Harry Hayfield


  • Thank you very much for that Kevin, I will translate that into a spreadsheet so I can do as much as I can in my weakened internet circumstances. This is the thermometer that I have bought https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-garden-digital-thermometer/p/0298564 and as you can see it has a shade above it (and it will be placed on a north facing…[Read more]

  • Llanrhystud is written in the Welsh language and translates as “Church of” (llan) “St. Rhystud” who was the Bishop of Carleon-on-Usk in Monmouthshire and an immigrant from Letavia. The house that we are moving to has the most perfect north facing wall, a garden (with lots of open spaces) for the rain guage and having bought a wind guage as well,…[Read more]

  • That might surprise you to know this but that is NOT an official UK weather authority map. That is a map produced by the WXcharts.eu website and is actually several number of times better than anything the Met Office can produce and incidentally, their maps of Norway are way better than anything that Norway can produce either.

    I shall certainly…[Read more]

  • And the reason for that is a jet stream that’s been taking a massive holiday for instead of crossing the Atlantic as it usually does, it’s been taking (perhaps a well earned rest) in Iceland and Greenland for the […]

    • Thanks for your post Harry. I just love the weather maps your government produces. Such clearly drawn and labelled isobars! And great collaboration between the surface map and the radar overlay! I shared your post with a friend of mine over in Norway, esp. since I believe your map does show a bit of the Scandanavian coast. I am trying to get him to join us here, but that seems so difficult as all my “recruiting” efforts to get more on Weather Together have not been very successful. Keep posting those great maps, Harry and keep us updated on the weather “across the pond”. Thanks!

      • That might surprise you to know this but that is NOT an official UK weather authority map. That is a map produced by the WXcharts.eu website and is actually several number of times better than anything the Met Office can produce and incidentally, their maps of Norway are way better than anything that Norway can produce either.

        I shall certainly try my best which is why I have bought in recent weeks a digital / analogue max / min thermometer, a rain guage and a anemometer in order to make my own observations when we move home on Monday to the village of Llanrhystud (52° 18′ 21.8″ North, 4° 8′ 35.77″ West at an altitude of 20m ASL) however this does have one small drawback and that is I have no idea what the internet signal is like. I am hoping to find out before Monday, but in case I don’t, I will e-mail Nathan my new postal address before I move, so that he can send me a letter and we can keep in touch that way)

        • Thanks Harry for your great reply update. Good luck in your move to Llanrhystud (what language is that BTW?) and I hope I can help you set up your weather records. I am working with Nathan on that. Amazing about the source of the maps not being from the government! I will have to tell my Norwegian friend about that website!! He may not know about it. Good luck with your future internet signal, hope it comes in for you! Stay in touch here on WT if at all possible. Thanks so much!

          • Llanrhystud is written in the Welsh language and translates as “Church of” (llan) “St. Rhystud” who was the Bishop of Carleon-on-Usk in Monmouthshire and an immigrant from Letavia. The house that we are moving to has the most perfect north facing wall, a garden (with lots of open spaces) for the rain guage and having bought a wind guage as well, I am all set up

    • Thank you very much for that Kevin, I will translate that into a spreadsheet so I can do as much as I can in my weakened internet circumstances. This is the thermometer that I have bought https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-garden-digital-thermometer/p/0298564 and as you can see it has a shade above it (and it will be placed on a north facing fence), the rain guage is placed in a location that is in the open and away from trees and the wind guage will be taken at arm’s height.

      The BBC have a recommendation of recording the maximum and minimum temperatures as well as the day’s rainfall at 0600 every morning (which is a little unlikely for me) so I will try for 0900 each morning starting on July 1st

    • So good to hear from you Harry, I presume at your new location. The thermometer looks really nice – nice digital readout at the bottom, otherwise the unit looks much like the old Taylor max min (sixes) thermometer many of my fellow local observers and I used many years ago. It had mercury in the tubes and you reset the max min with a magnet. We didn’t have any sort of digital readout on it back then. I will try and dig up a picture of it and share it with you.

      Morning rain gauge reading daily will suit most hydrologic needs most likely. It will be interesting to compare your readings with nearby “official” observing locations in a few months or so.

