Tag Archives: winter

As snow and freezing temperatures hit Britain last January, a small group of friends decided to put a rail outside a London church with some warm clothes on it. Beside the rail we placed a sign which read: “If you’re cold, take one. If you can help, leave one.” What happened next was remarkable.

By the afternoon the clothes rail was full. People living and working near Exmouth Market had donated jackets and coats as well as gloves, hats, scarves and blankets; passing homeless people were helping themselves to whatever they needed.

As well as the clothes rail, ‘pledge cards’ had been created which enabled people to offer homeless people free food, drinks and other services. These pledge cards could be bought by locals from shops at a discounted price or donated by shopkeepers .

More than 100 meals and hot drinks were donated in the first day alone, in the form of pledges, and more than a dozen businesses on the street got involved.

The rail stayed for the entire winter, being replenished each day with warm clothes and spawning similar initiatives around London and Britain.

In fairness.

‘Need a coat? Take one. Want to help? Leave one’: Tackling the scourge of homelessness in the UK (Stefan Simanowitz, Ceasefire Magazine)

Thanks Bebe

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data-showing-strong-or-very-strong-El-Nino-years-red-not-supporting-exceptional-cold-theory

From top: Today’s Irish Independent; UK Met Office graph depicting the relationship between the El Nino and cold winters in Ireland.

The coldest winter since the 1950s?

Not so fast, weather fans.

Mark Dunphy writes~:

There are some scientific/meteorological reasons to suggest that the building blocks for a colder than average winter to verify are in place. They include record-breaking cold seas surface temperatures in the North Atlantic, entrenched early season cold in Russia and soon Eastern Europe, a strong El Nino, and periods of High Pressure blocking in recent weeks dragging in a polar continental airmass across Ireland and Britain.

But – strong El Ninos and cold Atlantic waters have come and gone without record breaking cold occurring in this part of the world in the past. For example, the strong El Nino year of 1991-92 winter season saw Oct-May in Ireland/Britain producing warmer than average conditions. Furthermore, the below UK Met Office data shows strong/very strong El Nino years (circled in red) not exactly supporting the circulating theory of impending record breaking cold.

Furthermore, the UKMO [UK Meto Office] plot (pic 2) confirms the relationship between the El Nino and cold winters in Ireland doesn’t hold for STRONG events.

The Irish Independent article bases its article on the fact that migratory birds have migrated to this side of the world. Nothing too unusual about that you might think. The birds in question migrate to the UK every year and have arrived early for two reasons.

Easterly winds have been persistent in recent weeks meaning that they have decided to take off west while the going is good (easier flight than the flight they normally make against westerly winds).

The other reason is that Siberia has seen winter kick in rather early. Eastern and central Europe too will experience some snow over the next few days. Many other similar newspaper articles have appeared in recent weeks with no evidence other than supposition to claim that Ireland is set for its coldest winter since 1963.

FIGHT!

Is Ireland heading for a record breaking cold winter? Perhaps not (Mark Dunphy, The Clare Herald)

Is Ireland Heading For The Worst Winter In 50 Years (Independent.ie)

It’s going to be chilly with a lot of poorly-executed weather map designs.

Climatologist Peter O’Donnell writes:

Winter 2011-12 looks like being quite an active winter and not lacking in wintry weather types, although not entirely dominated by them either.

Readers in more isolated and upland locations might be well advised to have extra supplies on hand at a fairly early stage of the winter in case the early opportunities for cold dig in, but we think your main challenges will come in January this year.

Same old.

Same cold.

Irish Weather Online: Winter 2011-12 Forecast (IWO)

IRELAND can kiss goodbye to the Indian summer, with icy sleet and plummeting temperatures in store from the middle of next week.
Long-term forecaster Positive Weather Solutions has predicted a ‘white-out’ winter almost as harsh as the last — with widespread snow, temperatures as low as -16C and transport chaos.

Cold Snap To Herald Another Icy Winter (Edel O’Connell, Irish Independent)