A very faint rainbow at the end of a very wet and gloomy day.
Admin1 is rereading Jingo by Sir Terry Pratchett. Admin2 is reading Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson.
Category: Weather
Bow Wow!
Two awesome rainbows brightening our evening. According to an article in the paper today, seeking out awe can make you happier and healthier. Awfulness is the new mindfulness.
Admin1 is reading Peculiar London by Christopher Fowler. Admin2 is reading The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith, a gigantic doorstopper which needs a comprehensive workover by an editor. How many times does the author describe the office manager as having an e-cigarette clamped in her teeth? As if that were even possible.
Cloud Appreciation Day
Our contribution to the Memory Cloud Atlas; a cumulus mediocris which was what was on display today.
Admin1 is reading The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard. Admin2 is reading Not Saying Goodbye by Boris Akunin.
Overkill
Today all the newspapers are black and every electronic billboard has been switched to pics of the erstwhile queen. HMQ is queing in every bus shelter, hanging around the shops and looking down from high buildings. And it rained on and off all day so a very feeble rainbow arrived to cheer us all up.
Admin2 is reading Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris; those who signed the death warrant for Charles I get their comeuppance when Charles II ascends to the throne.
Catch the Sun
Last month was our sunniest August ever: 239.610kWh. It was the only August to appear on the high score table for the best months ever and featured 6 of the all-time best-ever days. On average it was 5 degrees warmer than last August by day but only .5 degrees warmer by night.
Admin1 is rereading Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith. Admin2 is reading Mother’s Boy by Patrick Gale; a fictionalised early life and wartime years of the poet Charles Causley.
Pink Sunset Rainbow
Admins 1 and 2 saw this lovely sight on a dry evening; the first rainbow we have seen since the very wet month of February.
Admin1 is rereading Lethal White by Robert Galbraith. Admin2 is reading A Change of Circumstance by Susan Hill, a mundane saga of family life disguised as a crime novel.
Red Sky at Night
The shepherds are delighted.
Admin1 is rereading Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith. Admin2 is reading Take Nothing with You by Patrick Gale; boy with cello needs a fellow.
Iridescence
An iridescent cloud shimmers above golden linings and a smoking chimney.
Admin1 is rereading the magical The Secret Commonwealth by Phillip Pullman, which ends on a cliffhanger with still no sequel in sight. Covid has something else to answer for.
And at last we scored 11.5 on the GSQ, bringing our score back to double figures. Good work everyone!
Clouds!
First clouds we’ve seen for ages. We even had a drop of rain, but not enough to register and none of the thunderstorms we were promised. And we had an unexpected visit from B&D, who dashed off precipitately to avoid the precipitation that never arrived.
Admin2 is reading The Liar’s Girl by Catherine Ryan Howard.
Yet More Sunny Days
Admin2 has been enjoying this weather. Admin1 less so.
Admin1 is reading Invitation to a Dynamite Party by Peter Lovesey, a short book which seemed rather too full of … words.
Admin2 is reading Selling Hitler by Robert Harris but abandoned it halfway through because…Nazis.
Sunny Days
The Met Office has issued an amber warning for four days of extreme heat. Not including today when the temperature reached 31.3 degrees.
Admin1 is rereading The Trawlerman by William Shaw.
An Unusual Occurrence
Tyrannosaurus Rex appears to have laid an egg from which a small human is hatching.
Meanwhile the sunshine on a cool and windy day gave us our best August solar panel output ever: 12.25kWh.
Admin1 is rereading Deadland by William Shaw. Admin2 is reading The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy; a community of transgender hijras in Delhi intersects with the everlasting conflict in Kashmir.
Eye Eye Skipper
A new visitor to our garden, the fluffy-bodied, beady-eyed, long-horned small skipper. Its caterpillars live on long grass so they have profited from No-mow May extending into June and July. And at last we had some proper rain today, but it didn’t register on our rain gauge due, no doubt, to the damn pigeons which have taken to sitting in it and probably using it as a toilet.
[update] and indeed they did. Here’s the evidence:
Cleaning it out added 5.4mm to our rainfall tally which is probably fair. Except that changing the batteries added another 5.4mm.
Admin1 is rereading A Book of Scars by William Shaw.
