Clouds form over islands

 

It was noticeable approaching Orkney, that in an otherwise cloudless sky, convection cumulus was forming over the islands. My guess is the differential heating of land and sea by the sun. Earth has a lower albedo and a lower specific heat capacity so should get warmer. The vapour later maritime air would get forced up by convection over the islands as a result and condense to form cumulus.

Up to 175kW

 

I've been interested in how quickly you can charge an electric car. This station was claiming up to 175kW. I looked up electric car battery capacities. This source suggests between 60 and 120kWh. Assuming all could be charged at the full rate, and that probably is a big assumption, then it would be between 20 and 40 minutes here.

Jupiter again

Jupiter is back in my evening skies. Two years ago it was prominent in September. Last year it was October. Each year it slips by a month. It has taken the Earth a year and a month to catch up with Jupiter again. Obviously in the mean time, Jupiter has also been moving along its orbit. One month forward every year. There are 12 months in an Earth-year so after 12 years, Jupiter would be back to the same place. The orbit of Jupiter round the Sun must be roughly 12 Earth-years.

Even higher pressure

The new high pressure is even higher than the last one. This needs recording as it may be set to drop quickly over the weekend. 

End of coal

Last time we drove past it was still burning coal to generate electricity but that stopped last month at Ratcliffe-on-Soar. That means no more coal burning to generate electricity in the UK.

Waves taller than a church

  During Storm Ashley we found a link to this site. It gives the live data from the buoys in the Atlantic used to feed weather information to the Irish Met Office. At the time, buoy M6 was recording waves 20m high. That's taller than our church tower!

Anti-cyclonic gloom...

... was a phrase used by Tomasz Schafernaker to describe the weather in the UK under a continent-wide high pressure. It's about as high as I've seen my barometer go and is a good time to calibrate them against a known reading. Mine is really close to the BBC reading for Carlisle so that will do.

The conditions won't be doing much for renewable energy. No sunshine, no wind and no waves!