Dr Foster avoided GloucesterHuttonian was hoping to be heading south this morning but was put off by the horrific weather conditions promised by the BBC Blether Centre. We just did not fancy a 650 mile round trip (crammed into 48 hours) on water logged motorway with the week end loonies desperate to get away from the big cities en route driving like Toad. As part of our proposed trip was to be a mass picnic I think we have made the right decision.Mind you according to the usually reliable met check Duns is to be the wettest place in the UK with not much short of 3" rain crammed into tomorrow.See the grisly prophecy here. Conditions around Oxford are slightly less wet but it is getting there and back which bothered us-call me wet (npi) if you like. A pity as I am a patron of the highly...
Les Vacances sont sur nousWe had 20mm of rain in about 30 minutes this morning and the area on the BBC Weather Warning Map dedicated to Scottish Borders Really Bad Weather; Venture Out at your Peril and don't bring your car was bright red. Disruption! Then the workmen arrived to carry on the extension exercise and the rain stopped. The BBC map turned its normal shade of green and the terror stricken service-as the Goons used to call it-has transfered the warnings to the south with Severe Gales. Blogging may soon be thin on the ground. Nothing to do with the suddenly clement weather but because, come Friday, we are off to Brittany, La France for a short holiday en famille Although the BBC is not good at forrin weather it agrees with Meteo that the Borders will remain slightly warmer than...
Never mock the boys in the BBC Blether Centre. AS a revenge for past slights, real or imaginary, they decided that 'North East England'(including Hutton) was the target for the Easter Weekend. And revenge is a dish eaten very very cold In a space of three minutes this early am we had huge hail stones, hissing rain, bright sunshine and blizzard snow-not together-separately. And throughout relentless northerly winds making a snug 2C 'feel like' (as the bs in the bbcbc put it) -15. A casualty of today's Global Freezing is the long planned expedition to rediscover Fishwick Kirk which allegedly exists somewhere between down town Fishwick and the Scottish bank of the Tweed. Only accessible when the grass and nettles are low and the bull locked away elsewhere. But to day with more blizzards on...
Wrong sort of Rail company on track. AgainI am glad to be excused lecturing at Embra today as the train companies have gone into a state of collective confusion, if not panic, over the terrible storms issued by the BBC Blether people. Not all companies to be fair, but locally, National Express rival even the cheese eating surrender monkeys: two of their Trains cancelled :'High Winds'. One from Glasgow and one from Edinburgh. Yet somehow the Inverness service, on the same track from Embra, exposed to the same force 22 winds is on time! And the Cross Country (Virgin) from Aberdeen, ditto, ditto, is 3 minutes early. From the website: Here is the evidence http://www.livedepartureboards.co.uk/ldb/sumarr.aspx?T=BWK ORIGIN TIMETABLE EXPECTED OPERATOR TRAIN Glasgow Central 11:41 Cancelled...
The End is 40% nighThe Blether Centre, run rather like an old fashioned Bookie, is laying odds, or rather percentages, as to the chances of being swept away by tonight and tomorrow's stormy weather:As follows:70% London & South East England 70% Wales 70% South West England 70% West Midlands 40% East of England 40% North West England 40% Northern Ireland 40% Yorkshire & Humber 40% East Midlands 40% SW Scotland, Lothian & Borders 20% Strathclyde 20% North East England To quote from the choicer bits of the blurb:"an intense low pressure system to move east across the UK during Monday, bringing severe gales and potentially damaging gusts across some areas:the early hours of Monday severe gales, an additional swathe of westerly severe gales to follow later on Monday into the early hours of...
Bearware Bad WotherThe BBC Blether Centre is mostly into Weather Warnings these days-wind, rain, flood, snow-anything to cover their backs against complaints of being caught with their pants down like Mr Fish in the Great Non-Hurricane of '87. They are even inventing their own adjectives to suit the weather. Ceefax P.405 had a long blurb on the dangers of going to Bute and Argyll ending with the very ominous caution:' Driving conditions will be harazrdousI wasn't actually planning a trip to either Bute or Argyll today but if I was, I would postpone it. Dangerous is bad enough, hazardous is awful but harazrdous is mind bogglingly catastrophic.I think I'll just go to Berwick. Weather is to be merely kolid with the Er casionall shar. I'll risk thatNB the image is of harazrdous weather...
WEATHER WARNINGWe are as obsessed with the (wonderful) weather in the Merse as the next man-our occasional garden help, a gnarled (youngish) countryman cannot introduce any new topic without a discourse on the weather, nor abandon an old one for that matter. But our devotion to meteorology and the other black arts is ignored by the pundits at the BBC Blether Centre who neither know where the Borders are nor care. We get lumped in with 'Scotland' or 'Northern England' and by the southhron- centric the presenters on the Today Programme as that huge area of Anglia Deserta which they vaguely believe exists beyond Hampstead. 'Here be Bumpkins'So the advent of the on-line weather map is a great boon and we can find ourselves on the larger scale ones. An example is above from Met Check and once...
The global warming/climate change advisory unit attached too the Hutton Think Tank having seen the Betjeman Plaque with an example of his verse-see image have suggested that 'carbon' be substituted for 'exultant' and that readers be reminded of the importance of conserving fish stocks in the huge consoling sea There are limits to nature's bounty. Also we are reminded that the BBC Weather Centre cannot be held responsible for any references to possible gale damage referred to in Sir John's poetry. Meteorology although more technically advanced than in his day (Seaweed and Red Sky in the Morning) is not yet 100 reliable for insurance or other legal...
Surge Horror. Hutton safe*.When its not the BBC Blether Centre terrifying the living daylights out of us with Severe Weather Warnings-maps covered in blazing red promising disruption and carnage on the roads should you dare to step outside, its the Environment Agency, borrowing the language of George W Bush predicting a massive 'surge' not in Baghdad but in our own dear North Sea. Huge walls of water varying from 18 inches above normal (Junior Agency Spokesman, Paisley jersey and dirty sneakers)) to 10 feet (very senior EA guy with expensive mac and brown wellies) roaring down the coast devouring the unwary and wiping out East Anglia as winds roared and tides rose to heights not seen since the Coronation. Never mind East Anglia and the other bits that stick out the whole East Coast was...
