Whether goes your Weather ..?

It's that Jet Stream Again ..!

The UK is currently facing winter storm after winter storm with much in the way of associated flooding and wrecked homes; from around Christmas Eve onward, this has been the experience of many.

Thanks to being online and using emails as an every day way of keeping in touch with folks thousands of mile away on the other side of the Atlantic, I suppose I should have been more aware of the implications of the news I was hearing from 'over there' regarding their climate conditions but, I wrongly amused what I was hearing was within the 'normal' range experienced by my American friends.

While recently chatting (emailing) with friends in America there had been quite a lot of chat back and forth about the weather and how lucky or unlucky some folks have been in that way over the past few weeks...

There were the usual tales of contradicting weather conditions 'from Miami to Canada' with 
those from the southern states telling of warm, dry, almost autumnal weather,  others, mainly those from northern states or those on the eastern seaboard, spoke of the cold and wet, weather far more like what we in the UK think of as winter weather.

No problem, I told myself, folks in the southern states are well used to warm weather at this time of year, its winter climate often considered one of the great things about living in Texas or Arkansas or Florida; while New Jersey is having a rather bad time of it right now with the snow, it's nothing they haven't had winter after winter in the past.

Then I saw a weather forecast for the UK on TV this lunch time. 

That forecast focused on those same contrasting climate conditions and told how they were helping drive the Jet Stream in a particular way ...
directly east to west over the UK.
And, the forecasters told us, that is having a direct effect on the current conditions in the UK.

 

 

13:29 pm today: John Hammond BBC Weather
"What's happening in north America is very unusual as we have *a very tight temperature contrast* which is driving the jet stream - a conductor of our weather - 
and the stronger the stream, the most intense our storm systems are at the surface."
( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25580722 )

However, and even more worryingly, it would appear this is to be a repeating situation in the UK for the foreseeable future ... 
weather conditions not experienced within the lifetime of many quite elderly people, including myself.

Also on a personal level, folks in Helensburgh, Argyll, where we love to visit whenever the weather warms up, locals are describing the current weather as the worst conditions they have experienced in many years. 

Another attitude altogether was reflected in the experience of Mark Simpson BBC Ireland Correspondent when he parked the company's Radio Ulster van beside flood-threatened homes in east Belfast... He tweeted that he heard a man shout out: 
"Just what we need, a DJ has arrived."