h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK, I can take a joke. I'm convinced that global cataclysmic downpours are here to stay.

Over last weekend torrential, and I mean TORRENTIAL< downpours flooded our workshop and the drains backed up far enough to fill the handbasins from underneath. The guttering overflowed the roof drains and water poured in through the roof damaging computers and photocopiers. No bad thing necessarily.

Monday, a rather more moderate thunderstorm, (no flooding this time) struck the building twice in quick succession. The accounts office staff abandoned ship and fled for the day.

Today, I'm sitting in the middle of another torrential downpour. The four way junction outside which is at a low point has just flooded and stalled the traffic and water is cascading over the high point of the kerb into some poor sod's garden and washing up to his front door. It doesn't look good for him. I hope his insurance is up to date.

A bit like the 'flood of the century' in Austria, Czech, Poland etc. some 5 years ago, as opposed to the one 2 years ago. Mind you Rumania and Bulgaria are always getting flooded, although at the moment they are "enjoying", if that's the right word, a short pause, until Saturday, in their 45 oC heatwave. There's even a rumour that the Rumanian Secret Service has banned the weather forecasters from saying how bad it's going to get - presumably to allay panic. It's all going belly-up even as we speak.

Well it seems that the UK and European weather patterns are linked by the abnormal action of the Jet stream air current, which is currently a bit off course due to the late arrival of a weather pattern that takes place from the Azores at this time of year.
The sooner it gets back in place the better.

A friend of mine has just returned from Egypt. which is basking in temperatures of 45 deg. C.

I expect at the end of it all they'll blame El Nino. If there is ever an end to it all.

Somebody must be in for a Super-Hurricane they way the seas are warming up. Wouldn't like to be 'there' - wherever 'there' is.

Reading about it over last weekend in an article by John Kettley who used to be with the UK's met office, and was a weather presenter on TV, he put it all down to another reason altogether.

Unfortunately I can't now remember the cause he sited but it may have been 'La Nina', something of which I hadn't heard of before.

It's not hurricane season yet but we'll look forward to that with renewed interest this year.

Actually, it's been hurricane season since June 1st, and right on cue, tropical storm Chantal is making her way up the east coast of the north American continent posing no danger to anything on land.

If I remember rightly, La Nina is the opposite (or a smaller version) of El Nino.

Or not.

Ah.. I've always laboured under the impression that hurricane season was late summer... August, September and onward.
Shows what I don't know then.

Had any hurricanes yet?

None yet. Chantal is the third storm of the season but none of them have developed into a hurricane so far. The season runs from June 1st to November 30th.

There was a Super-Typhoon hit Okinawa a couple of weeks ago although there was some talk of it being downgraded to Typhoon at the time. Anyway it flirted with Tokyo. Looked very big on the satellite.

Right now(2 Sept) the Carribian basin is experienceing their second major hurricane of the 2007 season
details at http://www.moreweather.com/tropics/

Felix - Cat. 2 last I heard.

Acapulco got a bashing from a mere tropical storm a couple of days ago. Big rockslides, lots of mud, people dead.

So, Given the fears on climate change, is the weather that's being experienced in that region over the last couple of years unusual? Historically that is.

the mountains of central america killed felix.
However it was at one point category 5 and historically few storms grow to that strength. Also at the same time they had a pacific hurricane striking Mexico from the opposite direction. Historically that almost never happens at the same time.

It's the first time that two Cat. 5 Hurricanes have made landfall in the same season they say - although they also say that it did happen in the 1800's - but maybe they didn't have the technology to measure these things so accurately in those days.
I noticed yesterday on cnn weather another swirly thing building in the Atlantic.