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weather-uk  press pack

 

Ready-prepared articles on miscellaneous weather-related topics  (continued):

 

  • 020601  Queen’s Jubilee  Coronations and jubilees have a dreadful reputation when it comes to the weather they bring. The Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977 occurred in one of
  • 020629  The power of numbers  If you believe in the power of numbers you will not be surprised that the summer of 2002 has so far proved something of a disappointment. 
  • 021207  Journalists who bug me  Earlier this week I had a telephone call from a journalist at a radio station in London, and she asked me the question that, come December, all
  • 010617  Another journalist story  Following two days of heavy showers I had a telephone call yesterday from a journalist who asked me if we were heading for the wettest June on
  • 030104  Misleading statistics  It was a year that gave statisticians a bad name. Almost the warmest on record, yet the one abiding memory of last year is the abysmal summer with
  • 030322  The 2003 Iraq war  The weather will be watched closely by military leaders for the duration of the conflict in Iraq.  Optimum meteorological conditions for an invasion do not
  • 040229  Static electricity  Have you found this week’s weather shocking? In many parts of the UK the atmosphere has been so dry over the last few days, the relative humidity so low,
  • 981129  Betting on a White Christmas  You may be one of those people who are daft enough to fancy a flutter on a white Christmas. Of course, the weather in late-November or
  • 990328  Night flying and the Kosovo conflict  “All manned aircraft turned back last night,” Defence Secretary George Roberston said at the press conference on 27 March 1999.
  • 990718  Did NATO bombing cause storms in Kosovo?  One of the stories going around the press pack in Belgrade and Pristina during the summer of 1999 was the theory that the
  • 991114  Britain’s highest barometer readings  The anticyclone (or high pressure system) which controlled Britain’s weather for much of November 1999 was, at its peak, the most
  • 991226  Death of the traditional Boxing Day  The battle to save the traditional Boxing Day appears to have been lost with scarcely a whimper. The Radio Times finally surrendered in
  • 000513  The Tower of the Winds  The UK’s Meteorological Office has just moved from a functional block in Bracknell to a high-tech, environmentally friendly site in Exeter. How
  • 000528  Weather and Dunkirk  Many people around the country remember every year the evacuation of Durkirk. Between May 28 and June 4, 1940, almost 340,000 servicemen were
  • 000625  Searching the internet for weather  The internet can be quite scary at times. I tried a google search on the old saw “The British summer consists of two fine days and
  • 000813  US Forest Fires, summer 2000  I have criticised the news media from time to time for exaggerating the rarity of newsworthy weather events and natural disasters. This week
  • 010318  Foot and mouth disease and the weather  Until the infamous foot-and-mouth outbreak in 1967-68, it was not widely accepted that the virus could be spread by the wind.
  • 010225  The River Thames in getting longer  The autumn and winter of 2000-01 was wetter than any since rainfall records were first kept in England at the end of the 17th
  • 020512  Spring sunshine in the UK The coastal fringe of southeast England enjoys almost 1800 hours of sunshine in a typical year, roughly 75 per cent more than the western
  • 020609  Golden Jubilee weather  In a week of remarkable weather one of the most surprising features was the way the rain held off on Tuesday during the processions and
  •  0012xx The umbrella  "The rain it raineth every day / Upon the just and unjust fella, / But mostly on the just, because / The unjust hath the just's umbrella."  The umbrella is a
  • 9807xx  Eclipses of the sun  It's a bit like the old cliche about buses. You know the one: you wait  for an hour for one to turn up, then three come along together. But in
  • 9808xx  The BBC Weather Centre  There are two sorts of broadcaster:  those with large fragile egos who recognise it, and those with large fragile egos who don’t. My twenty years
  • 9901  The Wivenhoe earthquake, 1884  It was a quiet Tuesday a little over a week after Easter, at roughly a quarter past nine, and the good people of Wivenhoe in Essex were
  • 9902xx  A rainy thesaurus  Pie in the sky, castles in the air, manna from heaven, not to mention pennies … it is amazing what unusual atmospheric phenomena we can dream up