Monday 11 June 2012

British Rain - Parked Clouds

I'm not going to complain about this 'ere weather we're having. I'm really not. There's no point anyway is there? It's not like anyone down here can actually do anything about it. And apart from the sideways stair rod variety that we saw when the poor Queen had to stand for hours watching boring boats float past her, most of the rain has been fairly harmless.

Like everything else in the States, the rain tends to be "big". Crackin' thunderstorms and large rain drops that have caused my basement to flood in the past (now completely dry due to an injection of mucho dollars, just in case there's a future buyer reading this). American rain however, moves off. If you look at weather maps there, there are large arrows and signs depicting constant movement of weather systems. The rain will be with you for a relatively short time before moving on to a completely different time zone. You then get the weather your neighboring state has just had.



Here, in the UK, the clouds just park themselves don't they? As I write, it has been raining non-stop for 24 hours. Just a bit more than a drizzle, but still. It's rain, and it doesn't look like the clouds are moving at all.



(Ha ha - I took this one from the Met Office web site, to show parked clouds. It came out like this, which I think is so funny, I'm just going to leave it. You can guess which parked cloud you live under!)

My kids are being fairly stoic about the rain given that this is their summer holiday. In fact we had a laff the other day when one of them remarked, Oh Look, The SUN", and then immediately followed up with "Oh, no. It's just a lighter shade of cloud!".


12 comments:

  1. 'A Lighter Shade of Cloud...' That's the title of a song by Procol Harum isn't it?

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  2. We had a surprisingly hot sunny day in Lincolnshire yesterday. Couldn't quite believe it was real. Woke up this morning to rain again so maybe it was just a dream?

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  3. It sounds to me like you're probably better off with predictable clouds in the UK rather than whatever's going on in the US. Florida and Alabama are apparently floating away, and New Mexico and Colorado are burning to a crisp. And of course, hurricane season started on June 1st. I can only imagine what will be going on when we fly home first of July.

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  4. A lighter shade of cloud is a good way of putting it but maybe a lighter shade of gloom would also be more realistic!
    Poor kids.
    I have so many memories of 3 weeks of childhood summer holidays every year in the Lake District & it always rained and every year we thought THIS time it will be lovely and being so disappointed.
    Well those lakes had to fill up some how, didn't they?
    Hoping that you get a bit of respite from it.
    Maggie X

    Nuts in May

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  5. The weather is crazy in parts of the US too. My brother in law was just in Florida for a week and says they saw the sun for about 3 hours, and never had to put on suncream!

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  6. I can't decide whether we're under a white cloud with one raindrop or a grey cloud with 2 raindrops. It's not the big drops that bother me, it's the hair-wrecking drizzle.

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  7. I am under that grey one in the Southeast, the one with the double drops. AAAAArrrgh, I am about to develop SAD in June!!

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  8. Wednesday AM, southern England:

    *blinks* What's that big yellow thing in the sky?

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  9. We left London on Tuesday and the weather improved. We are now in the NE and the immediate forecast seems to have "gone pear-shaped" as the weatherman said last night on TV. Eek.

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  10. I feel your pain. I remember landing in Manchester once and being warned that it was going to be 'unseasonably cold'. Brrrr.

    Having said that, do you think it's worse getting rain in the UK, when it's guaranteed to be overcast at least 50% of the time - or spending money on a June trip to Southern California only to realize the entire state is socked in by fog and drizzle for a month?

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  11. A lighter shade of cloud sounds like a Procul Harum song...

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  12. Here I am in northern england, laughing. That cloud? Clouds? It's the unicloud, it's everywhere. It's a myth that the sky is blue. I was up to the tops of my wellies yesterday trying to unblock a drain in the carpark at work. When I finally managed to poke a drain-rod through the accumulated silt, there was a huge gurgle and the whole lot started to slooge down the hole, leaving me in the middle of a humungous bath-tub whirlpool. Somewhere, far away, the sea level rose by an inch.
    Laughing? it sounds strangely close to sobbing.
    I remember the sun. I think I saw it once, long ago.

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