Autumn 2023

[GloriaSmud]

As we're a few weeks away from the start of meteorological autumn (1st September), some early thoughts here.

Fixed it. Now working. Have turned it off now and unlikely to turn it back on for a while. But when it does get cold I know it works now.

I like to sleep with the windows open too. And preferably a cool breeze.

Although the reckon they are painting the outside of the house tomorrow. I think they might want to check the weather forecast.

Agree with this.

We woke up to -2 here on the North East Coast of England today. That was a shock to the system. Had to go outside 10 mins earlier to scrape the car. It was only forecast to go down to 1 / 2 last night.

The cloud has definitely been thinner in parts than some of the models suggested. So temperatures dropped further.

Four days of warnings coming up. https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/weather/4920504-met-office-warnings-for-possible-extreme-rainfall-in-scotland-1910-2110?reply=130003938

Clever girl, what was it?

OH out shooting for the day, he came back in for his gloves. I've lit the fire because I'm writing Xmas cards, wrapping presents.

You won’t think I’m clever if I tell you. Lol

But I had an epiphany during the middle of the night about the process of removing and putting a radiator back on and realised that they may not have opened the outflow valves from the radiator either.

@RafaistheKingofClay but that's how clever brains work. They chunter away in the background, and come up with answers at unexpected times

This time we've woken up to localised flooding due to the relentless rain we had overnight and the forecast says it'll continue all day.

No weather warning.... 😂

Have The Met Office gone on strike or something? The water rolling down our road is like an actual stream - with waves!

Unsurprisingly they haven’t turned up to paint the outside of the house today.

I guess it is worth remembering that the Met office warnings are not driven by quantity of water falling, or how windy it is, but rather, the impact of the weather on the local situation. So they may have judged it to have low chance of causing disruption or danger to people in the SW.

Or, its possible that in the melee of what is a very complex situation with an extreme impact event expected in Scotland and lesser but still significant events occurring elsewhere that they missed this development. Warnings are continuing to pop up for the next few days.

Whereabouts in the SW are you? It's not bad in Bristol.

There's a house I can see when I'm sitting in the garden, and they've been having the roof re-tiled. The roofers seem to be on the ball, as good roofers must be, so I'm pretty sure they'll get it finished before the rain turns up later today

Even once we have Babet out of the way, the outlook currently looks very wet and unsettled.

As Babet starts to move away, we need to look ahead to what is likely to happen next. I'm afraid it doesn't look like a very cheery picture. We have a very unsettled period coming up, with lots more rain and perhaps gales in the forecast. The risk of the worst of this may be transferring more to the south of England, but that doesn't rule out heavy rain elsewhere too.

It is a good time to double check how resilient your home is to rainfall - get any repairs done while you can. Check whether, for example, you might need airbrick covers, or if you have any dodgy tiles that need sorting out. We are stuck in this pattern for a while.

I think the melting of the Polar Ice Cap is behind all this. Now we have more H2O in its gaseous state, and in its liquid state, and less in its solid state. (In addition, the energy [or in layman's terminology: heat] involved in an H2O state change is quite considerable.)

Looking at the Met Office animation, it looks like a depression has got stuck over the British Isles, and is rotating over them like a giant lawn sprinkler, instead of heading off to the East as used to be the norm. To the North, something (jet stream?) is stopping it moving Northwards.

What is behind this is climate change. We have always had severe flooding events, but climate change is turning severe into extreme. Warmer air holds more water. That means more flooding. Climate change makes severe events more likely. Our old 1 in 200 year forecasts are breaking down. We've not prepared for this. We need to become much more resilient rapidly.

There are of course other factors that make it worse - building on floodplains, turning front gardens into parking spaces, lack of maintenance of drains and ditches. Some of that can be sorted out, but as a nation we've done little to mitigate the risk. Instead we have relied on inadequate flood defences and hoped to get away with it. More and more often, our towns and villages are no longer getting awy with it.

I'm agreeing with you, @OhYouBadBadKitten

Of course it's climate change - that is what is melting the ice caps and the glaciers. I was speculating on the mechanics of weather generation that such melting would cause, and relating it to the recent depression that brought all that rain.

NOTE ON UNITS A scientific calorie, which I use below, is not the same as a nutrituional calorie, which is equal to 1,000 scientific calories.

People don't realise that although it takes 1 calorie to heat one cc. of water from 99 degrees C to 100 degrees C (i.e from very near boiling point to actual boiling point), to change that 1 cc of water at 100 deg C to water vapour at 100 deg C i.e. no temperature change at all, takes a whopping 212 calories. A state change always involves more heat exchange than common sense would lead to you think.

Similarly, it takes 80 calories to melt 1 cc of ice (ignoring change in density).

Somewhere, someone will have a model that takes this into account. No doubt its predictions are dire. I am just someone who aspired to be the next Einstein, as do many bright students who start a degree in Physics. Sadly my maths was not up to scratch, so I realised my ambition would never be fulfilled in the field of Theoretical Physics. But you don't know till you try! And I am totally useless at anything practical, and frankly not very interested in the actual practice of Experimental Physics. Luckily here at Durham, I could change to Psychology without missing a beat. It's very common for people to do this - or was. My talented Pure Maths friend changed to Philosophy in his first year

Temperature rise, more moisture in atmosphere, resulting in heavier rain, more persistent rain, which the land cannot absorb, leading to flooding. That makes sense to me. Climate change is making weather events more extreme, and more common.

November 4th, looks like a day to keep an eye on. A storm developing in the Atlantic shows on GFS with tightly packed isobars.
Long range though, and may be a rogue model run. If it happens it could mean high winds, and on the back tail of it I would wonder if it may bring heavy rain.

Any other models showing similar around 4-6th Nov?

Gah! We're due to bring Cubs hiking on 4th Nov to get the tired before we get to our hostel for the night. And it would be our only campfire this year as camping didn't work out well. The hike is on a hill with about 20 wind turbines so lack of wind isn't an issue...

@nannynick Yikes!
Looks like Fireworks Nights might be a bit problematic.
I wonder if indoor fireworks are still a thing, like they used to be decades a while ago? They are nothing like proper fireworks, in fact it's quite hilarious how pathetic they are. Which is all part of the fun!

Keep in mind that it is GFS and long range, so that storm may not develop like that, or be in same position. Just be aware that it might. Look models beginning of November to see which agree about what that storm is likely to do as it comes in off the Atlantic.

06:00z GFS run on Metcheck has the storm going north towards Iceland. So when planning events, keep an eye on the weather models, as storms will develop in the Atlantic and some may come to us, rather than go elsewhere, such as up to Iceland.

Anyone watching Planet Earth III? Showing clearly the devastation that changing weather due to Climate Change is having on Nature