Glidemet

Today was a good example of the fickleness of the easterly stratus. Earlier this week broadcast media forecasts were talking of sunny weather today, well, there was precious little of that about! Some places might have cleared enough for flying, but in many easterly stratus was simply replaced by almost equally low cloud from the west. A few places simply had fog—-on the HRV, banks of fog pooled against the South Downs were clearly visible poking out from beneath the general cloud.

Tomorrow (Thursday) will see westerly frontal cloud covering much of the forecast area, with the base in many places likely down to 1,000 ft but generally more towards 2,000. There’ll be the odd bit of rain in Wales. Friday sees a second, this time more active, line of frontal cloud crossing—-similar cloud bases, more rain for many.

Saturday still looks good for Welsh wave with a good temperature and wind profile. The only issue is the amounts of cloud present—-it will likely be one of those days where the descending limbs of waves dissapate cloud, but otherwise it’ll be pretty cloudy in the west, brighter elsewhere. Sunday still looks pretty dismal, probably turning out much the same as tomorrow or Friday will.

(I’ve also added a little more to the “afterglow and sunset” article below—-ice crystals alone couldn’t be responsible for the colours seen on Monday evening, which were almost certainly due to volcanic ash.)

In Other News—Heathrow third runway consultation
Everyone knows about the moves afoot to force the carriage of Mode S transponders. This is likely due to the expected increase in commercial air traffic in the next decade or two. One of the key enablers of the extra traffic is going to be Heathrow’s third runway. If you have an opinion on whether or not it should be built, you have one week left to respond to the public consultation.

As usual with any consultation, only responses that show an understanding and consideration of the issues will carry weight. Read the documents before responding. You might want to bear in mind some of the recent research demonstrating just how much impact the noise has locally. There’s also the fact that while airliners contribute only a small amount of Britain’s CO2 emissions, it’s the only source that’s rapidly growing while all others are declining.

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