I am writing this on my laptop at home, having decided by mid-morning that there is no point in trying to go out today. This unsettled & unsettling weather has thrown a surprise snow storm at us – unforecasted, as far as I can tell. The local councils cannot have known, since no roads were gritted. So, although the snow does not amount to all that much, there is traffic chaos, including on the main A6 all the way to Stockport, & some schools are closed.
Yesterday was cold with a blustery wind, plus heavy rain in the late afternoon/early evening. Even stronger winds, gale force in some places, were forecast for today, with scattered wintry showers, (longer spells of snow & sleet possible over Scotland). As ever, it was hard to tell what we should expect in our corner of the world, but it was only the prospect of high wind that was of the slightest concern.
I got a surprise when I went to put out the rubbish for collection last night; as I bent to tie up the bag bits of something kept falling out of my hair. I assumed my head must have brushed against the philadelphus, to which a few leaves still cling, until one of the frozen snowflakes caught the light. None of them was settling on the ground however & the wind was still blustering.
Another surprise lay in wait as I caught the tail end of Tony Livesey’s programme on Radio 5 Live – broadcast from Manchester – where colleagues were teasing Tony about the problems he would face on his drive home after 1am. Even Rhod Sharp joined in when he came to give his plug for Up All Night, astonishingly saying that anyone trying to drive to Buxton would be facing a real challenge, & he would be keeping listeners updated on his own programme. I still assumed they must be talking about high winds.
Sleep came before the promised elucidation.
Even before those late night excitements I had been beginning to mentally draft a post for today on the unsettling weather, inspired by thunder & lightning. We had had more of this around 8 or 9 in the evening, a few long rumbles rolling around the hills, not too close, the lightning imperceptible from inside with the curtains drawn, except for one flash which briefly made the lights flicker & the radio stutter. This makes the 4th or 5th such episode since the first snow began to melt, all very similar except for one in the early hours of Sunday morning which was loud enough to wake everybody up & with lightning which must have been sheeting across the whole sky, lighting up the room even through the curtains.
All while having an argument with myself: not another post on the weather.
The seductive power of writing about the weather I have come to recognise only since starting this blog – gives plenty of free rein to description & the use of adjectives, something frowned upon in official & academic writing. But it’s my blog, I can do whatever I like, nobody else has to read it – I used to skip all those bits myself, especially when attempting a Victorian novel with pages of the stuff. For heaven’s sake, all you need do is establish that ‘twas a dark & stormy night, no need to go on so.
However, sometimes language itself can lead you to weather science. Language Log provides some very useful links to discussions of how the pattern of rain has changed (in Britain at least), just through a discussion of how we should name, which word we should use for, this ‘new’ kind. One option is ‘convective rain’ since it is thought to be produced by processes similar to those which produce thunderstorms. I find that curious, since its frequency in these parts seems to be correlated with a fall in thunderstorms, suggesting something else is going on as well.
Perhaps it’s the bacteria in the clouds. Some of which have a pink pigment which acts as a sunscreen, enabling them to resist death by ultraviolet ray, even thousands of feet up & so much closer to the sun. Although it remains a mystery how they get up there. One speculation is that hurricanes & violent winds help create a kind of hovering effect which sweeps them up into the storm clouds. (I paraphrase all this from an intriguing Weather Eye column by Paul Simons in Monday’s Times). So I expect the jet stream is ultimately to blame – one way or another it always seems to end up getting the blame for our current unusual weather ‘events’.
Links
Georgia Tech: Study Finds Substantial Microorganism Populations in the Upper Troposphere
Research on Airborne Ice Nucleating Species (RAINS)
Can Bacteria in Clouds Influence Global Weather Patterns?
Live Science: Earth's Clouds Alive With Bacteria
National Geographic: Rainmaking Bacteria Ride Clouds to "Colonize" Earth?
