Funny you should mention, I was just thinking of doing exactly that. There are many people to visit on that side of the pond.
Oh - posh - you ain’t seen nothin’ till you’ve seen kudzu!!!
Exactly what I’m worried about. I think we’re getting southern weather here. I’d like to skip the southern vines.
When the heat gets me down, I check the weather in Barrow, Alaska. While it may be mid ninties here in the north east, it’s in the thirties to fourties there . . . cold, rainy, or snow showers. Reading the forcast on weather.com usually makes me mentally cooler. It’s freezing somewhere in the United States (even if it’s not continental)!
I am sorry to hear so many people are suffering with the heat. Keep cool, guys!
well, guess what? The %^&(^%&^% air conditioner compressor is frozen up again!
They came and recharged it last week, and “suggested” we might need a new compressor (I have no idea how old this one is, I’ve only had the house 7 years, but from the looks of it, it could be over 20 years old), but the service person thought the charge would hold it for a while.
It didn’t.
And they can’t get here until tomorrow.
And it’s not going to cool off tonight.
AND Tom will be out of town tomorrow, so I’m going to have to come home from work to let the service person in.
I may sleep in the basement.
Yeah, it’s bad. Almost hit 80 at my house yesterday.
Seriously, tho, my son had his first day of surf-camp today in Pacifica, which is so foggy that they have a fog festival, and it was clear. It’s over 100 outside the office where I sit, but it will be cooler at my home, closer to the water.
It’s earthquake-tsunami-Al Gore’s right day.
I’m afraid that the sea temperature here never rises above 18°C, though my wife has been in there every day for the last three days! We’ve had 25°C+ for three or four days in a row which is rare around here. That’s because we get a sea-breeze most afternoons, unless there’s a significant surface wind from the south or east to prevent the sea-breeze circulation from setting up. We get variable weather in summer but if you were ever to visit north Cornwall you’d be bowled over. I’d even buy your first pint of Doom Bar, though I have the impression (possibly completely unjustified) that you may not be a warm English beer man…
Well, you know where I am! 
Beautiful picture Stevie!
It’s actually getting hotter and hotter every part of this planet. I came form Ireland with a nice suntan, were we supposed to be back as pale as a sheet. Twice in Scotland more the same, I even got sunburnt at an open air agricultural show at Argyll once. I know how lovely mild weather can be but just think of those typicallly hot areas. Temperature increasing will have a dramatical effect for sure with growing desertic areas.
Taken from Google Earth:
I couldn’t find a similar picture; however it isn’t hard to think that we’d see much more green colour 3 o 4 decades back in time.
The link for Google earth:
http://google-earth.softonic.com/file.phtml?&id_file=41959&action=view&view=downloads
The button ‘descargar’ in the green box downloads Google Earth safely into your PC at no cost, but anyway, if you just google ‘google earth’ you’ll find more links.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that the Earth is warming up any longer. The only arguments that remain are if/how much human activity is responsible for the increase in temperature. The word here is officially that we have been warming up consistantly for the last nine years, except for spring 2002 and 2004. This past winter and spring were the warmest for us here on record. This summer is not looking like we will get any relief. Tornados a couple hundred miles north of me last night.
One of the wierder things that I saw on tv was an explanation of how they are determining that we are warming up. We are not setting many records for daytime highs, so why would they say we are heating up? Turns out it is that our night-time lows are not as low as they used to be. We are not cooling off at night. Meteorologists don’t track temperatures from day-time high to day-time high, but the by the difference between the high and low within one day. This was a new concept to me.
In a way, I am glad to have been born when I was. At least I have known what the planet was like before it started to die. If I had had children, they would not have known the world as it was when I was young - cleaner with less people, more wildlife, rainforests and coral reefs still pristine, etc. Those who follow will never really know how it used to be, so they probably will never really appreciate what has been lost.
djm
No, but then again we never really knew what the world was like when our great grandparents, grandparents and even our own parents were growing up. Each generation over the past 150 years has seen enormous changes during their lifetimes with improvements on one level and deterioration on others. Isn’t that the nature of life as we know it?
Anyhow, while I don’t doubt the world’s warming up and human activity causing it I am not sure how the present weather relates to that. It hasn’t been as warm in Ireland for at least ten years and last years summer temperatures in Clare never rose above 22 Celsius and only reached that high on a handful of days. So in that sense there’s not really an established pattern.
That said, the past few evenings we went out to Spanish Point to float about in the Ocean and it was just lovely (wearing the wetsuit mind you, watertemp here rarely gets over 16 and that only by the end of summer, there’s the gulfstream for you). Something I didn’t do since last year a dolphin came up to me , headbutted me off the bodyboard I was floating on and took it off to play with. While it was interesting and was hilarious to all who saw it happen, these are big wild animals and it was pretty scary having one pushing you around (she whacked a German tourist into hospital when he refused to submit his camera to her, she apparently liked things to play with).
I’m not an expert by any means on climate change. One of the things that has been predicted is a cooling, possibly even a failing, of the Gulf stream, which would lead to worse winters in Europe and cooler summers. At this point, my understanding is that we won’t see a constant trend in the changes, but that we are more likely to see more extremes, wild swings in the weather back and forth.
It sounds like your dolphin friend is well habituated to humans. I have read of several incidents where they just get too rough in their play, even with trainers who have worked with them for years. They are big animals who love the rough and tumble. Best viewed from the safety of a boat. 
djm
Yeah, they are expecting the gulfstream to stop at some point so we’ll get your kind of winter’s here.
here’s the dolphin incident, first she started circling me, put her head on the board made eye contact and funny noises. Then she pushed me away and took off with the board, followed by my son who was in stitches.
Some of those west coast dolphins can be extremely narrow minded.
That’s an event I would only want to see from pictures. What an amazing thing! I’m sure others wish it had happened to them. I wish only the best to dolphins, but as you say, they are wild animals and big. I’m sort of surprised she knew that the board was not part of you, that she could take it away. But maybe she’s been around there alot and learned about humans. Are the dolphins there all the time? Were you aware of them in the water this year? I would be scared to go back in even though the dolphin hadn’t hurt me. I’m not very adventurous 
. Your son will have some good stories to tell someday—“I remember the time my dad and I …”.
well - new air compressor will be installed at 4:30 this afternoon. It was TOO bad last night. We have a whole house / attic fan, so we at least had air (although it was above 70F) moving in the house.
WHY do these things always happen on the hottest day of the year?
(I know, I know, my dad was a heating and air conditioning contractor for many years…)
Well, we got 31°C in Bude today which is only 1.5 degrees below Bude’s all-time high. It may seem modest to some out there but it’s big stuff to us. We’re so unaccustomed to this sort of thing that the only “air-conditioning” I can resort to is to throw off the 13.5 tog duvet, rendering myself into a not-pretty sight for my wife who has to get up before I do.
Hi Steve
Reached 33 in sunny Larkhall. 
Good for my diet - must have sweated off pounds. a nice pint of Doom Bar would be lovely right now.
David
One good thing about the heat is that it really brings out the fireflies. I had quite a show last night before the rain came through. I like that they have such a sharp, clear, clean light, not just some hazy bit of fuzziness. I wonder if there’s any luck associated with finding them. I need some help with the lotto.
djm
No record temperatures here at the moment although, after an unusually cold May and June it’s setled into a pleasantly mild winter. Maximum day temperatures range from 16 to 24 C and it might drop to 8 at night, but usually only about 10.
Last December we had a record temperature for Wollongong—45 degrees C which I think would be 113 F. Wollongong is very humid, especially in summer, but that day was only about 70% fortunately.