Rain imminent

Having watched the Weather Display graphs for a few years now I’ve got my own theory for spotting imminent rain.

  1. It’s cloudy (pretty obvious most of the time!)
  2. The humidity rises fairly fast over a period of 15-60 minutes
  3. The wind speed picks up and becomes quite gusty

This isn’t foolproof, but I’ve spotted these trends on a nubmer of occasions.

If it makes a difference, I’m located about 2 miles from the sea, approx 50ft ASL, with the predominant wind direction from the sea and the predominant rain bearing clouds also coming off the sea.

Has anyone else spotted a similar trend?

Yes, I’ve noticed all these rain indicators… especially when combined with an abrupt shift in wind direction.

Keith

I hadn’t spotted a change in wind direction, but I’ll look out for that now that you’ve mentioned it.

If my memory serves me the abrupt change in wind direction is normally a result of a front passing.
I might have to go back to my books now, but I ‘think’ :roll: in the southern hemisphere a passing cold front will cause the wind to back to the south as it goes by.

Everyone is forgetting the best one. If you are off from work, the chance it will rain increases at rate proportional to the amount of enjoyment you could have outdoors, if it wasn’t raining. At least that always happens to me. :cry:

Chris

Also if Chris can see Blackpool tower it is going to rain, if he cannot see the tower, it is raining !! :wink:

Also if Chris can see Blackpool tower it is going to rain, if he cannot see the tower, it is raining !! :wink:

The tower is useful for a couple of other reasons…

  1. If it looks fuzzy then it’s light rain.

  2. It’s a good gauge of cloud base height. If I can’t see the flagpole cloud base is 500ft. If I can’t see the top ‘bump’ cloud height is 400ft. I need to graduate the main body for lower base heights!

Too many damn trees now surround Bursledon windmill, but this has some advantages. One of the most reliable of all natural weather indicators is a pinecone. In dry weather, pinecones open out as the scales shrivel up and stand out stiffly. When it is damp, they absorb moisture and as the scales become flexible again, the cone returns to its normal shape.

Living beside the sea, as I do, I can also use seaweed. Kelp, for example, shrivels and feels dry in fine weather, but swells and becomes damp if rain is in the air. Unbelievably, our own hair reacts the same way. Human hair is used in museum thermo-hydrographs, as it gets longer when it is wet, and shrivels and grows shorter in damp weather. As is true with human hair, wool is also very responsive to the amount of moisture in the air. When the air is dry, hair shrinks and curls up, whereas if the air is moist (indicating rain), it swells and straightens out

There are a number of flowers that you should look for if you want to know what the weather will be like. One of these is the Scarlet Pimpernel, not the daft drag queen hero written by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, but the plant Anagallis arvensis, which has been called the "poor man

Amazing but only too true. One would think in this time and age with all our knowledge, satellites and other electronic gadgets that we could accurately predict the weather a few days ahead or a week ahead. But the poor ol’ Weatherman seems to get it wrong more times than right.
Summer time here often sees the prediction of ‘an evening storm or shower’ for several days. Nothing happens. So the forcast is changed to fine. Ans yes that afternoon the clouds really start to pile up, then crack booom.
But plants and animals know and they don’t have any gadgets to help their predictions. A friend of mine grows Orchids. One type he has will flower almost exactly 14 days before the wet season breaks.
I used to live in an area where frosts where the norm in winter. Certain plants that loose all leaves in winter, won’t shoot until the frosts have finished. How they know is beyond me. #-o But the plants never seem to get it wrong.
Maybe the Wet Bureau should consist of a Cow, Scarlet Pimpernel, Seaweed, Pinecone, and an Orchid. :lol:

They do Peter, thats the problem, behind the photo of the office full of computating forcasters, is a field, where a two weathercaster’s sit with a pair of dice, problem is they are still using the dice… :lol:

[quote author=41South link=topic=3736.msg23576#msg23576 date=1077598097]
If my memory serves me the abrupt change in wind direction is normally a result of a front passing.
I might have to go back to my books now,


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Have you seen…http://discourse.weather-watch.com/t/5907

I have now, and I forcast that the same joke will bring sunny smiles to the locals down the pub tonight.

Hey have you heard the one about the sailor who went to the doctor and said, “doc, I feel dreadful, whats wrong with me?”

Joke removed by administrator. Probably best left for the pub after a few pints of scrumpy.

:oops: sorry admin… work in a PC environment, and only tell clean jokes all day, tend to forget and let my hair down when home… it was a good joke though :wink:

Whatever happened to the cow that was lifted into the air by the tornado? Udder disaster!

Why did the woman go outdoors with her purse open? Because she expected some change in the weather.

What

Definetly notice the “kick” in humidity just before it rains, sometimes a bit more wind too, but living in a valley the wind is either from the North or South and doesn’t normally tell me a lot more than that !

That reminds me of the coolest thing that I’ve noticed since starting out with WD. Summer thunderstorm with a rapid rise in tempeature then a near vertical rise in dew point, then (coolest of all) the wind flips around through 180 degrees (indicating some inrush into the storm) then Bang/Crash - discharge events followed by a heavy rain belt - perfect !

Ready for some snow ? (to those in the UK)

Cheers,

Richard…

It tried in Portsmouth this morning, which is a rare event on the island. I thought it was industurial waste from the building work at Gun Warfe at first, but one landed on my forehead, and melted. The streets were cold enough for it to settle, but the wind was a bit too fresh, and it blew off towards the north west.

And they say people from the Isle of Wight are strange… :wink:

:lol:
Ha ha, you are the first ‘islander’ I have ever met who uses the term ‘the Isle of Wight’, most simply refer to the island as ‘the island’- as if it was the only island in the world, forgetting that Portsmouth is itself an island, as too is the UK. However, the frost was welcome, as the parsnips will be sweeter now, and it has frozen all the flies and moths that were sheltering in the sails of the windmill. Problem is, that as I set sail now, I get showered in frost, but it is an improvement on dead flies. :roll:

The originator of this post commented that the wind speed picks up and becomes quite gusty just before rain.

When I was a sprog, I thought that the word ‘tempest’ was a just a generic term for a strong wind; but, apparently, a tempest - technically -