      Good luck with your new station and look forward to seeing your observations from it coming soon I hope. Thanks for posting the information and stay in touch!
      Thanks,
      Kevin

    • The thermometer is going to be hung in an alleyway that the house has (which is in shade 24/7) and therefore will record the actual temperature, however I cannot remember what height it needs to be. As I have said the rain guage in a place where nothing can drip into it and the wind guage (which needs a new battery already) will be hand held at the time of the recording of the temperatures.

      Although I said that I thought 0600 was a little unlikely, thanks to the thinness of the curtains in the bedrooms, I woke up at 0530 on the day after we moved and therefore seem to have now defaulted from a 0700 – 0800 wake up / 2230 – 2330 bedtime to a 0500 – 0600 wake up and a 2200 – 2230 bedtime, whether that will be the case in July (or indeed the winter months) I cannot say.

      • Hi Harry! Here is the text from the following link, in case you can’t open it for reasons you found a few days ago… I can vouch for this source, I know the founder and head of “Weatherworks” very well – Mike Mogil of Naples FL, but who used to live up here in this part of Maryland.

        https://www.weatherworksinc.com/temperature-measurement
        Air temperature is the most widely measured quantity in the atmosphere according to the National Weather Service. People plan their lives around the temperature, from picking out their clothes to planning daily activities. With temperature being so important, I think it’s necessary to understand how to properly measure it. I think you would be surprised at how many people, including professional meteorologists, don’t quite follow the general guidelines laid out by the National Weather Service.

        The following directions apply to all types of thermometers, from classic mercury thermometers to new-age digital temperature sensors.

        1. Place the thermometer 5 feet above the ground (+/- 1 ft.). A thermometer too low will pick up excess heat from the ground and a thermometer too high will likely have too cool of a temperature due to natural cooling aloft. 5 ft. is just right.

        2. The thermometer must be placed in the shade. If you put your thermometer in full sunlight, direct radiation from the sun is going to result in a temperature higher than what it should be.

        3. Have good air flow for your thermometer. This keeps air circulating around the thermometer, maintaining a balance with the surrounding environment. Therefore, it is important to make sure there are no obstructions blocking your thermometer such as trees or buildings. The more open, the better.

        4. Place the thermometer over a grassy or dirt surface. Concrete and pavement attract much more heat than grass. That is why cities are often warmer compared to suburbs. It is recommended to keep the thermometer at least 100 ft. from any paved or concrete surfaces to prevent an erroneously high temperature measurement.

        5. Keep the thermometer covered. When precipitation falls, you do not want your thermometer to get wet as that could permanently damage it. A Stevenson screen is a great place to store thermometers and other instruments as they provide cover as well as adequate ventilation. If you can’t get one, a simple solar radiation shield is adequate.

        And that’s it. Now you are all temperature measuring experts so let’s get out there and start taking some readings!

        Kevin back again with a closing comment – sounds like you have your time schedule for daily thermometer reading. Good luck!

    • Thank you very much for that. I will admit I am surprised that the instruction drilled into us as children “Always face a thermometer on a north facing surface” has been dumped, presumably of course if you have a Stevenson screen that doesn’t really come into it.

      As you know my broadband at the moment doesn’t like pictures so I can’t show you where my thermometer is being located, but I can try and give you an indication. Next to our house, is an alleyway, that is surrounded by walls on both sides and a door onto a south facing street. This means that throughout the whole day no sun fills that alleyway at all, and it is there that I have placed the thermometer (case in point, today’s maximum according to it was 17.1°C (comparable to the 18°C recorded by the internet in Aberaeron) despite being on the ground (as I cannot find a hook or a nail to hang it on five feet off the ground)

    • Hi Harry! It is still preferred to have your thermometer in a shield facing north, but the most important thing to have it sheltered, even when it stays in full shade, as radiation still comes down on the unsheltered thermometer.

