28 June thunderstorms

Two main thunderstorm areas moved northward past our house as part of a much larger band of thunderstorms that shut down Wimbledon, except for Centre Court where the sound of the rain on the roof was forcing the umpire to shout the scores. That was during Lisicki's game that I'm glad to say she won. I got some captures from video of lightning. Also got a time-lapse running through the day that shows the northerlies setting in as the line moved eastward. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0zH5oXZdL0 At times the thunder was near constant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26EY-y7Ouy8 is a video of thunderclaps and lightning grabs from my window.

Google Earth, Thomas Montgomerie and K2

One of the fun things you can do on Google Earth is recreate the view that Thomas Montgomerie had when he named the second highest mountain in the world; K2 (8,611 m). Thomas named K2 and the other Ks in 1856 by viewing the distant mountains from the top of Mount Harmuch (5142 m). The view he sketched is shown below:

Mount Harmuch is located approximately at 34°24 N  74°54' E so you can fly there in Google Earth. If you zoom in to the summit of the mountain, tilt the view to the horizontal, and look north you will see on your left a huge white mountain. That is Nanga Parbat, at 8,126 m the ninth highest mountain on Earth. Now look to the northeast. There is no immediately obvious massive mountain but on more careful inspection you should be able to spot two sharp peaks on the horizon that look similar to the drawing above. They should look like the picture below:

You can now have the pleasure of flying towards these two enormous mountains, the peak on the right, K1 of course was Masherbrum (7,821 m). As you fly towards the two peaks it becomes apparent that K2 is more distant than Masherbrum and that is why it appears lower from Mount Harmuch. My rough estimate is that K2 is about 30 km more distant than Masherbrum. That whole area is extraordinary to view in Google Earth. Measuring on Google Earth reveals that K2 was in fact some 220 km away when Thomas viewed it. K2 was the only one of the five K named mountains that retains it's K name. I will repeat here (from the Wikipedia K2 page) the wonderful quote from the Italian climber Fosco Maraini on the accidental appropriateness of the name K2. It was  "... just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man – or of the cindered planet after the last."

YouStorm home

YouStorm home

This is the dodgy site I am working on. It is my attempt at creating a website that provides easy access to weather information. As a weather enthusiast I sometimes find it frustrating to search for the information that I am looking for. Now if I find a useful website I will link it to youstorm.org in the section where it is most applicable. The site works on a few principles, that may change as it evolves. These are: 1) At present there is no advertising. 2) YouStorm provides no data itself, it purely links to information on other websites i.e. yes it is only a humble links site. 3) The site works largely through icons and maps that link you to the specified region, phenomenon or data. Wherever these icons appear on the site will be a link to data or pages relevant to the icon. 4) It is designed to be fun and useful, although whether it is either is up for discussion. OK that will do for the moment, if you are reading this then you are one of not many, if any besides myself ha ha so please leave me a comment.

aloha

Chris

First blog

This is my first blog. As you can read it's pretty fascinating. Here is a picture of a cumulonimbus from yesterday.