Question: Why is English weather so miserable?

[SpeedBird22]

Damn damn damn damn damn!!! Thats another flight cancelled. I'm beginning to forget what a plane looks like...

Lets all go into Boots or Superdrug, and randomly let off enough aerosol cans to skyrocket global warming. Should do the trick :)

Anyway, the real point of this thread is to find out what all of you crap wx blighted pilots do when you've just had that cancelling phone call and another grey rainy sunday in front of the TV looms.

I jump into my motor, find a dual carriageway and drive in the middle, pretending I'm on a runway. hehehe. :)

Happy window flying,

:) :) SpeedBird22 :) :)

[Luftwaffle]

Perhaps the English just whinge more than any other nation.

When I'm weathered out I cook a week's worth of food, pack it into plastic freezer containers, and then read PPRuNe. Don't ask me how many weeks of food are in my freezer.

[This message has been edited by Luftwaffle (edited 18 March 2001).]

[Yogi-Bear]

When you are weathered-in, ask your instructor to teach you some MET ground school! Soon you'll get the picture and begin to predict when you won't be flying, save yourself the abortive trips, put the time to better use and become more philosophical about it.

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Yabbadabaadoo. It's OK Boo-Boo.

[smallfish]

The British Isles lies at the mean latitude of the North Atlantic Polar Front. Combine this with 5000 miles of ocean and you get the British weather. Sorry, this doesn't solve the problem of what to do when you can't fly. Move to the Med?

[PilotOfficer]

Read material in the clubhouse (NOTAMs, POHBs etc.), go to the pub next door, come back and do a check A, go back to the pub, nip up to the tower and talk to the guys (they'll be bored as well at a small field!), all go back to the pub.... :)

[G SXTY]

I just run FS2000 & crank the visibility up to 30 miles.

This method has the added advantage of being able to buzz Tower Bridge in Concorde once you get bored of doing circuits in the C172.

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Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit pruning.

[Speedbird252]

Stand around at the Airfield pointing up at the sky with the instructors and acting all knowledgable. Truth is if we were any good at met we would have never have left home.

Ooops, another pub lunch inbound.

[Vmike]

There is a school of thought that reckons the UK weather is the main reason we Brits once owned more than half the world.

The likes of Hawkins, Raleigh, Drake and their ilk waking up one morning and saying "Bloody hell, more rain. Sod this! Get me a ship, I'm off to somewhere sunny. And, just to give me something to do, I might do a bit of conquering while I'm at it. Might get a few quid out of it, maybe even a gong or a K from Her Maj. Either way, anything beats sitting around in this crap weather.... "

Well, it's a theory!

[smallfish]

I like it Vmike, old Shackleton must have been a warped guy though, heading off to Antarctica only to get his ship crushed by icebergs then spend months under an upturned lifeboat braving the Antarctic winter. And all because he'd had a cricket match rained off.

[robione]

I,de rather be down here wishing i was up there,than up there wishing i was down here.
IT CAN KILL YOU,U KNOW.

[SpeedBird22]

Robione - Yup..but bad weather flying done properly can negate ever being up there wishing you were down here!!

*wishes he had a current IR*

:) :) SpeedBird22 :) :)

[WX Man]

Increasing the greenhouse effect by cutting down a shed load of trees and putting fields full of farting cows won't help...

As you increase temp through increasing the greenhouse effect (increased concentrations of Carbon Dioxide and Methane), the Greenland Ice Sheet and Arctic ice melt. Because of the geography of the northern hemisphere, this puts a whole load of fresh water into the North Atlantic, effectively cutting off the Gulf Stream (or at least moving it a whole lot further south). This puts the polar front somewhere near Portugal, and makes our weather sh*te.

I could cite all the evidence for this happening in the past, but I won't bore you with details of it. But if you're really curious, next time you're in your local library look out:

An abrupt climate event in a coupled ocean-atmosphere simulation without external forcing

Alex Hall, Ronald J. Stouffer

In the journal Nature Volume 409 Number 6817 Page 171 - 175 (2001)

The knock on effects of this are that the weather just gets sh*tter and sh*tter. A brief melting of the ice preceeds a build up of ice, increases albedo and makes the planet cool down. Bish-bash-bosh, ice age. Within the next 60-70y (maybe).

[spannersatcx]

And the last 12 months were the wettest since records began in 17** something!

[EDDNR]

The good thing about our crap weather is it keeps Johnny Foreigner at bay and improves our own intellect.

Because we haven't got the weather to laze around on a beach all day, we get busy in our sheds inventing jet engines, designing fantastic buildings and writing great pieces of literature or a fancy play that will be studied for generations.

Visitors come, stay for a while, but only the really determined will stick it out. Unless you're a refugee on some benefit scam that is.

Rod

[Strobin' Purple]

Good point, EDD. That explains Australia's contribution then.

The difference between Australia and a pot of yoghurt?

...leave a pot of yoghurt alone for a while and you'll get some culture out of it!

chin chin

SP

[twistedenginestarter]

My thoughts on the curious fact that we manage to support a fully developed society including breweries, so near the top of the world you have to tip the globe over along way to spot us, is captured by Dr Samuel Johnson's remark he made when he was shown a dog dancing on its hind legs.

"What is remarkable is not that it is done well but that it is done at all"
;) ;) ;)

[foghorn]

Whatever happened to the drought conditions?

From 1989 to 1994 we were running out of water because all the reservoirs were empty, the weathermen were crowing about how it was hotter and drier than ever before, and making wild predictions like the UK would be making world-class wine within twenty years.

Now it suddenly seems to be the other way round.

[twistedenginestarter]

It's getting hotter now. It'll be drier in a few decades time. In the meantime it's always been predicted we're in for a rough ride.