      I don’t know how much, if any, you can see of this web page, but this is the link to the Taylor “sixes” style thermometer I was telling you about, with a magnet reset. It is being sold out of company “katom” which is located in the U.S.

      https://www.katom.com/383-5458.html

      I have been discussing your new station with my friend Ray Muller, who has an intense interest and knowledge of personal weather stations and really most all things weather. He was curious to know the details of exactly what kind of rain gauge and anemometer you have now – perhaps a website source for the particular instruments you have recently purchased if you can’t provide pictures. Ray has email but cannot access Weather Together. Do you have an email address you could send me? Ray might like to drop you an email if possible to express his opinions and information about your current weather station setup. BTW, right now I am watching a horse race from over in England, with the Queen in attendance- the Royal Ascot, the Group One Diamond Jubilee Stakes from the Ascot Racecourse in Ascot, England. Looks like a fine pleasant comfortable day at the racetrack today.

      Thanks,
      Kevin

  • This evening the United Kingdom is starting to recover from a severe blast of Siberian winds that have made the average temperature fall as much as 14°C (from Friday’s maximum of 15°C in London, to today’s m […]

  • And there is the evidence for that claim. When the Beast arrived on Monday I started noting the temperature (in °F) and as you can see on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the trend was clear, but last […]

  • This is a snapshot of the UK’s rain / snow radar taken earlier this evening and in a time when Cardiff is under an extreme snow alert, with vast chunks of the South Wales valleys under a snow watch this is the […]

  • Ladies and Gentlemen, pray be upstanding for the arrival of Miss Emma Storm

    Miss Storm is wearing a green ensemble this evening and as she enters the room (British maritime waters) that green ensemble will […]

  • Pictures taken over the last 24 hours across the United Kingdom and Europe showing the effect these easterly winds have having, and even here on the west coast of the UK the impact is being felt. The average […]

  • If you think that’s bad Mark, there is a forecast for a -15°C (6°F) windchill on Thursday evening which is the lowest ever recorded for this area.

  • The following post is sponsored by “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

    We Britons are a calm group of people who don’t let major things upset us. We vote to leave the European Union sending the European […]

    • I know that Agata is way the heck out in Siberia, but seeing -51C on that map for their daytime high is still disturbing to someone like me who gets cold when the temperature is +5C!

    • If you think that’s bad Mark, there is a forecast for a -15°C (6°F) windchill on Thursday evening which is the lowest ever recorded for this area.

  • You get a bad cold!

    Okay, so I’m not going to win any major comedy awards with that one, but it is the honest truth. On February 11th 2018, an SSW (Sudden Stratospheric Warning) event happened which, […]

  • Sea Foam is, as you state, moderately rare in the UK, but if the wind blowing is in the same relative direction as the sea (from the west on the west coast and from the east on the east coast) then yes, you can get it.

  • This is a time lapse film showing the first stages of the snow event in Ceredigion on February 6th 2018

  • The fifth named storm of the winter 2017 – 2018 season was, in part, formed by the arctic blast that has been hitting America of late (and today produced snow in Florida). With a temperature range of almost […]

    • Wow, that’s an extremely impressive storm! How often do you get sea foam like that?

      • Sea Foam is, as you state, moderately rare in the UK, but if the wind blowing is in the same relative direction as the sea (from the west on the west coast and from the east on the east coast) then yes, you can get it.

  • I am so glad that someone was able to get a White Christmas this year, our last was in 2010 (and before that 1995) so as you can see ours are even less frequent than yours

  • It has been said in the past that we Brits have a very unique way of dealing with things going wrong, take for instance the forecast for Christmas which is suggesting that all the dreams and hopes for a White […]

    • Your first video was from the Fox station in Phoenix. I got to visit that station and meet some of the meteorologists there a few years back. Thanks for finding these!

  • I’ve just had a snow day

    Now, snow days in the American sense don’t actually exist in the United Kingdom although that said several councils have already started to alert families via local and social media […]

  • but, my word, is the rest of the UK feeling the after effects of it.

    At its deepest, Storm Caroline was pummelling the Northern Isles of Scotland with helicopters, normally used in coastguard operations […]

  • and that is putting it mildly. At the moment everything is as you would expect for an early December day, there’s a bit of cloud everywhere but generally speaking it’s a non descript sort of day allowing […]

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