Kitz Forum
Chat => Chit Chat => Topic started by: sevenlayermuddle on August 25, 2019, 08:18:35 PM
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I see BBC are reporting the lovely weather represents “UK weather: Hottest late August bank holiday weekend on record”. We saw 33.3 at Heathrow.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49466596
The report concludes with the obligatory, sinister, mention...
The government's advisory Committee on Climate Change has warned the UK is not prepared for the increase in heatwaves that is expected with global warming.
And, as with the early Easter, they fail to point out that the date of the August holiday varies from year to year and this year’s is quite early, so not terribly surprising it might, with a bit of luck, be relatively nice. Out of interest, I checked to see if I could find underlying stats to draw a meaningful comparison of temperature extremes, compared to this time of year, from years gone by. I found a Met Office page...
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-climate-extremes
It seems the record for August seems to be 2003, 10th August - just two weeks earlier, when Kent saw 38.5, a full 5 degrees hotter.
And smashing as this weekend’s weather has been, it appears to be some way short of a record temperature for September, when South Yorkshire recorded 35.6 on 2nd September, a whole week later, in 1906.
:)
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Janettold me that it was 25C here in Skye on Sunday.
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Currently 27.2C here, according to the usually accurate sensor, in the shade behind the garden shed. Pretty much matches the met office stats for an hour ago, 28C, from a weather station a few miles away.
I’ve been experimenting by watching the temps closely. I open a few doors and windows early morning then, at the point in the day when outdoor temp rises above indoor, all doors and windows are closed and curtains drawn. It does seem to work - early evening yesterday, indoors was nearly 5C below outdoors, despite having being all closed up for hours. :)
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I’ve wanted to do just that the last couple of days, but my wife insists on fresh air and believes it keeps the house cooler. I then spend most of the late evening chasing moths and looking for spiders that may have come in because she can’t sleep while they’re in the house.
29C according to my cheap in the shade garden thermometer here in Newbury at the moment.
Kevin
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One of my daily jobs in summer is, once the air has cooled a bit outside, to arrange a couple of big fans on interior window ledges upstairs. One is facing out, the other in, with location chosen to assist whatever is the wind direction, thus cooling the house for bedtime. It can be very effective. When that happens, I get lots of brownie points. :graduate:
Unfortunately an easy mistake to make, concentration having been focused on the science of wind speed research and choice of fan location, is to forget to switch off the light. You then have bugs, attracted by the lights, filling the rooms. Better still, many get shredded by the fan blades, their remains blown over furniture and bedding. When that happens, I get in a lot of trouble. :'(
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Been there many times, do your best, make a small mistake, the end of the world.
I like the idea of two fans at the window pointing in different directions, makes perfect sense. Thank you for the tip.
Totally off topic. I intended to write window cill but the spell checker told me it was wrong. Now to find out why I’ve got the spelling of a word that I’ve regularly written over the last 50 years is spelt wrong.
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Totally off topic. I intended to write window cill but the spell checker told me it was wrong. Now to find out why I’ve got the spelling of a word that I’ve regularly written over the last 50 years is spelt wrong.
That’s why I wrote ‘ledge’. In conversation I’d say the other word, but realised when typing that last post, I’d was unsure how to spell it. :D
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I'm really sorry to drag your thread off topic but annoyance got the better of me.
I'm in the trade, and the strange thing is if I were talking to a costumer I would say window cill, if I were talking to a timber merchant I would say window board. The timber merchant would understand either term.
It looks like my spelling of the could be wrong, oh well.
So why do some people use “cill” at all? Well sometime in the 1800’s, some amazingly clever people, true visionaries, basically just decided that they were going to spell it differently. It stuck as a sort of peculiarly British variant of the “normal” spelling, particularly in the booming industry of digging canals, which down to this day is the only place where “cill” is by far and away the most readily accepted spelling. In the building industry too “cill” seems to be holding on with remarkable tenacity, a testament to the bulldog spirit of this plucky British word, like a kind of linguistic red squirrel.
From here https://www.thorogood.co.uk/cills-or-sills-debate/ (https://www.thorogood.co.uk/cills-or-sills-debate/)
Kevin
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I'm really sorry to drag your thread off topic but annoyance got the better of me.
Not at all, it’s in chit chat. :)
I’m not in the trade but I did have to buy one once and found it was indeed known as a window board in the timber merchant’s printed catalogue. I’d forgotten that, until now.
From here https://www.thorogood.co.uk/cills-or-sills-debate/ (https://www.thorogood.co.uk/cills-or-sills-debate/)
Nice link, thanks. :)
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A little bit more wind would have been nice! We were at Bognor kite festival and struggled to fly anything. Saturday was the best - the Pegasus in the first video on this post (https://www.facebook.com/chelsea.cherylkewclark/videos/10217246931540153/) is ours.
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Now very sultry and humid, this afternoon, in East Anglia. Some rain would be a nice experience.
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Some rain would be a nice experience.
