What's more current than the weather?

[Trilby]

Oooo! I like the 'lemon-green the vaporous morning drips'

It reminds me of Plath's line about the sea during rainstorm: "Where it pours bean-green over blue"

[Lamplighter]

Grav, you must have forgot again and left the frig door open.

[Trilby]

It's freezing.

We've given fall a miss and headed straight into winter.

[Sundae]

Parts of the UK are taking a battering at present.

80 flood warnings still in place, 300 homes flooded, hundreds more evacuated, road and rail links closed/ disrupted. Power cuts, school closures and even the closure of a blood-bank in Bristol.

We had squally showers here, but nothing much more than a lazy topic of conversation. Although it meant I go a lift home from the Doctors as it was squalling at the time

[Lamplighter]

PDX has had a long string of beautiful sunny days, but some rain is predicted for the weekend.

But getting outside just before sunrise tomorrow morning will give
us yet another nice array of bright stars and two planets...

[glatt]

38 when I climbed out of my tent this morning. Brr.

[Trilby]

Blustery out this morning, Pooh.


Happy Thursday!

[BigV]

Still shirt sleeve weather here, but we did get some rain, enough to justify turning the wipers on. The first in about three months. Very, very, very dry summer here.

[Trilby]

Originally Posted by BigV

Still shirt sleeve weather here, but we did get some rain, enough to justify turning the wipers on. The first in about three months. Very, very, very dry summer here.

Did the drought effect the Starbucks crop very much?

[BigV]

...

I do sometimes drink Starbucks, but for the most part, I grind and brew my own coffee. And I'm a four-season coffee drinker. Sometimes I get an iced coffee when it's really hot. It wasn't especially hot this summer, just arid. Parched. Dessicated. Mummified. Dried. De-watered. Dusty. Water, Water, nary-where and barely a drop to drink.

Which explains the coffee.

[Trilby]

The only thing I like at Starbucks is the salted caramel latte.

And this one kind of berry iced-tea...it's really good, too. but I'm not usually willing to pay five bucks for a cup of coffee. I only go there maybe three times a year.

[ZenGum]

We're moving well into spring now, so in the Outback (Thargomindah, Qld in particular) the forecast is for hot dry weather, smoke haze, strong winds, with a chance of fire elementals in the 4 to 6 hit dice range.



Okay technically that's a piddly little tornado (note the outdoor toilet or "dunny" on the right for scale) which is sucking up a pre-existing bushfire. I've seen things like this in bushfire footage fairly often. Without the fire we'd call it a willy-willy. With the fire, I don't know if it has a common name. Fire tornado? Firenado? Firespout? Fire devil? Firewilly?

[glatt]

willy willy, huh? We'd probably call that a dust devil.

Don't think we have a name for it when it's sucking on a fire.

[infinite monkey]

Fire fag?

[BigV]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

We're moving well into spring now, so in the Outback (Thargomindah, Qld in particular) the forecast is for hot dry weather, smoke haze, strong winds, with a chance of fire elementals in the 4 to 6 hit dice range.

Attachment 41351

Okay technically that's a piddly little tornado (note the outdoor toilet or "dunny" on the right for scale) which is sucking up a pre-existing bushfire. I've seen things like this in bushfire footage fairly often. Without the fire we'd call it a willy-willy. With the fire, I don't know if it has a common name. Fire tornado? Firenado? Firespout? Fire devil? Firewilly?

first of all, that is a great picture! very dramatic.

Originally Posted by glatt

willy willy, huh? We'd probably call that a dust devil.

Don't think we have a name for it when it's sucking on a fire.

"sucking on a fire"... I see atmospheric phenomena like this from time to time, (never on fire though) and I always think about where and how the flow is moving. this is how I see it and understand it.

When you take a bath, and you pull the plug from the drain, the water swirls and forms a cone, right? same thing's happening in a tornado or a hurricane or a firewilly. In the bath, there's a layer of heavy dense water above a layer of light less dense air. In their struggle to swap positions, the water swirls downward and leaves a tube through which the air may swirl upward.

That's exactly what we're seeing here. The hot air around the burning ground and brush is less dense than the cooler air layer above and it wants to rise as the cooler air wants to press downward. The easiest way to do this is to swirl and the fiery air can now flow up and away from the pressure of the layer above. Same thing in a tornado. Warm air near the ground, colder stormy air above, when they try to swap, they do so in a swirl, a tornado.

Most times, you can't see the funnel of air, unless there's something in it like dust or in this case, fire. Very cool picture!