Celandines and a grey wagtail

Following my last post on mimosas I'll now write in a more positive vein. So it's nice to be able to mention seeing yellow celandines in flower down by the river yesterday. All right not the magic carpets of yellow that hopefully will be in evidence next month but at least a promise of things to come. For the avoidance of doubt I'm talking about the lesser celandine here but the much rarer greater celandine does occur not too far from my home. A good deal of gentle bird calling too with tits being particularly active. Another pleasing sighting was that of a grey wagtail - I'm surprised I don't see them more often but perhaps they are a bird more of upland streams and rivers where the water is always fast flowing.

The weather forecast for the week ahead suggest that the current changeable regime will continue but we are at least getting some blue skies between the rain belts and luckily the worst of the precipitation has been occurring after dark in my two counties.

Thunderstorm brings dry spell to end

The last few days have been warm, dry and sunny but as so often happens a thundery low pressure has moved north from France to spoil things. So yesterday the weather started going downhill and in the evening lightning lit up the sky, thunder rolled and there were some heavy downpours. Although we have had severe thunderstorms in the past it very often seems to be worse to the east and south of us and so it was last night. Certainly there was a reasonable gap between flash and thunder - I think a 5 second time gap between the two is equivalent to about a mile away in distance and this seemed to be as near as it got.

I have to say that I'm not too enthusiastic about thunderstorms but nevertheless am in awe of the power of natural phenomena. What happens in Britain of course pales into insignificance compared with recent events in SE Asia. First there was the cyclone in Burma and now the devastating earthquake in China. Another 1000 shelterboxes left East Midlands airport for Burma this week and I think I heard that the Charity are now gearing up to send supplies to China. Another Westcountry based Charity, RAPID UK, whose office is at Jacobstowe near Okehampton in Devon, has a team on standby to be deployed to China if needed. RAPID is an acronym for "Rescue and Preparedness in Disasters" and their well trained volunteers are always ready to assist when an earthquake or similar disaster occurs anywhere in the World. Much more about them can be found at their website here.

What brilliant organisations these two are! More power to their elbow!

The weather forecast for Christmas

Exactly three weeks ago I penned a piece under the title "Differing weather forecasts for Christmas". I wrote this because I was aware of two very different expectations on the weather the country would experience at this time. So on one side we had the BBC weather centre represented by John Hammond who, using conventional forecasting techniques, used the phrase "More settled conditions develop" in reference to the second half of the month. Against him was Piers Corbyn whose firm 'Weatheraction' forecasts over a much longer time span and insists that it is the activity of the sun that drives our weather.

Time then for a reality check - how did they do? Both pretty badly I would say. So far as I can see it was a typical Christmas for weather, a mix of some rain with drier spells between, windy at times but not the severe storm predicted by Piers with attendant problems of travellers having massive disruptions. Regarding John Hammond, if he had applied the "settled conditions" to the middle two weeks there would have been little cause for complaint. In other words he was about a week out.

Once again it's the weather itself having the last laugh. Clever we may be but not that clever in getting medium to long term forecasts correct.