Be careful what you wish for. In the climate in which we live, history has shown, it can be granted at short notice. :D
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I have had all the blinds drawn and the windows shut in the bedroom. Janet has opened one window slightly behind one of the the blinds. The bathroom window is open and the sun comes blazing in through that window. I have been asleep most of the time for two days. Janet was grumbling at my this evening because she says that I have not had anything to drink for too many hours and will therefore get kidney problems. When she woke me up this evening she changed my fentanyl patch and I felt very awful, but after a lot of pain relief I’m ok now.
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More sun forecast today :sun: :)
Although it will be cooler oop norf. I've not much liked the rain we've had for the past week & I've been feeling it :rain:
I think I need to emigrate to warmer climates :D
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Rather pleasant here again. Deep blue skies with just a few wafts of light cloud, 22-ish and not a breath of wind. Enjoying a cuppa on the patio as I write this post, in the dappled sunshine breaking through the trees.
Wish we’d had some of that rain, though. I treated the lawns to some autumn feed & mosskill treatment about two or three weeks ago. The instructions said it needed rain within two days and all my favourite weather forecasters agreed heavy showers were expected over coming days at the time I spread it, but I’m still waiting. :(
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I'm really relieved that the forecast for tomorrow is good. I'm helping organise a kite festival near here and it's been heavily advertised that we will be flying our Pegasus kite.
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That kite looks amazing. :)
I’ve just learned that our own plan for today is to make the most of it with a trip to the seaside. This will most probably involve penny machines, fish&chips, crazy golf, and generally enjoying the sea views.
Only trouble is... it’s an hour and a half’s drive away. Makes me envious sometimes of those who live a little closer to the coastline with such facilities closer to hand. ::)
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Wow.. that kite is fab. Hope all goes well :)
Hope you have a lovely day at the seaside today 7LM. A tad cloudy here today but still warm and a bit of hazy sun, so that will do me.
>> Wish we’d had some of that rain, though.
We've had loads over the past month, the garden is flourishing and the weeds have been going mental. We've also had quite a few strong winds, so the shrubs are also battered. Aug was a bit of a damp squib.. was meant to be doing a BBQ a few weeks ago, but it ended up being just general party food served indoors. Wasn't rain that stopped it but the wind. In fact since about June there's only been the once when we've been able to do the pizza & wine 'til late :( Shame as I love sitting in the garden on a warm summers eve with a bottle of wine and the log burner providing the light. :/
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Well that was a nice day out. Well worth it, glad we went. Penny machines to lighten my wallet a bit, and fresh fish & chips eaten from the paper while strolling along the beach. No crazy golf today, just too busy. Everybody else seemed to have had the same idea I think. :D
I slightly begrudge the fact that, to get 4 hours on the South coast, I also had to spend 4 hours at the wheel of the car. It was worse than usual, motorway reduced to a crawl for miles through sheer volume of traffic, roadworks with interminable 50mph limits, plus it took an unexpected twenty minutes extra to find somewhere to park. >:(
I had no idea August had been so damp elsewhere. I remember a few showery days, but our own BBQ probably got used more this summer than any previous. I also remember a few very windy days, can’t remember exactly when, but the forecast panicked me into repairing some dodgy fence posts.
As regards my local rainfall, I now have admitted defeat and turned on the lawn sprinklers. That must be a first, for me, this late in the year.
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It has been very wet, really foul often times during the last few days, with horizontal rain at times. A lot of truly nasty weather. Last week Janet commented that it suddenly had begun to really smell like autumn. Bracken is very high.
There is a giant crop of big apples on the apple trees that Janet planeted in 2003. We are leaving them for another week or two before harvesting for pies.
(https://i.ibb.co/nc11mWf/55-EDAF8-F-89-AC-4-EE1-90-C2-728-BD70-A6-EBD.jpg)
A cooking apple from one of the trees; can’t remember which variety now:
(https://i.ibb.co/G7zvMP3/513-CF7-C8-0-FD0-4-BEC-B44-D-C44-B7352-FD7-B.jpg)
One of the trees is a crab apple tree, chosen because it provides lots of flowers for the bees
(https://i.ibb.co/prGSzvM/39-D44-F4-A-6610-4-C13-AB00-09090-F6551-E8.jpg)
There was a third very young tree but it got eaten by sheep and generally mangled and so did not survive. Somehow the other trees seem to have done well despite the cold, the wind and the salt. They are slightly sheltered because although they are up on a north-east-facing bank behind the house, they are behind a ridge and the prevailing winds from the southwest go over the top of the ridge and so over the top of the trees. Also, despite the risk of exposure to cold winds from the north, there are other trees to the north which provide some protection; these are the rowans seen in the photo.
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As regards my local rainfall, I now have admitted defeat and turned on the lawn sprinklers.
And inevitably, it is now raining quite steadily. :D
@Weaver, nice photos. Re horizontal rain, reminds of first time I took other half 'home' to see Scotland, hoping she'd be impressed. As we drove up out of Glasgow for a day trip, the clouds gathered. By the time we were at the scenic bit of A82 towards Glencoe it had become windier and wetter. Water was cascading down from the scenery in spontaneously formed waterfalls.
I'd rather it had been nice and sunny, as that's a lovely drive. But I consoled myself that, in the mountainous setting, raining in spectacular horizontal stair rods was pretty impressive too. And probably a good second best to the sunshine I'd have chosen. Not sure we bothered with the picnic we'd packed, though. ::)