A sticky night

Hot and sticky and the most uncomfortable night for many a long day - or night!  It has seemed a little less clammy today although still a bit sticky.  It has been cloudy, thin in patches, and there is a slight haze obscuring distant views.  I was unable to see the sea this afternoon when walking the dog - and there are dark black clouds over the Downs to the north of us as I type.  According to the weather forecast in the local paper, there is a 90% chance of rain today, the weather system moving down across the country from somewhere near Iceland.

We are also on alert for tropical storm Bertha to hit us on Sunday when we could see three-quarters of the average rainfall for August fall in just one day. A Met Office spokeswoman is quoted as saying: “The worst case we are looking at on Sunday is 60mph gusts of winds and 50mm of rain."   That's two inches or thereabouts.  Apparently the average total rainfall in August is 69mm.  

There was rain during the night earlier this week, and heavy thunderstorms about a week or ten days ago, but so far this really has been a good summer weatherwise.  It has been pleasantly warm most of the time, occasionally hot but not too often, and there has been not a lot of rain to spoil daytime activities.  Or so it seems to me.

Mind you, I am notorious for not being able to remember whether last summer was good or bad.  I do recall that last winter was very, very wet with a lot of flooding but not much snow.  In fact, I'm not at all sure that we had any snow.   There are just two years I remember for the weather: 1976 was a very long, dry summer with water rationing (using self-discipline) and standpipes.  I remember that because that was the year my daughter was born.  The other year I remember is 1987 when we had a "hurricane" in October.  Many of the fine beech trees in Stanmer Wood were blown down; in fact, the upturned stumps and roots and some of the decaying tree trunks are still there to be seen.

You might gather from all this that there is nothing much going on.  Don't be fooled - there is plenty to occupy me and my mind but none of it is suitable for disclosure in the public domain.