We had a Chinese banquet for supper and scored 11 on the GSQ, restoring our running average to exactly 10.
Too Hot!
The temperature topped out at 39.2 °C today; our hottest day ever recorded. It was too much even for the heat-hardy admin2 who came over all faint after walking the kids back from school at peak celsius.
Admini is rereading A Song from Dead Lips by William Shaw. Admin2 is rereading Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford.
When the Nights Are Blue
Happy birthday twins!
To celebrate, some low-down noctilucent clouds, the first of the year, and 13.397kWh on the solar panels, our third sunniest day ever, by 2 watts, what what!
Admin1 is reading Tragedy on the Branch Line by Edward Marston, which was a considerably cosier train ride than Bullet Train, soon to be a big film. Admin2 is reading Crow Court by Andy Charman, another crowdfunded debut, not so interesting.
Hello Summer Goodbye
Hottest day of the year so far: 28.6 °C. It soon cooled down by ten degrees and the days to come look more like autumn.
Admin1 is reading Running Out of Road by Cath Staincliffe, a breathlessly paced child abduction thriller. Admin2 is reading, for the first time and for a change of scene, Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome.
Catch the Sun
Contrails and shadows on altocumulus. Immediately afterwards a red kite flew overhead, but we missed the shot.
Admin1 is reading The Rising Tide by Patrick Easter. Admin2 is reading The Hiding Place by Simon Lelic.
Flower of the Day: Foxglove
We had 44.1 mm of rain last night, as much as we might get in a month, but today was all sunshine, fluffy clouds and happy buzzing bees.
Admin2 started reading The Killing Song by Lesley McEvoy but didn’t enjoy it and is now rereading Joe Country by Mick Herron.
Cloud of the Day: Undulatus
The sun is wrapped up in a thick puffy quilt to keep warm.
Admin2 is reading The Rising Tide by Patrick Easter; an eighteenth-century river policeman investigates a murder and meets Prime Minister Pitt.
We scored 9 on the GSQ. None of our guesses worked out so the only points we got were for things we actually knew.
Rainy Days and Mondays
27.6 mm. We were going to get up for the lunar eclipse at 3am, but under the circumstances didn’t bother.
Admin1 is rereading Real Tigers by Mick Herron. Admin2 is reading A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel. Rocket science!
In the Empty City
City Square, the would-be bustling hub of Leeds, at prime shopping time and the place is deserted apart from some trees and the Black Prince.
Admin1 is rereading Dead Lions by Mick Herron. Admin2 is reading The Dark by Emma Haughton, a juvenile mystery/romance, wasted on the locked room/powder keg setting of an Antarctic research station in winter.
Today was the warmest day this year: 23.2 °C.
The next day was cloudy and cool. We ate pork, veg and rice with the newlyweds and scored 11 on the GSQ after a lot of guesswork and bet-hedging.
Cumulus, Contrails and Communication Cables
On the sunniest day of the year so far (11.230kWh) Admin1 is reading The Darkest Evening by Ann Cleeves. Admin2 is reading The Stone Chamber by Kate Ellis; a Devonshire crime tease.
Good Friday
A nice warm day and a red sky @ night.
Happy Easter, Passover, Ramadan and Vaisakhi!
Admin1 is reading Dead Man’s Lane by Kate Ellis. Admin2 is reading The Raphael Affair by Iain Pears which was ho hum.
Hooray Hooray It’s a Halo Halo Day!
A sundog in the morning…
…and a halo in the afternoon.
Followed by buckets of rain.
Admin1 is rereading Cut Short by Leigh Russell. Admin2 is reading The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard, a gripping novel in which the perpetrator of a string of unsolved murders is reading a true-crime book written by a survivor of his depredations.
Mushroom Cloud
Ooh er! Saw this shape in the sky and couldn’t resist.
Admin1 is reading Survivor’s Guilt by Michael Wood, in which enough tears are shed to float the Titanic. An awful book, a histrionic soap opera with a terrible plot.
Admin2 is reading You Don’t Know Me by Imran Mahmood, a convincing piece of cultural appropriation from a fifty-something Pakistani barrister writing in the first-person voice of a London teenager of Nigerian descent.
Despite the clouds and rain and sudden burst of hail it was the sunniest day of the years so far: 8.449kWh