PC Hut re-opened for business today after the proprietor had spent ten days falling frustratingly in love with every Spanish woman in Barcelona under the age of forty...which I am reliably informed is on the Costa Brava and not the Costa del Sol which is Andalusia and not Catalonia. Dear Diary I must swot up on my Spanish regions.
I use the word frustratingly advisedly because Tony Payne has now discovered that if you don’t speak the local language you become dependent upon getting to know women who not only speak English but also feel disposed to do so with you. This lengthens the odds and leaves you a victim of much unrequited love. This type lasts the longest.
Meanwhile in England summer came and went and came back again. The old adage of the English summertime being several days of sunshine and then a thunderstorm rings true. High pressure and sunshine led to high temperatures briefly by day and night. The daytime maximum at the London Weather Centre on Monday was eighty eight degrees Fahrenheit...the hottest temperature recorded on June 12 since 1897. Such temperatures were hardly surprising during Monday as the lowest temperature recorded on Sunday night was a balmy seventy degrees.
But at the same time the weather was already changing to a cooler regime towards the West Country and Wales as a feature known to meteorologists as a short-wave trough approached picking up heat and moisture from the tropics on the way. On its arrival in the West of England this atmospheric weakness...wonderful term...allowed thunderstorms to barge high into the sky as daytime heat forced thermal currents upwards. I read that in the papers so it must be true.
Worst hit by water was the area between the Peak District and the North Yorkshire Moors where summer was ended abruptly by thunderclouds and there was flooding everywhere disrupting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Worst hit by the heat were motorists on the M25...the Great Wen’s Ring Road...who were forced to a standstill for more than six hours in the blistering heat as a Road Maintenance Crew was dragged away from watching the World Cup on their television screens and ordered to re-tar-macadam the road after a lorry had burst into flames.
Only the UK Highways Agency could make this sort of idiotic trade-off. The French would have had Red Adair on call to shove the truck down the embankment and dowse it with foam so cars were moving again within twenty minutes instead of six hours. Goodness only knows how we ever managed to run an empire. Perhaps it’s a myth.
Meanwhile time and tide were reluctant to wait for a man from the Highways Agency to finish his cup of tea. Following behind the trough line were more bearable temperatures as the maritime origin of the air brought temperatures back to a much fresher 63-68F across Wales and the West Country by Monday afternoon.
The Ancient Town of Rye sticks out into the English Channel so its microclimate...like everybody else’s local weather...is quite different. Also the reasons for the differences differ from those of some other places...but the same as some other other places. Rye is strongly influenced by sea breezes. These baffle forecasters because they have a tidal function as well as a diennial function...and the moon’s weekly cycle is not the same as the sun’s.
Sea breezes develop when sunshine beating on land surfaces send huge warm-air thermals into the skies. The air at the surface must be replaced from somewhere and in coastal regions the air employed lies over the sea. This air is cold. I was brought up swimming all year round in Eltham Park Open Air Swimming Baths...the water was always freezing in June and only started to warm up towards the end of July unless there was an exceptional run of hot weather. And the mass of water in the Eltham Pool hardly compares with Rye Bay or the English Channel. Even then water temperature never ventured much above the low seventies.
My mother was one of the all-year-round stalwarts and took a leading part in ensuring that the pool was kept open when the M2 Motorway from Dover to the Blackwall Tunnel was forced through in the 1970s. Mum...bless her...was usually decades ahead of her time. Now all over the country local councils are under siege as they are being instructed by their local voters to refurbish and reopen these lidos built in the 1920s with public money and closed down in the 1970s on spurious health, safety...but mostly stupidity...grounds.
Sea breezes cool the coasts. Thursday 8th June is fairly typical. While temperatures of 68 degrees were being reported by the English Harbour Towns, the English Market Towns inland were in the mid to high seventies. Such differences beg many questions about the raw temperature/time data being used by the Climate Changelings when this type of small-scale local weather pattern has weather forecasters scratching their heads and kicking their computers.
By early afternoon on this particular Thursday while England was basking in almost unbroken sunshine, a ribbon of cloud with light showery rain stretched all the way along the M4 and then into East Anglia. This cloud marked the point where the sea breeze is effectively turned back by the land breezes. Clouds billowed up and ruined the forecast.