grumpyf1

Lunch out? Not unless you want snow balls... I’ve got a confession to make.  Lean in a bit, because I’m going to whisper it. Bit more. Did you have curry for tea? OK, good. I’m a weather nerd. There, I said it. When I was growing up, I didn’t want to be an astronaut or a fireman – I wanted to present the weather on the TV. I was lining myself up for a career at the Met Office when, at about 18 years of age, I discovered I was allergic to studying. Anyway, despite a jam-packed and varied career over the subsequent years, I still have a fascination for the world of meteorology. I even have one of those clocks that projects the time and the external temperature onto the ceiling at night, so I can see how cold it is outside whilst lying awake worrying that I might have wasted my life and been more successful with girls if I’d been more into cars than clouds. So far this year, I’ve gazed at a chilly reading of -5C a couple of times, and been grateful for previous sensible ch...

Lovely day in Cumbria... To make optimal use of the word ‘understatement’ - it’s been an interesting couple of weeks weather-wise, hasn’t it? Last week featured rain that would have seen Noah reaching for his saw and nails, whilst glancing nervously at the sky and wondering what the giraffes were up to. Where I work, on the edge of Ambleside, the river Brathay filled up rapidly enough that it was actually higher than the road. Unfortunately, this being Cumbria, it was being held back by a dry stone wall, so the river was squirting out through the gaps between the stones and filling up the road. True, it wasn’t all bad. Someone in a ’17-plate Mercedes obviously presumed their car must be amphibious, and had attempted to drive through the deepening flood. When you pay that much for a car, I guess you just expect it to come with an automatic ‘boat’ mode. Still, I’m sure their carpets will dry out eventually. And their shoes and trousers. My journey home (as I’m sure many of your...

It's very quiet on the roads today, isn't it? “...and that’s why this particular budgie won’t be dancing on the ceiling any time soon. And now it’s over to Simon for the weather.” “Thanks, Kirsty. Your forecast for the weekend, then – Saturday will be cloudy, with sudden cataclysmic outbreaks of rain, whilst Sunday looks even worse, with a high chance of apocalyptic conditions throughout the day, and a light south easterly breeze. Temperatures around normal for the time of year. The outlook for next week? Well, in one word – Biblical. So, not looking great, Kirsty!” “No indeed, Simon. Definitely not barbeque weather – unless you can strap it to a canoe. If you survive, see you on Monday. Goodnight!” OK, so that might seem a tad far-fetched, but according to the Met Office, there’s a significantly increased risk of winter downpours, which they’re cheerily describing as “unprecedented”. By chucking a large amount of data into a supercomputer and waiting for a bit, the...

Lean in a bit – I need to whisper this. The weather has been really... quite good recently, hasn’t it? I know. Weird, right? As someone who wanted to be a meteorologist whilst growing up, I find the weather pretty darn interesting. After our recent winter, even a met-nerd like me discovered the clouds had lost their lustre, the silver lining notably absent. So with last weekend’s Bank Holiday looming, and having already had a lengthy run of lovely weather, I made the logical assumption; it would be cataclysmically awful. Rain, wind, maybe even snow and a miniature tornado to get the 24 hour rolling news channels all excited. But it was, as I’m assuming you noticed, even nicer than before. Warm. Dry. Smashing. I have red marks on my arm from pinching myself to check I wasn’t dreaming. And it continued this week too. To further enhance the distinct and unexpected pleasure this has delivered, it appears to have been cloudy, binning it down, and distinctly chilly in the south and...

The weather – source of endless fascination, conversation, irritation and (just recently) excess irrigation. And a fidgety weather presenter on the BBC... I’m endlessly fascinated with the weather, and will confess to making sure I catch the BBC’s updates whenever possible. Not the local ones, where half the presenters look like they got dressed in the dark, or ITV, where they seem to know very little about actual weather, but the national forecasts. Delivered by actual Met Office personnel, their job entails a tricky mix of waving your hands about a bit, explaining about warm fronts without smirking, and trying not to look too pleased whilst mentioning gales force winds and torrential rain. Or stand in front of Cornwall. Each has their own presenting style, but there is one who intrigues me above all the others. Step forward, Tomasz Schafernaker, the 37 year old man from the Met who breezed onto our screens in 2001, as the youngest male ever to point out that it was going to r...

I spotted a bit of a novelty in the Met Office forecast for today – it doesn’t have a Weather Warning attached to it. 2015 has certainly got itself off to an eventful start, weather-wise. Impressively, the five day forecast for our most north-westerly part of England has recently featured four warnings in place covering the whole lot, featuring rain, wind, ice and snow (not to be confused with 1970s funksters Earth, Wind, Fire and Unseasonably Warm For The Time Of Year.) There’s been no mention of the “Weathebomb” effect for a bit, but judging by the state of the back yard, it looks like someone might have let one off. Apparently, this run of jolly unreasonable weather has something to do with Millibars, which is confusing – I was convinced they were the sort of drinking establishments favoured by the current leader of the Labour Party. An intrusively unpleasant side effect of the recent high winds has seen me shivering in the shower during my morning ablutions. Whoever cunni...

Feel that sudden chill in the air? It’s winter, heading this way. Or you’ve left the fridge door open. One of those, definitely. According to people with the word ‘meteorologist’ somewhere in their job title, it has been the driest September since records began. Hardly surprising, really – the wettest winter on record immediately beforehand almost certainly used up all the available rain in the sky early (Note to self: check the sciencey stuff, it doesn’t sound quite right). With just 20% of the normal rainfall of the most Septembery of months, 2014 trounced the previous record holder, good old 1959. Whilst this may have led to less plump courgettes, and parched blue tits mugging you for your bottle of mineral water, it does have a beneficial side-effect: Your granddad will finally have to stop saying “Dry? You don’t know what dry is! When I were but a lad...” Clearly disappointing for grandpops, especially so soon after the “Wet winter? Pah! When I were but a lad...” sto...

Can I just check something with you? It’s been worrying me for a couple of weeks now and   it’s about time I developed a decent (if irrational) obsession - It is May, isn’t it? And not March? Right. I’m a bit confused then. March featured temperatures well in to the 20’s, beautiful sunshine, and the worrying sight of me with more than one button of my shirt undone. Steady, ladies. So far, May has featured rain, chilliness, frosts, hail, more chilliness, more rain, parkiness and very occasional bits of sunshine. Before it rains again. I’ve even been unsure if what I can see is blossom from trees drifting down or a bit of snow. Frankly, even that wouldn’t surprise me. In fact, just about the only thing to prove we haven’t just got the months starting with ‘M’ muddled up is that it’s not completely dark at 10pm now, which is a bit unfortunate, really. It just gives us more time to spot how damn cold it is and yet another opportunity to stare forlornly as more precipitation ...