Weather 2008

[Maggi Young]

Peter, this is bad news about the Dales....flooding is just so ghastly.... hope they are soon back to normal...pass on good wishes from Ian and I if you see them, please.

[Peter Maguire]

Maggi,
I think Mike will be in touch with you by phone shortly (when he has dried the phone connections he hopes) to arrange for something to be posted prominently on the website. Ironically the AGS journal arrived today with the details of contacting them to enter plants for the show.

Anthony,
The weather was very localised. I drove up to Glasgow airport on the Sunday after the previous day's deluge to collect my daughter and conditions were atrocious to Dunbar with extremely poor visiblility, diversions off the A1 due to flooding and the A697 due to landslips. By the time we reached the airport the sun was out and we had a very pleasant lunch by Loch Lomond before driving back, by which time she (daughter) was wondering what the fuss was about!

Peter

[David Nicholson]

Sunday was our first September day without rain and we travelled up to Billingshurst in West Sussex to spend the night in order to give us a full day at Wisley on Monday. Monday was dry and reasonably pleasant and it was a pleasure to walk around the Garden I always enjoy, whatever the season. Colchicums and Cyclamen were in their full glory and it would have been nice to post some pictures had I taken a spare set of batteries for the camera! I managed one very out of focus shot before my batteries called it a day. The Alpine House looked, and smelt, lovely- a credit to Paul and his team.

The journey home on Monday evening was dry too, until we got to Exeter, and then normal weather applied! Still it's got to be better than the poor folks in Morpeth got. Today-heavy drizzle, grey skies and a Dartmoor mist until the sun came out at 1815 and by 1845 it was raining again. Promises of the tail end of the latest hurricane on Thursday and Friday-ain't life fun!

[Maggi Young]

Just in case the work of the Scientists at the European Centre for Nuclear Research, with their research project  near Swiss-French border with the Large Hadron Collider really DO cause the end of the world/universe as we know it, when they progress their proton collision experiment.... I'd just like to say it's been great knowing you all!

[TC]

For once, the west coast of Scotland has got off lightly during the past week.  On Saturday I looked out my window to the N.W, saw blue sky and took off.  About two hours later and a 5 minute ferry trip from Colintraive, we were on the Island of Bute.  As the day wore on, the sky became bluer and bluer.  We toured round every road on the island and had coffee and a bun in Mount Stewart gardens.  We did not visit the house and gardens as time was pressing.  We stopped at a viewpoint overlooking Arran and I watched the Royal Navy's latest destroyer undergoing sea trials off the measured mile on Arran.  When we finally left Bute, we took the long way back via Strachur and stopped at the famous Creggans Inn for a meal.  As it is our forty third wedding anniversary next week, we decided to celebrate in advance although drink was off the menu as I was driving.  The journey back was in sunshine all the way until we crossed the Erskine bridge just as the sun was setting  Some days are better than others.
Attached are a few pictures for those who have seen nothing but rain recently

[David Shaw]

Reply to you on Thursday, Maggie, or not!

[Maggi Young]

David, I think, though they switch the collider on on Thursday, it will take about two weeks to get everything up to speed and for the actual collisions to beginso :-Xthere's still time for last minute parties and chocolate!

To Tom and Cindy... very best wishes for your forthcoming anniversary....hope you get another such lovely day to celebrate it!

[Martin Baxendale]

Just in case the work of the Scientists at the European Centre for Nuclear Research, with their research project  near Swiss-French border with the Large Hadron Collider really DO cause the end of the world/universe as we know it, when they progress their proton collision experiment.... I'd just like to say it's been great knowing you all!

You're just worrying about all that Swiss chocolate disappearing into a black hole, Maggi.

Of course it's always possible that there's been a long series of Big Bangs with each one caused when  a civilization within the universe developed enough science and curiosity about the Big Bang phenomenon to build a machince to replicate one...

I can't help thinking about those nuclear bomb scientists on the U.S. Manhattan Project who didn't know whether the first nuclear detonation would create a runaway nuclear reaction that would destroy the World...and yet they set it off anyway!

[Peter Maguire]

Well, we're still here............
Or at least I am.
No sign of the chocolate yet 

[mark smyth]

I'm here also but logging in from a parallel universe

[Luc Gilgemyn]

 

No black holes sighted yet here either...  however, I can offer some Belgian black chocolate !!!

[Maggi Young]

Well, just in case the world did , I ate all my chocolate stores last night, so I am now in desperate need of re-stocking my cupboard or life will no longer be worth living anyway!!

We are having a better day here.... actually some sunshine so we have made a pleasant walk with Lily and Molly, who came today for a haircut........so I suppose I could be running the "dog parlour at the end of the universe"

[Martin Baxendale]

As Maggi said earlier, it'll take at least a couple of weeks to get the collider up to speed and start getting results. So don't uncross any fingers just yet. 

The weather's finally warming up and drying out a bit here. No problems with flooding here, apart from (you may have heard it on the news) the poor bloke who was buried alive just down the hill from us when a mud-slide filled the gas pipeline trench he was working in. 

[David Nicholson]

Been raining heavily here since 1430 and the wind has got up too. Have you seen your forecast for tomorrow Martin?

Am I the onlly one who was horrified at the costs of setting up and maintaining this 'big bang' equipment? The sums involved would have gone a long way towards solving starvation problems in the 'Third World'; significant funding for cancer and other serious illness research; and providing hospitals, doctors and nurses throughout Africa. At least the results of my funding scheme would be instantly tangible rather than a philosophy of "well we don't know what will happen but it will be nice to find out".

Oh, and if there is a Pound or Euro or so to spare I suggest it be offered to the BBC as an inducement not to report anything further about the forthcoming Presedential election in that big country just over 'the pond'. After all we have enough of our own politicians to put up.

[art600]

Been raining heavily here since 1430

Didn't know that records went back that far