Lee Jordan .org.uk

These photos were taken a short while ago, just after a storm had started to clear away, on the brink of sunset within 10 minutes the sky was almost pitch black as lightning returned roughly 10 miles away.

The view from the front and back of our house as the sky changed colour by the second at the end of one of the hotest days of the year for us. And with it perhaps just about signalling the start of the Autumn, the summer just flew by and wow August was certainly a month for weather.

Just thought I’d add in from MetCheck.com as a flash warning appeared this afternoon. Reel Feel 28^oc for us tonight around 9pm, it’s gonna be a sticky night, if fact it’s very humid right now, summer came back for a week!

[edit] : Lightning has knocked most train signals in Coventry to stay on red.

Even though I have been following extreme weather for the past few weeks and noting the impact of geomagnetic storms, I’m shocked as to the amount of destruction Katrina brought to the point where I couldn’t watch the news. Katrina whipped up to Cat5 in a matter of hours just days after the solar flares and related space storms.

“In New Orleans, water began rising in the streets Tuesday morning, swamping an estimated 80 percent of the city and prompting the evacuation of hotels and hospitals. The water was also rising perilously inside New Orleans’ Superdome, and Blanco said the tens of thousands of people now huddled there and other shelters would have to be evacuated as well.” Source

And the quotes coming from people on the ground means that this is gonna be one of the worst weather events of the year.

Even so :

“Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is the result of global warming.

But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with Atlantic Ocean temperatures in cycles that take several decades. The recent onslaught “is very much natural,” Source

Ah man this whole thing sucks big time, only now are details readily becoming availible, our understanding is shifting daily. A typical headline on this day on this topic : “Even redheads who avoid sun may be vulnerable to skin cancer”. Not only is is hard enough being hit by it, but it’s twice as hard when imagined it might not have been avoidable and not so obvious. I was one of the sensible ones, fully rejecting any blame aportioned to myself, a life smothered in sunscreen, fate all along, welcome to my sense of irony.

“Both UVA and UVB light caused a photochemical reaction with the redheads’ pigment, called pheo-melanin … People with red hair may get cancer from over-exposure to the sun even if they do not burn, according to new research in the United States” Source

Katrina slams into oil price as it is branded one of the most powerful storms to hit the US, president Bush has already declared Emergency, ahead of schedule it looks to be a bad one. Those who are sitting out the storm in New Orleans are gathered in one place known as the Superdome, which has already been damaged. A freak Tornado wrecks Finnish Masters in Europe

Freak Tornado at the Finnish Masters

Further details and images found by clicking the title of this post.

I found this podcast from the comfort in sound Livejournal community : illumination Audio, really great podcast playing mainly podsafe music with minimal chat. Just listening to show #21 and The Innocence Mission get a track featured, this after Glastonburypodcasting played a track from the band too.

Robyn over at diskobox.net had introduced me to the wonderfully strange vocals of the bands lead singer, via a CD sent at Christmas. I think if marooned on a desert island (made of deserts of course) Robyn would be in a select group of people that would make being stranded not so bad.

It certainly is a small podo/blogosphere!

Hurricane Katrina, the 11th (!!!) storm of the Atlantic hurricane season has become a category 5 storm as many forecast it would die down, it intensifies right on course after 3 major hits from the sun. As Katrina cuts oil output in the Gulf of Mexico and swings towards New Orleans. Now already we have people jumping on the global warming bandwagon, proclaiming this (normal event) evidence of (extraordinary and) unstoppable Climate Change .. I would agree so far as to say that to stop climate change would be a real calamity, to even think we can stop something (we didn’t start) is a real leap of imagination, if we can think we can stop climate change then we should be able to consider something as obivious as the Sun-Earth Connection.

Guys if you are reading this, welcome to a new way of thinking about how the sun affects life on earth. Half a million loose power in California on the same scale as seen in Jan and March of 2001 at a peak of solar activity. The summer shakes are back : “Two Quakes Hit Northern California”. South Africa also hit by power cuts. Our office power just spiked. Storms worldwide are getting stronger, causing more damage, this is not global warming, a pattern of events right around the world happen at the same time and just so happen to come at a time when the planet is being hit by billions of tons of stardust, which is essentialy what we are made from?

“The blackouts began after the California Independent System Operator, which operates the electric grid in California, declared a Stage Three transmission emergency.” Source

As new research shows Earth’s iron core almost has a rev counter, sometimes speeding up sometimes slowing down, Source, how much longer can we honestly think we kicked off a series of unstoppable events? Time to stop skirting round the issue, this is real and we should talk openly about how these events are more aligned with solar activity than human activity.

Hail halts traffic in areas that were forecast to be sunny, which has people asking, well where did that come from. Northen Lights hit New York, which is rare and makes me so envious right now and this is still flare 1 of 4. I’m not drawing a strong connection with the hail and the earthquake to hit England, as we have had a low pressure system over us even before the solar flares, but the flare’s can intensify already existing activity as Florida and perhaps a couple of other states will no doubt soon witness. It did get very windy in the Midlands about 16:40. Click the title of this post to get the quotes.

Two coronal mass ejections hit Earth’s magnetic field on August 24th, sparking a severe geomagnetic storm, perhaps the effects are global

The National Geological Survey recorded the earthquake taking place just after 1530 BST on Wednesday. It later confirmed that the epicentre was about 50km (31 miles) south of Plymouth and that it measured 3.1 on the Richter scale. Kp Index ‘Off the Scale’; Warnings Sent Out and 4th M-Class Flare. In fact, we’ve only observed this intense level of coupling a handful of times over the past 10 years. Watchout for unusual quake activity, freak weather, power outages, downed planes … you name it.