So ends a fair weekend in wrath
So after two lovely days of long weekend, a day of thunder and rain. Sucks to be a vacationer, but I was glad of a day of snooze and indolence.
And so I give you Dungeness lighthouse in rain. Dungeness — AKA the Fifth Quarter — the whole of the sticky-outy bit of South Kent is for sale.
Most of it, anyway. Much to the consternation of those who love it. This includes us, though we are too far away to visit very often.
Still, not to worry. It bounds a nuclear power plant, a nature reserve and a lighthouse. It’s not going to see any development in my lifetime.
August 31, 2015 — 9:51 pm
Comments: 5
Got this badass coming up the Channel
England top left, France bottom right, we’re somewhere under those big black blobs in the middle. Thunder, wind, the whole schtick. A lifetime’s worth of rain in ten minutes, or however it was the Mail drama’d it up.
I shall wish you a good weekend and sign off, I think. Good weekend!
July 24, 2015 — 8:44 pm
Comments: 7
Oh, that’s right – YOU DON’T GET THIS ONE
We’re getting a total eclipse on Friday — first one since 1999.
I’m not sure why that is. It seems like y’all in the States get one every year or two, but there you go. Not quite total where we are; about 80% on the South coast.
It should peak in the middle of my Friday commute, but I’m not getting too excited. The weather is due to be very overcast, and probably will be (I say that because weather forecasting here is atrocious, but this is a big predictable band of dark cloud). Although I suppose overcast will just make it eerily darker.
I like eclipses. I haven’t seen many.
Anyhoo, check out this neat tool. It’s a 3D global eclipse tracker (yes, yes…it works for you, too). Go play with the buttons and knobs!
March 18, 2015 — 10:27 pm
Comments: 16
Duck!
Just ran across this in the newspaper: little origami paper airplanes. Propeller at one end, controller at the other. Fly ’em by waving your smart phone around. Run for 10 minutes, up to 180 feet away. Don’t cost an arm and a leg. Christmas will be here before you know it. Just saying.
We’re bracing for the ass end of Hurricane Gonzalo or Bazinga or Zoobadebeebop or whatevers. High wind and rain starting about midnight. It looks like the worst of it will pass North of us, but our little microclimate is subject to wilder-than-predicted weather, so we’re bracing anyway.
If you don’t hear from us, it’s because we have a tree tangled in the phone wires. We were trying to cut them free this afternoon, with only moderate success. One good gust could take our internet away.
It’s an elder tree, see, so it grows really, really fast and we didn’t notice it had gotten entangled. Also, you have to be careful trimming elder trees. If you don’t ask the Elder Mother nicely before you cut, she’ll give you restless leg syndrome.
October 20, 2014 — 10:14 pm
Comments: 21
Weasels in the mist
It was sunny and fine today, so after work we grabbed some sammiches and headed to the beach. Sea fret!
Uncle B took this shot (“weasel contemplates tiddler”) before the fog enveloped me completely. The tide was way, way out. By the time I reached the waves, all I could see was a soft, weak disc of sun and the waves around my ankles. It was so totally cool.
So, the Scots voted No. In some ways, the fun starts now. Cameron promised them a bunch of stuff if they stayed. He may not be able to keep those promises.
But more interesting still, the English are starting to clamor for more self-rule. See, there is no separate parliament for England. So the English don’t have a vote on, say, education in Scotland, but the Scots have a vote on education in England. Mess with the English sense of fair play at your peril.
BTW, I’m all for devolution. I’m for concentrating power as far as practicable toward the bottom of the hierarchy, where local knowledge and accountability reside. The silliness of the Scots position is that they wanted to break away from the UK and join the EU.
Have a good weekend, y’all. Oh, and it’s Talk Like a Pirate Day, if you’re so inclined.
September 19, 2014 — 8:59 pm
Comments: 21
Moar weather
This one missed us, somehow. It was a beautiful sunny day here. Uncle B called to tell me cars were floating sideways along Brighton Marine Parade.
I called up the Met Office Satellite page and here was a big, fat band of severe storms from the Brighton seafront all the way to the outskirts of London. That isn’t at all far West of us.
Funny thing — the time lapse satellite animation showed that thing just sitting there for hours, moving neither to the East nor West. It ultimately just melted away (though we’re having a bit of gentle rain now).
