29th June - Today's News

Back from Peebles with a million midge bites and a slight hangover ...... Loads of weather stories to bring you up to date with as well so not much comment from me today - except to say well done BBC for broadcasting half of Springsteen's superb Glastonbury concert, now why the h*ll couldn't you have shown the rest of it? Us licence payers paid a of money for you to send hundreds of people to film the concert, least you could do is show it!

Anyway, rant over, here's the weather news:

Australian senator rejects climate change evidence

Tornado confirmed to have hit southern Ontario

Tropical storm hits southern China

Czech floods widen, death toll rises to 13

Fewer sunspots mean a cooler sun

In New Zealand, storm hits bringing lightning and floods

Foggy Times

Also in New Zealand, the PM is among passengers stranded by fog, whilst across in Australia rare fog blankets top end towns and Fog shuts down Brisbane. Sadly, it also causes problems in NE England and E Scotland with one motorist killed in pile-up due to thick fog.

Global cooling? What global cooling?

It's supposed to be a cool summer. In fact some say we're supposed to be experiencing global cooling due to the current solar minimum. Hmmm, really? Well if this is global cooling imagine how much worse it'd be if we had global warming? In India, monsoon rains are below normal and many die in acute Indian heatwave whilst another heatwave blasts way through China, driving temperatures above 40 degrees. In the USA Houston hits record high with 104 degrees as the Central heatwave blamed for at least 4 deaths continues from Texas to Chicago. And of course here in Britain officials issue heatwave warming - with temperatures expected into the low 30s in the London area through the week. And, with luck, some nice juicy thunderstorms around Evesham!

The Vale missed the storms over the weekend that left a 17-year old critical after being struck by lightning, caused flash flooding in Manchester and resulted in tragedy as freak storms hit Cumbria.

However, although bookmakers make Britain odds on for a summer scorcher, I still wouldn't be betting on any records being broken. The weather this week is pretty much waht would normally be expected most summers and by next week things will be a good bit cooler. I will admit this heatwave has come earlier in the summer - and indeed looks like pushing the mercury up a bit higher - than I had expected. Still, it'll really annoy those who dislike the Met Office because there's no way you can really argue that, compared to 2007 and 2008, this is indded a 'BBQ Summer'. So far. Well, except in Aberdeen where the sun hasn't been seen since 2003.

Oh, and getting back to Glastonbury, the festival started drenched in rain but then the sun came out, the E Street Band walked on stage and it ended up being declared the best ever. I almost wish I'd been there. Until I think of the toilets ......

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