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About this blog

A green (white in winter) and pleasant land. Probaly.

Entries in this blog

Politcal Correctness

Just watched a few more of those Tom & Jerry episodes I got for my birthday. The cartoons themselves are fine, but there's been some annoying 'censoring' of them going on, especially the redubbing of Mammy Two-Shoes (I grew up on the uncensored versions that the BBC showed until 2000 and the uncensored VHS editions from the 80s and 90s). As it happens, the versions I have are the best available, and remarkably, there are no uncensored versions available any more. Yes, if some find the orig

23rd Birthday

Had a decent birthday today- indeed I can only remember two years when I haven't had a good birthday- it's probably partly because I make such a big thing of it! Got some new clothes, some sweets, and a set of Tom & Jerry DVDs. I haven't seen T & J for a long time, but I remember I used to watch it regularly at my grandparents' and I regularly tuned in to BBC when they showed it until 2000. According to reviews there are some issues with PC censorship (shame on the PC brigade) but have

Dull

Well, my life has pretty much stagnated recently- being at home with lots of time on one's hands is great initially, but after a while I feel that I'm not getting as much out of life as I could do. The weather meanwhile has been ridiculously cloudy here; hardly a glimmer of sunshine. There have been a few showers and storms this month, but it has been difficult to see what's going on as there's always been North Sea "haar" in the way. It makes my blood boil on days when the rest of the coun

PhD

Excellent news- I have just been offered a PhD position at the University of East Anglia! The project is based on analysing precipitation variability across the UK and includes 6-9 months' working with the Met Office, in conjunction with the well-known Climate Research Unit at UEA. I have to admit I was always against the idea of living in the south-eastern third of England, but then again I had always considered that Norwich might not be so bad, because of being in a relatively rural area, exp

Winter Snow Events

My Winter Snow Events file has been updated to cover Winter 2006/07 (I think it's unlikely that we will get any snow in the first half of May). With a score of just 11, Winter 2006/07 was the most snowless, along with 1997/98, since 1991/92. For those not 'in the know', the Winter Snow Events was largely inspired by L.Bonacina's 1875-1975 (recently extended to 2004) categorisation of past winters. I attempted more of a numerical/statistical analysis of the snowiness of past winters, aiming to

Weather Forecast, 21-27 April 2007

May as well start writing some blog weather forecasts; partly because many other members of the forecast team are doing a similar thing, and also partly as a means of keeping myself up-to-date with events. 21 April: A very hazy day across much of the country, with some patchy rain affecting Scotland, Ireland and to a lesser extent northern England under a rather moist south-westerly flow. South-eastern areas should experience the most sunshine. A warm day over England & Wales with highs t

Stevenson screen

Well, at long last, it seems that I have a Stevenson screen set up such that there is, at worst, only a small anomaly relative to the sort of readings one would expect from standard Met Office stations (by small, I mean quite possibly no greater than a degree Celsius on the sunniest days, which is pretty good for a back garden site) I have had an automatic weather station since 22 June 2005, but until November 2006 the temperature sensor was placed on the side of a hut, giving anomalously high r

Social pressure

It is often considered that as we pass adolescence, we become old enough to decide for ourselves, therefore we cease to be influenced by social pressure and we never follow the crowd; supposedly only "weak" people follow the crowd. This argument is often used to dismiss the idea that any form of social pressure can be a factor in people's decisions, so if a person makes a negative choice the person gets 100% of the blame, end of story. To my mind, that idea is flawed. Yes, we make decisions fo

A Satirical Piece of Debating

I was in the Debating Society in first year at Lancaster University. Now, I certainly wouldn't be in favour of banning phones, but could someone come up with a set of convincing arguments for banning them? Here are some obvious arguments that I think could be used: Telephones are abused by people who send prank calls, harrass and stalk others. We need to do something about these prank calls; thus, in order to put a stop to the problem, we should ban phones; then nobody would be able to send p

Cold Snap

After a couple of what were, by North East standards, feeble cold snaps in January and February, something with rather more substance happened over the last few days. Monday had sunshine and wintry showers throughout the afternoon, although it did feel more like a potent early to mid-April cold snap, or a half-hearted late March snap. I recorded a max of 7.8C, but it frequently fell to 2-3C during wintry showers, and there were impressive Cb cells around. Tuesday: I only got up to 3.8C, which

Update on Events

Well, quite a quiet period in some ways. I've been busy applying for PhDs, and had a couple of interviews at Manchester and UEA- I'll be giving more details of what's been going on when I get confirmation of whether I have funding or not for any of the projects. Hoping to get funding this year, or else it's another year of hunting for what limited employment there is in this region in the fields I'm after. According to the law of society, I'm supposed to be obsessed by money and thus getting

Stevenson Screen

Well, with a lot of help from my dad, I finally have a kind of Stevenson screen set up to house my automatic thermometer sensor, which is placed by the side of my back garden near a fence (and at the opposite side from the house). It is louvred at all four sides, and has a plain white top and bottom. Some inflated readings while the sun was shining on the screen today that I might have to look into; don't know if the sun is somehow causing the screen to radiate heat despite it being 100% white,

Thundery wintry showers

Thundery wintry showers

Goodbye Leeds for the time being

I have just finished my MRes course in Physics of the Earth and Atmosphere- got a Merit in it as well, so all in all a positive result. The positive result summed up a very positive year- the period September 2005-August 2006 probably represented the best year of my life so far. The course was very good with a lot of meteorology content, and it was good to be able to get involved in research into convective storm initiation and converse with the Environment department, the lecturers and PhD stu

