British Winters
 

I hope that the weather pundits who forecast that we are in for a number
of years of Winters like this one are wrong. I don't know how badly
others have been affected but my Leeks, brussel sprouts and purple
sprouting broccoli have been killed by it, the only survivors in the
vegetables has been the spring cabbage. How many of my numerous flowers
in pots have survived it is too early to tell.
--
Residing on low ground in North Staffordshire

British Winters
 

"Moonraker" wrote in message
...
I hope that the weather pundits who forecast that we are in for a number of
years of Winters like this one are wrong. I don't know how badly others
have been affected but my Leeks, brussel sprouts and purple sprouting
broccoli have been killed by it, the only survivors in the vegetables has
been the spring cabbage. How many of my numerous flowers in pots have
survived it is too early to tell.
--
Residing on low ground in North Staffordshire


Even stuff in the greenhouse has taken a battering.

HOWEVER, there are Crocus up and in flower in the garden :-)

Mike



--

....................................
Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out alive
....................................

British Winters
 

"Moonraker" wrote in message
...
I hope that the weather pundits who forecast that we are in for a number of
years of Winters like this one are wrong. I don't know how badly others
have been affected but my Leeks, brussel sprouts and purple sprouting
broccoli have been killed by it, the only survivors in the vegetables has
been the spring cabbage. How many of my numerous flowers in pots have
survived it is too early to tell.
--
My flat leaved & curly parsley are well deceased from the minus temps in
December. It got to -15c here and my toilet froze, which was not a happy
experience, I can tell you.. It's not an outside toilet, btw.
It's years since the temps went so low. Last time it did my flannel froze
to my bath overnight.

British Winters
 

Christina Websell wrote:

My flat leaved & curly parsley are well deceased from the minus temps in
December.

Mine looked pretty sad for a while, but a quick trim, and it soon
perked up. There should be enough to sprinkle some on the fish
for tonight's meal.

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK


Have dancing shoes, will ceilidh.

British Winters
 

Moonraker wrote in -
september.org:

I hope that the weather pundits who forecast that we are in for a number
of years of Winters like this one are wrong. I don't know how badly
others have been affected but my Leeks, brussel sprouts and purple
sprouting broccoli have been killed by it, the only survivors in the
vegetables has been the spring cabbage. How many of my numerous flowers
in pots have survived it is too early to tell.

Is it the weather pundits?
Sir Patrick Moore predicted this and said also that it may last for 5 or 6
years due mostly to sunspots.(a bit like floaters in the eye)

Goodness me I have had the same failures as you have had. And some more.

It's a thing we have to live with, sadly. And it may be that Sir PM is
wrong and it is the weather pundits who are wrong also. We simply do not
know, but I know who I am putting my money on!

It is really frustrating, isn't it.

Baz

British Winters
 

"Chris J Dixon" wrote in message
...
Christina Websell wrote:

My flat leaved & curly parsley are well deceased from the minus temps in
December.

Mine looked pretty sad for a while, but a quick trim, and it soon
perked up. There should be enough to sprinkle some on the fish
for tonight's meal.

Lucky-- mine did not withstand the -10 to -15c temps I had for most of
December.
There is nothing to trim.

Hi Moonraker, Well, I know everyone has a theory about weather patterns but try this for size ! One of my golfing partners down here in Cornwall works on a research ship out of Falmouth, monitoring amonst other things, the gulf stream flow. They sadly have found that the gulf stream has infact reduced by 20% in volume in the last 5 years !!
The reason being, according to thier findings is as follows. The warm water flows over the Atlantic, on the surface. cooling slowly as it travels North East. It passes western UK and on up into the northern Atlantic. As it cools, it gets increasingly heavier and ultimately sinks and then travels back along the sea floor back to the Gulf of Mexico, thus completing what they call the North Atlantic conveyer system.
Now here is the problem, with all the ice melt from the northern ice sheets and with this huge volume of fresh water being added to also by vast rivers now flowing out of northern land masses, the salt water is actually being diluted and the effect of this is that it prohibits the cooling gulf water from sinking and its this thats actually cutting off this system !!
The million dollar question is, at what point does the flow stop completely ?? the answer is, THEY ARE NOT SURE but its thier opinion that we are very close ??? What does this mean, well, for UK, it means, Montreal type winters almost immedeately. Snow for 6 months every winter and upto 3 miles of sea ice not being uncommon !!
This phenomenon has happened once before, where this system shut down and then, it took 300 years for this gulf stream to activate again !!
So, why are we not being given this information by the goverment, well, if you think about it, its fairly obvious why ??
Lets hope this is not going to happen, as you can see, the effect on the country as a whole in general and to both agriculture and horticulture would be to say the least catastrophic but having grown plants down here in Cornwall for the last 30 years, with many of those years being virtually frost free, we all said, the first bad winter was a fluke, the second, an unfortunate coincidence but three in a row !!!!!!!!!! Maybe my friends research is not as far fetched as I first thought ????????
Time will surely tell ?? Lannerman .

British Winters
 

On 05/02/2011 20:34, lannerman wrote:
Moonraker;912001 Wrote:
I hope that the weather pundits who forecast that we are in for a number

of years of Winters like this one are wrong. I don't know how badly
others have been affected but my Leeks, brussel sprouts and purple
sprouting broccoli have been killed by it, the only survivors in the
vegetables has been the spring cabbage. How many of my numerous flowers

in pots have survived it is too early to tell.
--
Residing on low ground in North Staffordshire

Lannerman .
SNIP




Thanks for that :Lannerman, that has really cheered me up!
--
Residing on low ground in North Staffordshire

Oh dear, Sir Patrick, you are past your sell-by date and have been conned by some climate denialist propaganda, which is very cleverly written.

The thermal variation due to solar radiation variations over the sunspot cycle is only worth about 0.1C, so saying cold winters are due to sunspots is ridiculous - the effect is small in comparison to the CO2 effect. And why should thermal variations from a solar radiation variation have a different specific, identifiable effect different from other, larger thermal variations? We are actually now past the solar minimum, so if he is right, why should cold winters continue?

Actually the recent cold spell in Britain seems to have been due to the arctic being unusually warm in the Autumn. Normally the Arctic gets high pressure over it in the winter, which keeps the cold in. But there has been unusual low pressure over the arctic this winter, which seems to have arisen because of the unusually low ice cover in the arctic in the autumn. This low pressure is allowing the cold to spill out, like leaving the fridge door open. In December, it spilled out over NW Europe. At the moment, it is spilling out over the NE USA. Meanwhile may northerly parts have been having an unusually mild winter, like last year when Vancouver didn't have enough snow for the winter olympics.

The above is part of the more respectable reasons for thinking there might be more cold winters for NW Europe in coming years. I have seen such predictions, but coming from more reliable climate modelling sources, and suggesting the effect would last till about mid-decade. But regional climatic effects are terribly hard to model, so I would not rely even on such a prediction, just take it into account.

This is a common misunderstanding. If you look at the difference in winter temperature between Montreal and London you will discover that it is about 17C different in January. Not all of this difference is due to the gulf stream. For example, Vancouver has a similar latitude to Montreal and London, but Vancouver doesn't have the gulf stream, and Vancouver is only about 1C cooler than London in January.

In fact only about 2C of London's winter warmth is due to the gulf stream. Most of the rest of the difference with Montreal is due to (1) not being continental location (2) being west of a large ocean with westerly prevailing winds (3) some specific topographic effects due to the location of mountain ranges in the northern hemisphere which affect the location of the jetstream.

The gulf stream is far more significant for northern Norway, where it is worth about 6C.