Brrrr!!

It has been a bit chilly today to say the least, and this map from the Met Office shows that there are warnings of severe cold weather in place across much of the country.

The cause of the cold weather is the high pressure system that is currently sitting over northern Russia...





The Year 8 geographers have been looking at air pressure and how it affects the weather, so they should be able to tell you all about what's happening at the moment.


However cold we might think it is here though, we come off pretty lightly... Temperatures in eastern Europe have reached -32oC in places, Hungary is experiencing the lowest temperatures it's seen in 65 years, and more than 70 people have died as a result of the cold temperatures.

There is a fantastic set of photos here of the coast of Romania, where the Black Sea is frozen!!

#UKSnowDepth

Following on from the #uksnow map started last year, Tom Barrett has set up a UK Snow Depth map... Measure the depth of your snow, and add it to the map:


View #UKSnowDepth in a larger map

Snow Missions...

I've posted a few times about the excellent Mission: Explore... but now there are Snow Missions! Try some of them out and leave a comment or send me an email with your evidence Or have a go at creating your own snow mission...

If you're a Twitter type, search #SnowMission...

Weather World Record Attempt

Part of the BBC School News Report event involves an attempt to break the world record for the largest interactive weather report... Here's Aaron's report:

Schools all across the U.K today are taking part in a world record attempt to create the largest interactive weather report. Schools from the Shetland Isles to schools on Jersey and even schools on St Helena are taking a temperature reading at approximately 9:15am and emailing the temperature to the BBC Weather Centre to gather the readings and to see whether we can break the record and get into the Guinness World Record Book. Every school's temperature reading will have to be seen by an independent witness for their reading to be counted and go towards the record attempt.

At our school we took the temperature and it was 3◦C. our reading was witnessed by Mr Hickton who is a member of the Amber Valley Rotary Club.

Aaron checking the temperature

What happened to global warming?

Lots of people have been asking in the past few days why it is so cold when people keep banging on about global warming... A nice little video clip here from the BBC, which emphasises the difference between weather and climate.

Weather....

Not the greatest of weather for this time of year at the moment, but what is quite great is this new Met Office/Google Maps mashup...

The "Weather Visualisation" is part of Invent, which is the Met Office's showcase of some of their plans for new ways to present weather information and forecasts, and allows you to turn a variety of layers (the one above shows the rainfall forecast for 10.00am today) on and off, and also to view forecast and weather warning information for specific regions.

Thanks to Ollie Bray for the tipoff.

Should the Met Office be sued?

Yes, according to the author of this article from The Times. Earlier this year, the Met Office announced that we were in for a "barbecue summer"... But there has not been much evidence of that so far - in fact, it's been quite the opposite!

The Met Office revised their forecast earlier this week, claiming that they had only said that there was a 65% chance of a hot summer, and that the media had mis-reported the seasonal forecast. Here is their response to the recent criticism they've received...

Nice article here, with some excellent photos.... Kayaking round a campsite anyone?

Is it raining?

Miserable weather here all weekend, and elsewhere in the UK too, according to Twitter. So, as a little experiments/investigation, I set up a wiki map which can be edited by anyone - add a marker with details of what the weather is like where you are...



Oh, and if you haven't already seen it, check out the brilliant Is it going to rain? which I discovered a while back but had forgotten about until it appeared in the latest GA Magazine...

Is it going to rain?

Rather liked this - another new discovery via Twitter (@coolkiddo).

Twitter Snow Map

I mentioned the other day about Twitter and the UK snow map, and also about the arrival of Google Earth 5. The two have been rather neatly combined to produce this nice animation:



And there's more snow on the way, according to the Met Office... (Although still actually rather sunny outside at the moment here.)

Snow!! And a competition...

Lots more snow in the early hours of this morning... And a day off! Plenty of photos and videos, news articles about the lack of grit, etc. on the BBC website, and an explanation here of what's causing this weather...

My slightly lop-sided snowman:

And I think that it's about time for another Geogtastic photo competition. So, SHS students and staff - send your best snow photo to me via email (if you send from your school email, you just need to type vel into the address bar) before Tuesday 10th Feb...

And more snow...

Actually, not more snow in our neck of the woods, just very cold so that the snow we had yesterday and last night was nicely frozen and dangerous... It looked very pretty though:


Lots and lots of stories, videos, photos, etc. on the BBC website, and a nice set of photos by Twitter users on Flickr (including mine from Smalley Dam yesterday)...

I particularly like this though...

Snow...

You will probably have noticed the weather forecasts over the weekend, with Met Office warnings for "heavy snow", and, depending where in the country you are, you might also have noticed some snow...

The East Midlands was meant to be one of the worst hit areas... There was nothing, however, til the middle of this afternoon - then a sudden flurry that lasted all of five minutes. I was going to go out and video it but on opening the front door, I changed my mind. Instead, here's the view from the bedroom window:


Snow in Smalley... from victoria ellis on Vimeo.


