WHAT'S YOUR WEATHER LIKE - 2017

A top temperature of 68f today with my Garden Weather Station flashing a Storm Threshold level as the pressure dropped to 986hpa. Recorded winds gusted up to just over 20mph, with average speeds of around 17mph coming from the South. My house is sheltered by other neighbours Houses to the South about a 100 yards away and also by Bickerton Hills about 2 miles away while my garden is protected by high fences and shrubs lessening the winds while we had wind speeds up to 35mph in Cheshire. Right now the average wind speed is 13mph and it's gusting up to 18mph, a temperature of 57f and a pressure reading of 989hpa and the Weather Station dropping out of Storm Threshold mode.

 

We had a nice sunny and warm day until about 3.30 p.m. The solar panels were happily producing a load of electricity until the sun turned red. The sky then looked as though it was on fire before turning an eerie yellow and the sun suddenly seemed to switch off. There were no visible individual clouds but the whole sky was a dark grey colour and the solar panels stopped producing anything at all.

The wind started to pick up and the trees at the bottom of the garden started dancing in the gusts of the gale. Mrs Shiney and myself rushed down to the bottom of the garden to pick a load of eating apples that had been ordered for sale today. It's the fastest we've ever picked apples! I was up a step ladder and passing the apples to Mrs S. who was sorting them into boxes (good ones) or the wheelbarrow (bugged/damaged ones for cooking). We managed 40lb of good ones before having to abandon picking as we were being bombarded by flying apples!!! I expect we'll have a lot of windfalls for Mrs Shiney to pick up this morning.

I remember the hurricane of '87 very well. I was sitting in an armchair, at our lounge windows, at 3 a.m. watching the winds pick up and listening to music with the sound of the howling wind in the background. Tree branches were flying everywhere and at 3.43 a.m. the wind suddenly changed direction completely and I watched one of our silver birch trees very slowly fall over whilst ripping its roots out of the ground.

It was 62ft high before the hurricane and 62ft long after the hurricane. As it came down it smashed off a 20ft section of tree from the silver birch next to it, then a 30ft branch from the willow (the wound on the willow is now about 3ft x 2ft and a hole 18" deep where the woodpeckers have been digging it out ever since). The tree missed our 20ft x 10ft greenhouse by just under 2ft

The next morning the root ball was 15ft wide and 7ft high but no more than 2ft wide. Just a large vertical disc exposing where all the roots had been ripped out of the ground.

It took from Friday morning until Monday afternoon for the farmer and all the neighbours who had chain saws to clear a path for vehicles through our road. On the Saturday I walked just under five miles to where one of my staff could come and pick me up to take me to work (our busiest day of the week) and then walked the same distance back!

 

Its grey,dull,grim where they get this from I just don't know

 

Mostly sunny today with increasing cloud during the afternoon a temperature of 59f and very little breeze. Right now the temperature is 46f and the pressure reading is 997hpa. The forecast is for more stormy weather during Friday night and Saturday