowy Road

Yes­ter­day I had no prob­lem at all catch­ing buses and trains to get from our home to Guild­ford, a good hun­dred miles away. Guild­ford was under 3–4 inches of snow, com­plete with the req­ui­site ice under­neath, so using the pushchair was a chal­lenge — but we made it.

This morn­ing, an inch fell on Bournemouth. And paral­ysed it.

The photo below is Queens Road this morn­ing, which nat­u­rally, the coun­cil have not grit­ted. Of course not, I mean, it’s only a 1-in-5 hill on a bus route. Why would they want to grit that?

With my car­pool absent, rail ser­vices reduced and no buses going my direc­tion as far as I could tell, I gave up and for lack of any­thing bet­ter to do, started grit­ting Queens Road myself. See that non-snowy bit? That’s a pro­duc­tive morn­ing right there.

Big Society, bitches!

Big Soci­ety, bitches!

So, no work for me today, and since my lap­top is also at work, I can’t pre­tend to be work­ing from home. On the other hand, a lot of dri­vers looked pretty happy — and the falling snow has been replaced by rain, so hope­fully the town will have resumed nor­mal ser­vice again tomorrow.

A Farewell to Summer

Posted on by
Reply

The day began with mist rolling in over the sea, but before long it turned to morn­ing driz­zle and on into a rainy after­noon; big, lazy rain­drops falling in patches from the sky. Then as evening came the mist rolled in once more, cloak­ing every­thing in damp­ness and white. Here by the shores of the Eng­lish Chan­nel, this is how autumn begins.

Though it will return in patches over the com­ing month, brief flick­ers and shad­ows of July’s heat, the sum­mer that was is now gone. It was a sum­mer of travel and of dodg­ing the rain, a sum­mer of remem­ber­ing the past and of mak­ing plans for the future. It held what might be my last RABIES, what may be my last sum­mer in Gali­cia, and what almost cer­tainly will be my last sum­mer as an unmar­ried man.

So now, as the light dims and dies for another year, bring on har­vest and Hallowe’en, bring on the howl­ing winds and dri­ving rain, bring on coats and inside-out umbrel­las and mugs of warm cider by the fire. Soon it will be sum­mer once more, and every­thing will be different.

Endings and Midwinter

Posted on by
Reply

Win­ter has well and truly closed in, with black ice lay­ing in sheets across the roads, scarf and gloves on, and “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” stuck on a per­ma­nent loop in my head. I had Cliff Richard’s “Mistle­toe and Wine” in there this morn­ing, though, so John and Yoko are def­i­nitely a step up.

For all that “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” has hope­ful lyrics, it’s always seemed to me one of the sad­dest of all Christ­mas songs. It reminds me of the odd feel­ing that things are end­ing — say­ing good­bye to col­leagues as you leave work for the hol­i­days, wish­ing a Merry Christ­mas to the staff of shops and cafés you fre­quent… It feels like sort of like a per­ma­nent end­ing, even though we’ll all be back at work in two weeks’ time, and my café and take­away habit will con­tinue unabated over the Christ­mas season.

Per­haps it’s a remain­ing echo of my time at Uni­ver­sity, where hol­i­days meant we all scat­tered back to fam­ily homes, leav­ing each other behind. These days we’re scat­tered for good, as far apart as the four winds, but some­how hol­i­days are still lonelier.

It’s dark now, deep into the longest night of the year. Time to raise a glass to the Win­ter, to light a fire upon the hearth and look for­ward to length­en­ing days once again. To those friends of mine who cel­e­brate such days, have a very merry Win­ter sol­stice night! To every­one else, you’ve still got four days left to go!

Cold November Rain

Posted on by
Reply

The rain here is not falling or even pour­ing. It is con­stant, per­va­sive. As you look into the grey mist a hun­dred metres away in all direc­tions, if you’re lucky, you can make out the mer­est hint of an angle to sig­nify the way the squally wind is buf­fet­ing the mael­strom.
I left work early in order to do some pho­tog­ra­phy this after­noon. With hind­sight, of course, this was a silly plan. Even sil­lier my lack of coat and umbrella today — the thrice-damned weather fore­cast, of course, promised only driz­zle. I wore my heavy-weather tri­als gear on the half-hour walk to the sta­tion, but to my regret I only both­ered to take the jacket.
Net result: my upper body is bak­ing hot — the gear is designed for much colder and wet­ter things than dry land can pro­vide — while my trousers now stick uncom­fort­ably to my legs and drip pud­dles into my boots.
Next time the weather is bad enough for me to get the foulies out, I must remem­ber to take the trousers, gloves and wellies too. Or a taxi. Maybe I should just remem­ber to take a taxi.