I think they said three weeks rain in a few hours. At one point, the water in the Underground was chest deep. Places in Brighton, hail fell like snow.
Pictures: the BBC, the Brighton Argus. I particularly liked the hen and chicks floating around someone’s laundryroom on a dinner plate.
Also, not entirely unrelated, I thought this was an interesting article from the BBC: what happens when lightning hits the sea.
July 28, 2014 — 8:51 pm
Comments: 9
Moar storm
Everybody has a story about Friday’s storm, but I still haven’t seen any official suggestion it was anything but a typical Summer thunderboomer. You can see the leading edge of it again in the photo above (credit to this guy). Tenterden (where that picture was taken) had anecdotal reports of a funnel cloud, but that’s not official either.
It’s amazing the stuff that can happen without much official notice — before, during or after. Occasionally, the sea sneaks in and steals a village here. They are placid people.
Anyway, this is now officially my favorite weather event EVAR. And I just love weather.
And, yes — with the death of James Garner, the Dead Pool is officially won (step forward, Platypuss!). That means…Dead Pool 67! Friday! 6WBT!
July 21, 2014 — 11:01 pm
Comments: 15
The big blow
Today, everybody was talking about the storm (except any of the news sites, for some reason). There were rumors of a tornado. Certainly, the whole business started off very effing strange indeed.
It had been an unusually hot day for England and thunderstorms were predicted in the afternoon. Everyone who was outside agreed you could stand and watch the storm come. On the one side sun, and behind it roared a great fist of cloud. It hit with a sudden blast. I’ve never felt wind like it. It blew junk from the garden straight through the house. I had to lean my entire bodyweight against the front door to get it to shut and latch.
The extreme wind only lasted ten minutes or so, but there was a pretty good thunderstorm behind it blowing all night long. We lost power early on so we sat in the dark and drank wine. After which I slept through most of it.
I tried to get a picture of the approaching monster — the sun was going down and those first clouds were dyed orange, with an absolutely sharp edge because it was moving so damned fast. It was an amazing thing to see. Alas, that’s when I discovered I busted my camera when I dropped it earlier. By the time I fetched another camera, it just looked like a regular old thunder boomer, see above. And in color.
And that’s why no post yesterday.
July 19, 2014 — 8:43 pm
Comments: 29
Weasels in the mist
I haven’t talked about the weather for a while, because I know a lot of you are still socked in with Winter and…well…no beating about the bush, we’ve had a sunny few days here. When it’s nice in England, it’s first-lovely-warm-day-in-Spring nice. It can be 72, sunny with a cool breeze for months on end, when we get lucky.
But we paid for it today. When the sea is cold and the sun is hot, we can get a weather phenomenon southerners call a sea fog or sea fret. Northerners call it a haar — or har, hare, harl, harr or hoar. It’s where we get the term hoar frost (the fog that freezes and sticks to things).
A sea fret is awesome to watch, because it’s dramatic and sudden. It’s a dense fog with a highly perceptible edge. It comes galloping in from the Channel, drops temps twenty degrees and reduces visibility to sweet fuck-all.
We drove into the one today. Clear one minute, whooff the next. Not the densest fog I’ve ever been in (that would be a cloud I drove into on Grandfather Mountain once), but it was pretty spooky.
I gather most of England got this one.
March 13, 2014 — 10:50 pm
Comments: 8
Who flushed?
This is what meteorologists call a “swirly.” They should, anyway. They really should.
South of England has been getting weather off the Atlantic for twelve solid weeks. That means warm, wet and windy. I mean, day after day. After day after day after day. ‘Round about 45° in the daytime, 37° at night, and cloudy.
Sometimes wind. Sometimes rain. When it’s both at once — boy howdy! — this house leaks in all sorts of new and interesting places. “Honey, have you pissed on the floor in the pantry? Because there’s this, like, huge puddle…”
I shouldn’t bitch. What they’ve gotten in the Western half of the country is much, much worse.
That’s because they bear the brunt of it on the West Coast. But here on the East Coast, every few centuries the Channel hikes up her skirts, tiptoes inland and nicks a couple of fishing villages. Much more of this — and there’s much, much more of this in the forecast — and we’ll be looking over our shoulders for her.
Today’s magic word or phrase: Grote Mandrenke.
February 13, 2014 — 12:20 am
Comments: 14