Thundery wintry showers

Thundery wintry showers

My Questioning Attitude Towards Rules

In some discussions on this forum I've often displayed a questioning attitude towards rules and laws, and refused to accept without question that "rules are rules". I think I know where this attitude comes from. It's by analogy with being picked on for being "different" (years of experience of it at school, and also at Lancaster University to some extent). If you complain about being picked on for being different, you often end up with a discussion like this: I: I'm being bullied. A: Well, j

Holiday In France

The holiday in France was actually quite a good one- mainly spent around the swimming pool and messing about, sitting around in the sun (though I usually went in the shade to avoid sunburn) and playing table tennis. And also, getting lots of posh ice-creams. The first week was spent in the eastern Dordogne near Perigueux, the second not far from Magny-Cours. Some good visits to various places- my favourite was Chenonceau, which had a good castle and outdoor area, a boating area and a maze. The

Off On Holiday

Going to France for two weeks tomorrow- one week in the Dordogne and another in the eastern side of the Loire region. I had a great birthday this year, but things seem to have gone downhill a bit since then, with many people leaving and social events becoming very few and far between. As I go through life, I'm becoming more and more convinced that the main factors influencing my state of well-being are the amount of social interaction and the scope to do things that I enjoy. Workload doesn't s

June 2006 Weather Summary

These stats are copied from my June 2006 weather summary in the thread. I could sue myself for infringing my own copyright and make myself put up with Starforce 3.0 Professional copy protection just to read my discussion (only kidding; been uninstalling a computer game because of above issue) Statistics for June 2006, relative to estimated 1971-2000 averages for the location: Mean max: 18.8C (+2.2) Mean min: 11.2C (+2.0) Mean: 15.0C (+2.1) Difficulties with rainfall recorder- only 2mm, which

University- And Sloganiser

Currently cracking on with this main project, and failed the latest PhD application- looks like I'm going to be going home and looking for jobs (preferably related to meteorology!) in the autumn. There were some astonishing thunderstorms yesterday, which I posted about in the storms section. Continuous thunder for 20 minutes isn't something that happens very often, let alone three individual storms in one day. It seems that Sue started something of a trend among the moderators with Sloganizer

Platonic Relationships

Following on from the discussion with WBSH et al, I will add some of my own thoughts in here, especially since there have recently been positive developments in this area. In my experience, one of the main issues with these relationships are knowing where the line stands between platonic and sexual love (in theory it is easy; a platonic relationship has no sexual involvement, a sexual relationship has at least some, but in practice it is complicated). With regards sex and love being different t

Stuff In Leeds

I haven't updated the general section of this blog for quite some time. Essentially things in Leeds seem to be going quite well, but I don't have my coursework marks yet; I need to get above 50% average in all modules to be able to continue with this CSIP project analysis. I am also messing around on my computer quite a lot, and having some social events. It's no exaggeration to say that friendship-wise, the period September 2005-May 2006 in Leeds has been the best of my life so far, all I can

May 2006 Weather Summary

In Cleadon, Tyne & Wear, the statistics were as follows: Mean Max 14.8 Mean Min 7.2 Mean Temp 11.0 Warmest: 20.9C (5th) Coldest max: 9.3C (13th) Coldest: 1.7C (14th) Warmest min: 11.8C (18th) Precip: 39mm (I think my rain gauge might have under-recorded slightly!) Air frosts: 0 Fog 1, Hail 0, Thunder 0, Sleet/snow 0. In Cleadon the first half was warm, though less so than in many other regions of the country, with the wind off the sea helping keep maximum temperatures down. The second

January, February And March 2006

I don't have the time (or will) to put in complete summaries for Jan, Feb and Mar, but here is a brief outline. January 2006: Max 6.6, min 1.4, mean 4.1, precip 30mm, sleet/snow falling 2, snow lying 0. It was a benign, and rather uninteresting month, and very dull until the final third, which was relatively sunny. The least warm January since 2001. February 2006: Max 7.1, min 2.0, mean 4.5, precip 22, sleet/snow falling 3, snow lying 1. Quite similar to January, with an easterly non-event du

April 2006 Weather Summary

Since I didn't get my weather records in until after the April 2006 Summaries thread was closed for some reason, here's the April 2006 Summary. Mean Max 12.2C Mean Min 4.3C Mean Temp 8.3C Highest max: 16.7C (25th) Lowest max: 6.9C (4th) Highest min: 9.5C (25th) Lowest min: -1.8C (5th) Air frosts: 3 Precipitation: 27mm There was sleet/snow on 3 days (sleet on the 7th and 9th, snow on the 8th) and four days with hail or graupel. Snow was lying at around 3pm on the 8th April, but there was

December 2005 Summary

Here is a summary of what happened in Cleadon, Tyne & Wear, during December 2005. Mean Max: 7.1C Mean Min: 1.6C Mean Temp: 4.3C Highest Max: 13.2C (11th) Lowest Max: 0.9C (29th) Highest Min: 8.3C (11th) Lowest Min: -6.0C (29th) Air frosts: 12 Note that the lowest max was recorded using the standard Met Office 0900-0900 recording system: using an 0000-0000 system, the temperature on the 29th got no higher than -1.2C, the lowest day maximum for exactly 10 years. Precipitation: 35mm Days of fa

Thundery wintry showers

Thundery wintry showers

Christmas- And The Beast From The East

Well, this was something of a surprise- my biggest snowfall since 22 December 2003, looking likely to be the longest lasting since the New Year period of 2001/02, and easily beating anything I saw in Lancaster. I was getting concerned when I woke up at 6 am. on Wednesday morning and saw no lying snow. I had forecast that the snow would probably settle on Wednesday, and up to that point, we had been warmed too much by the sea, and had had mainly hail and sleet showers. That had been in line wit

Thundery wintry showers

Thundery wintry showers

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