Windy Weather

What is going on with the weather? Well it is all about the Jet Stream - an oscillatory air stream over the northern hemisphere that is largely responsible for our weather - it brings in the wet weather from across the Atlantic. In the summer 2007, it "unusually"* sat further south than normal in June and July and led to the most costly floods the UK has ever experienced. In the summer of 2008 it again seemed to get stuck over northern England leading to more floods in Morpeth and in 2009 and last summer, we had unsettled, rubbish weather pretty much all summer. Looking at its current patterns (see below), it seems once again to be hitting the UK pretty hard and blowing us to bits....and little sign of moving northwards anytime soon!! But early indications suggest that things may pick up in early June - fingers crossed?

Climate change? Well, yes, maybe, but umm, no, maybe not - as with all the weather extremes that we get (like the heavy snow over xmas) we must be careful when blaming climate change as these types of weather have happened in the past (e.g. my big sis Claire's birthday when we were kids, on May 21st, when it snowed!!) so may just be part of much largely and longer cyclic weather behaviour (perhaps over decadal length and timescales longer than our instrumental records). But on the other hand, they may be related to anthropogenic climate change - probably best not getting into my views on climate change - all a bit complex!

Crap summer?  Ha ha, who knows! Not even the best models in the world know this! Most likely it is in the hands of the gods!

Running? Dangerous, frustrating, hard work and darn right annoying when racing and everyone who raced on Sunday across the UK knows. Big well done to bro-in-law Ross who ran an amazing 2:23 in the Edinburgh marathon in this wind!! Whoop!

Image courtesy of www.wunderground.com

*So given that the reoccurrence of the jet stream's southerly summer tracks, 

perhaps it isn't so usual after all!