Weather

The spiral of a low pressure system heading across the UK

The weather affects us all and is still a major topic of conversation in the UK.

Farmers, Fishermen, Sailors, Surfers and many others depend on good forecasts to plan ahead and Weather forecasting has become big business and big science.

The meteorological office - the place to go to find out about weather in the UK and around the world.

If you are interested in major weather events check out Historical weather events in the UK from the met office site.

 

Thunder and lightning
The electric charge in a lightning bolts heats the air to a temperature of around 30,000C for a fraction of a second. Thunder is caused by the intense heating and cooling of the air near the bolt. Between 75 and 100 people are killed in America every year by lightning. Lightning is quite likely to strike the same place twice as it goes for the best place in the locality. Our house was struck twice in one week, both times I received a shock, the second time we had a blue plasma ball hovering in a corner of the kitchen for a few seconds after the strike. The house was struck again a year later.

At any given moment there are about 1800 thunder storms active around the Earth. The USA gets approximately 100,000 thunderstorms a year and they generate about 1000 tornadoes. Over 100 Million dollars of damage is done in the USA every year by fires associated with thunderstorms. 10 million dollars worth of damage is done by large hailstones generated in thunderclouds each year.

The aptly named lightningstorm.com gives live info about lightning strikes in the USA .

Ian Wittermayer's site looks boring as it is all text but it provides loads of excellent weather links including weather cams. The image is from his photogallery http://reef.atmos.colostate.edu/ian/

Chase day site has excellent lightning images and info well worth a visit.

I would love to see a video of that cloud it looks like a nuclear explosion.
This site provides a lot of info on hurricanes including pictures of the world updated every three hours so you can watch their progress if there are any around

Air

Air is wonderful stuff, without it we would not be here.

The layer of air surrounding the Earth is known as the Atmosphere, it protects the Earth's surface from harmful solar radiation and provides some of the essential ingredients for carbon based life - free oxygen and water.