Tag: weather

January reflections

January has already been a mixed month here in West Dorset, with cold, cold weather and blue skies at the start of it (hooray!) and then miserable rain and wind (boo!), which kind of reflects the way many of us feel in the weeks after Christmas.

The festive season passed me by without major incident and now the forward-face of the dual-headed Janus dominates our lives as The Good Ship 2025 slips its mooring and floats off into the past.

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings (Wikipedia).

Whilst some of us are celebrating the arrival of new little people, it’s been a rough old twelve months for some, with Christmas and New Year anything but merry.

Life is hard, and even more so when you lose something or someone dear to you.

It doesn’t help when the outside world is going through tumultuous times which appear to be never-ending.

I’ve stopped listening to news bulletins. They’re full of multi-daily doses of negativity which make us all feel so angry and/or helpless. The chatter and backbiting on social media is even worse, with entrenched views constantly in a bitter battle with the voices of sanity and rational reason.

I heard on the news this morning that people tend to book their holidays in January because it gives them something to look forward to during these dark and dreary months.

I can well believe it.

The best thing so far this month has been the remains of the Wolf Moon shining over the village green in a three-way chorus with the lights of the community Christmas tree and the phone box library.

And on another positive note, we came third in the pub quiz, the morning cuppa tastes even better in the mugs my brother bought us for Christmas and I’ve lost four pounds since Christmas.

Roll on blue skies and warmth.

That’s about it.

Love, Maddie x

The rain it do raineth

It’s a dismal day here yet again, with grey skies and intermittent rain.

The water gathers in big puddles at the side of the road. If you’re walking along the pavements, you have to be aware of the traffic, otherwise you’ll end up soaked.

There is a particular spot where the road narrows at a pinch point, which is intended to slow down the traffic. If you don’t walk past it pretty sharpish, you can be guaranteed a car will come zooming by and splash you to smithereens.

In the mornings and evenings, many of the motorists on their way to and from work – and also, surprisingly, school – tend to ignore the 20mph speed limit and belt by at 30 and 4omph.

It’s a terrible advert for some of the builders, plumbers and electricians who shoot by in their liveried vans. Still, they obviously have plenty of work on and don’t need business from village folk.

Anyway, enough complaining. It’s World Book Day on Thursday, 7 March and I’m looking forward to my morning walk coinciding with the children all dressed up as book characters and making their way to school.

A few years ago I encountered Roald Dahl’s Mr Twit followed closely down the road by Dr Seuss’s Cat in the Hat.

I wonder what lies in store for us this coming Thursday?

Batten down the hatches

Mammatus storm clouds, San Antonio. Picture: Wikipedia Commons

The storm tickled us here in west Dorset, with high winds and rain but nothing we couldn’t handle.

We were lucky. Other parts of the country have had it much worse than us.

Storm Isha is the ninth named storm this season. We have Storm Jocelyn just around the corner. Batten down the hatches.

I don’t know about you but there are so many named storms, I lose track of them all.

Someone told me yesterday that the storms are named by European countries jostling for position in the naming stakes.

I didn’t think that could be right. But there was something in the back of my mind about storm names alternating between male and female.

So I turned to the internet and looked it up.

Thanks to a very comprehensive (and, thankfully, short) article on the BBC website, I am now considerably the wiser.

The male/female names were indeed a thing, but not any more. (And to digress, when did the words any more become anymore? I must have missed that memo.)

The US began naming storms in the 1950s.

Here in the UK, it’s a much more recent phenomenon.

According to the BBC, ‘in the UK, the Met Office names any storm when it has the potential to cause disruption or damage.

‘It believes that it is easier to follow the progress of a storm on TV, radio, or social media if it has a name.’

So how are storms named?

Over to the BBC article again:

‘The UK Met Office and Irish service Met Éireann launched their first Name our Storms campaign in 2015.

‘Most years, they draw the names from a shortlist of favourites submitted by the public. Since 2019, they have been joined by the national weather service of the Netherlands, which also chips in a few suggested names each year.

‘In previous years, storms have alternated between male and female names.

‘However, for the 2023-24 season, the Met Office has altered this, naming a number of storms after prominent scientists, meteorologists and others “who work to keep people safe in times of severe weather”.’

So, this season, it will be mostly:

Agnes, Babet, Ciaran, Debi, Eli, Fergus, Gerrit, Henk, Isha, Jocelyn, Kathleen, Lilian, Minnie, Nicholas, Olga, Piet, Regina, Stuart, Tamiko, Vincent and Walid.

(Storm Minnie!)

We might not get through the whole alphabet and the letters Q, U and Z don’t get a look in. But over the coming months, you may hear some names which aren’t on the British/Irish/Dutch list.

Explains the BBC: ‘That is because storms are named where they originate. Storms that reach the UK are occasionally the tail end of one that started in the US several days earlier – and may have been downgraded from hurricane or cyclone status.’

Keep safe.