The latest anthropomorphically-designated bout of crap weather, ‘Storm Claudia’, apparently came through today but while things were definitely damp this wasn’t a major event. Either way, staying indoors and watching next door’s guttering struggle a bit seemed like a good move. I had work to do.
This shot somewhat misrepresents the day’s weather, as for most of my time in Solihull today (near Birmingham, and making its debut on the blog) I walked and sat in quite pleasant sunshine. But not from between about 2.30 – 2.50pm. And the seats for the match to come were not under cover. Fortunately, it stopped, and two other big fat thunderheads that looked like they were later coming in also passed us by.
Thunderstorms were coming and going all afternoon: here, we are perhaps a quarter of an hour from the next one. In response, the local rail system threw its hands up in fear and went into another one of its spasms, but I just stayed in and watched.
Depending on how I count the days in transit, today could be reckoned the 50th day I have spent on St Helena across my three trips — and it was, certainly, the one with the worst weather. Jamestown, on average, gets 9-10mm of rain in the month of May, yet at least that amount fell today. It started overnight, and this morning there was already a dirty brown stream running down Main Street and debouching into the sea. It carried on, too, heavy showers every few minutes all day, really quite foul weather. And at points up in the hills, correspondents reckon there might have been some 100mm (4 inches) of rain through the day. Not normal…
This is a totally crap picture, but it epitomises the day, entirely. The sunshine of Boxing Day was not sustained. We left Dundee at about 9am, I gritted my teeth and drove, and we staggered into Morecambe at about 2pm — an hour longer than it should have taken — battered by high winds, driving rain, surface water, low visibility, the lot. This is taken somewhere in the wilds of the Southern Uplands, in the indefinable watershed country between Tweeddale and Annandale, when I just had to pull over and stop for a few minutes.
Working at home today, I thought, after lunch, I would just go out and stretch my legs for a bit. Great timing; this was taken only a few minutes later. On the other hand, this was actually the most interesting thing to happen today.
Umbra in Latin means ‘shade’, a sign that the umbrella was originally designed to protect against the sun. But this was not the application required in Hebden Bridge this afternoon. I believe this outrage against good weather can officially be termed ‘Storm Dudley’.
After another hot and dry day it was a surprise when Hebden was drenched by a substantial storm in the early evening; such things can be expected in high summer, of course, but the surprise came more because there weren’t really all that many clouds around, and the sun mostly kept shining throughout. But rain it did, and hard; these two were not the only ones scuttling for cover.
The village of South Milford, east of Leeds, makes an exceptionally wet debut on the blog, and thus a rather grim one, despite being a pleasant place that hosted me entertainingly enough this afternoon. But it was damp, oh yes indeed.
The underdwellings beneath Lee Mill Road rise above our allotment. We were there this afternoon, doing a filthy job in filthy weather, caught in the tag end of this revolting hail storm that blew over as the sun went down. I hope this is the end of the storm in a broader sense too — it’s been another weekend of severe weather, not so much round here this time as further south. A grim period all round.
Being 42 