All that's left now is a fine scattering, nicely frozen and slippy ready to cause mayhem in the morning...

You will also, most likely, have heard of Twitter in the news of late. Like many other people, I didn't "get it" at first, but it's grown on me and I've discovered lots of interesting things - especially, though not exclusively, about ICT in education... Anyway, across the "TwitterVerse", people are "tweeting" snow reports, which are being incorporated into this Google Maps mashup:
I suspect that it says more about the locations of Twitter users who are still up and about than it does about where it's snowing most, but either way, it's interesting from a geographical point-of-view.

Is it snowing where you are?

Cold...

You will probably have noticed that it's been a bit chilly of late... Some pictures I took last week at Scar House in Nidderdale:

And it's been pretty cold in Paris too, judging by these fab pictures courtesy of my sister who lives there:

However... the "Arctic blast" has casued huge disruption across Europe, and the cold has been blamed for the deaths of at least twelve people...

The decision by Russia to shut down gas supplies via the Ukraine has affected fifteen countries and left hundreds of thousands of homes without heating.

Closer to home, cold weather payments, issued when temperatures fall to 0oC for seven consecutive days, have caused controversy...

The Big Freeze Round-Up from the Met Office is a good summary of the weather of the first fortnight of 2009 - which is predicted to be one of the five warmest years on record!

Vendee Globe Update

Conditions not sounding too pleasant for the Vendee Globe competitors at the moment:



Find out more here.

Or have a go yourself in the Virtual Regatta! I've not quite got my head round it yet, but could be interesting... Click on the picture to link to the site:

Sailing Update...

Vendee Globe

Almost 14 days into the race, more than half of the Vendee Globe boats have crossed the Equator...



It's not all been plain sailing though... A great description from Steve White about his time in the Doldrums:

"I have been released from the Doldrums. I thought initially that perhaps I'd escaped punishment, but it was not so. At one point I was trapped under a cloud that filled a 24 mile range radar screen - and boy, did it rain! It was almost Biblical! We just sat in the midst of it with the sails banging and slatting back and forth, which is a sailor's Chinese water torture, with the rain bucketing down. That was the largest of many clouds, but there were very many equally frustrating ones, sometimes with wind in them, and sometimes only with wind at the edges, and nothing but torrential rain and no wind at all in the centre. There were gusts, but never that big, up to about 20 knots usually, but that's enough when you normally have a couple of reefs in and full ballast tanks by that point, and, you've guessed it, it can blow from any direction. It changes direction so frequently that I often had to look at the wind direction from the instruments and make funny angles with my hands to work out which tack I should be on to get me best to where I wanted to go! At some points I was going backwards faster than I'd been going forwards for the preceding few hours! It changed so often it can get confusing if you're tired. It has been really frustrating, and I am not keen to come back, but it is another experience to add to the list. I often imagined what it would be like to come through here in a square rigger. You can see how they got stuck here for weeks, sooner them than me....... When it rained for the first time,which was both a blessed relief from the heat and the chance for a shower for me..."

Rich Wilson, the only American in the race, has a very good website - check out the Saturday Updates Q&A section, and his description here of the traditions of crossing the Equator.

Mike Perham

The other sailing story at the moment is that of Mike Perham, who set off last Sunday in an attempt to be the youngest person to sail around the world single-handed. He has stopped briefly in Portugal for some repairs to his boat, but is hoping to be off again soon. Follow his progress on his website here.

Around the world in three months....

...by yourself... in one of these?

(Image: Aviva Ocean Racing)

That's exactly what the 30 sailors who've just left Les Sables d'Olonne in France are planning to do. They are taking part in the Vendee Globe, which runs every four years, and is described as "one of the most challenging tests of endurance there is".

You can find out more about the race here, where there are maps of the route, photos, video clips and weather reports, and information about the competitors, seven of whom are British. Find out more about them, their boats and their progress in the race on their websites: Mike Golding; Samantha Davies; Alex Thomson; Steve White; Jonny Malbon; Brian Thompson and Dee Caffari.

Rather them than me, I think!

Hurricane Gustav

The Mayor of New Orleans has ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city - including emergency services - in preparation for the arrival of Hurricane Gustav, which he called "the storm of the century". The BBC has a video clip of the press conference, where Mr Nagin urged people to take the situation seriously, and warned them that if they did choose to be "stubborn" and ride out the storm, they would be on their own.

Hurricane Gustav has already wrought havoc in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Cuba, and is forecast to hit the Gulf coast of the USA tomorrow.

The BBC has an In Pictures here and there is more information about Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Hanna from the US National Hurricane Center.

SNOW!!!

The view from my front door about an hour ago!! I'm sure I get far more excited than someone my age should about snow, but hey ho!

I don't think I want to go camping....

Just checked the Met Office website, in the hope that it would tell me that the rain was going to stop before the D of E weekend away... But instead...

What's it like where you are??