A radical meteorological - hydrological shift
Cold wave to Heatwave
Damp sog to super-dry
Oops gloops banished - soils parched dry, cracked
22nd
April - Lots of photos and a few videos on FB of last night’s thunder
and lightning. A particularly good one with several fork lightning stikes over
Fawley.
--------------------------------------------
26th April - Facebook
dredged up a memory from this day two years ago Thursday or my video of the
drive back to Inverness on the Ullapool across the higher ground; snow either
side of the road; snow falling; so not unusual.
----------------------------------------------
May
As someone who goes for the
cooler weather and dynamic skies, we chose right by holidaying near Gairloch in
the NW Highlands during the first half of May. Though it was dry throughout and
warmer during the second week; I was largely blissfully unaware of the big
warm-up / dry-up beginning throughout the rest of the UK and well beyond. More on
that trip in my Water & Art blog.
My Cycling Man, stayed in the
north for another week, to go cycling with a twice-Munros man, turned
passionate cyclist. I headed home early on May 21st, on the 7.00am flight
to Gatwick from Inverness; window seat booked with the hope of enjoying the
view. Though much of Scotland was clouded out, I still saw a good deal of the
length of Britain from the Murray Firth to the English Channel. Flying over
Liverpool and the Wirrall, the cranes on the Mersey opposite New Brighton (last
visited during the early autumn heatwave of 2016). Then followed the Dee
inland. Shortly after that, I recognised the bend in the Severn between the
Welsh and English Bridges at Shrewsbury; and was subsequently able to follow
the Severn to the Avon confluence at Tewkesbury, almost to its estuary.
Ironbridge Gorge was particularly prominent, with the circles of the red earth
cooling towers of the power station (now closed). The gorge stood out for being
so straight and narrow compared to the open, sinuous stretches of river either
side. I won’t repeat it here, but it’s all to do with Geology and change in
course of the Severn at the end of the last ice age.
Off the plane and back home, it
felt it as if I’d walked straight into summer. The following Saturday, 25oC
in London. Another spell of major seasonal adjustment followed.
You turn your back and they’ve
grown eight feet!
We usually go away in May, often
to somewhere in the Scottish Highlands. Usually, we’ve enjoyed good weather,
but it has a habit of flipping from cool and pleasant to hot, humid and midgy;
within a day in the more sheltered areas such as the glens. In that phase, a
given temperature always feels warmer than the same back down south: 15oC
I begin to think, that’s warm enough’ 20oC, I want to go home. It
was the low twenties in Inverness the weekend before I flew home; but it felt
more pleasant than usual; probably because it was dry and more breeze. While
away, I do lots of sketching and certainly came home with plenty of mountain
and island related material. Frustratingly, the drive to develop this material
evaporates faster than a fish pond in a drought once I get home, as everything
moves on. Post-May hols more than any other; the scenery and weather in
highland Scotland being very different from that back home; and if there isn’t
a turnaround in the weather while away, it happens soon after coming home. May
is peak-berserk for garden weeds growing – turn your back and they’ve grown
eight feet! There’s always a demoralising big backlog / overgrowth to tackle on
our return, fuelling post-hols anti-climax. Though that didn’t hit me
immediately this time; it did over the warm, muggy, thundery, headachy late May
bank holiday weekend.
The last few days of May were
warm and thundery, after an otherwise very dry month. Most of the rainfall
total for that month came then. The real heat came on during the second half of June, but it would be the last the last Sunday of July (29th) before we saw any more noticeable rainfall.
