Weather in NW Europe

[Kirbstone]

Dingle is all white fine sand, so that guy will just get impact bruised, as all the beaches are hard as hell from all that wave pounding. We have a holiday house just 20 mi. S of there and our local beach is perfect for launching & retrieving our 16 ft sailing dinghy there.

Aer Fungus have announced the cancellation of all their flights this W/end out of Dublin into Logan Boston, but some New York & Chicago flights are getting away.

As far as I can recall Carl F. uses his large snow shovel as physical training to work off all those beers he nicks out of the (re)fridge(rator)!

T.

[crfriend]

I've heard that the New England area of the U.S. is in for some very heavy snow and that it will cause some disruptions ( a euphemism for chaos). How are Carl & Sapphire, and any others in it's path, faring? Keep us informed.

Sapphire and I are fine. I haven't been outside yet as I haven't even had my first cup of coffee and it's cold with a really whipping wind. It looks like we got a little bit more than two feet of stuff from the sky, but it's hard to really tell because of all the blowing and drifting.

The weather station at the Worcester Aerodrome, some 5 miles distant, says "light snow and breezy"; the "weather window" in my study says "15+ knot winds and heavy snow with gusts to over 25". I rather like the immediacy of a sheet of glass and the good ol' Mark I eyeball.

As far as I can recall Carl F. uses his large snow shovel as physical training to work off all those beers he nicks out of the (re)fridge(rator)!

That's a reasonably accurate description, but I think I burn off most of the simple sugars and carbs from the beer between my ears. I'm not even going to try to do any shovelling until the snow stops coming down, and we have a nice large stockpile of chili as fuel for once I get going physically.

At the moment, the enitre state is under a State of Emergency and the Governor signed an Executive Order yesterday prohibiting non-essential traffic from the roads. One next-door neighbour is National Guard and might get activated and the other is a nurse at the big hospital in Worcester, so those guys may have reason -- and clearance -- to be out and about. I'm a plebe so I get to sit here. At least I have power, warmth, Sapphire, cats, and computers. Life is pretty good, even if I am "snowed in" (or, if it keeps up, "under").

[Kirbstone]

Carl, Diana,
Hope your power doesn't fail and that the hens are OK in their little house outside. When we moved out here on site before Castle Kirby got the go-ahead we lived for a short time in a 'Favella' consisting of a 24 foot mobile parked parallel to a 40 foot container with an interconnecting shed 18 foot wide. We got hold of a Honda 9-horse electric generator which did the (noisy) trick and could do so again if we have a serious power cut.

No harm in being prepared, which I'm sure you are.

Keep snug & warm, and the helicopter-borne rescue party will get to you within a week! I'm confident their dogs will sniff you out under 14 feet of snow.

Today I was on parade at 07.45 hours to catch the tide so we having slithered under that low bridge works on our way down to the docks, could get back again. We did, but the tide had risen a foot meanwhile, so it was tight enough this morning.
We're scheduled to do it again tomorrow from 08.30.!... Mad idiots, the lot of us. The good news is that we had 7 degrees Celsius, so it wasn't so blxxdy cold as last week.

T.

[crfriend]

The good news is that we had 7 degrees Celsius, so it wasn't so blxxdy cold as last week.

According to the weather service, it's supposed to be -8C at the moment, but I didn't feel a bit of that whilst moving the accumulation of snow from one place to another so we could get out when the Governor decides to rescind the travel ban that was imposed yesterday as the snowstorm ramped up.

The final tally on the thing for Worcester was 28 inches which, for those who've been around for more than a few years is merely a decent snowfall and more of a nuisance than anything else. The power didn't quit and no trees are down locally, and the wind kept anything meaningful from accumulating on the roof so we don't have to worry about that.

I am completely exhausted from the exercise and will likely sleep well tonight.

I would rather have been rowing or sailing than shovelling snow. Actually, almost anything other than shovelling snow... It'll be interesting to see if the old ticker quits now that I'm done.

[Kirbstone]

As a ticker tag tell tale I wear a chestband and a Polar wrist heart rate monitor when training away. My own ergometer has a monitor built in to the performance display so I don't need the wrist band there. I train to a predetermined intensity dictated by the terminal (at the end) heart rate I decide before the session.

This ensures that there will be no surprises when I give it wellie, as you have done today.

For example, if I do say, 5Km on the 'erg' I'll kick off at a familiar rate of striking and split time, e.g. 2m.08sec./ 500 meters. At this pace the pulse will creep from around 95 up to 140+ quite quickly, level off and creep upwards only slowly, topping out at around 4.000 meters at 159/160/161. I then back off the pace, letting the split time slip to 2.10/11/12 to hold the pulse down to 160 and not let it creep up to 163/5 or higher. Passing the 5Km mark at heart rate 160 I'll record my time taken. Usually around 21min. 30sec. which is an overall split time of 2m.09. As the 'season' progresses that time will come down for the same pulse rate, indicating an improvement in personal fitness.

Other sessions are taken at different intensities, so it takes the worry out of 'straining my heart' and other such nonesense.

That's what this particular sepruagenarian does for his endorphins...

T.

[Kirbstone]

As most dictionaries have difficulty seperating the meaning of two words: Complete, and Finished, a local wag decided he'd clarify the difference thus:

When you've married the right girl, you're Complete.

When you've married the wrong girl, you're Finished.

If the right girl catches you cavorting with the wrong girl, you're Completely Finished!

T.

[crfriend]

[...] Passing the 5Km mark at heart rate 160 I'll record my time taken. Usually around 21min. 30sec. which is an overall split time of 2m.09. As the 'season' progresses that time will come down for the same pulse rate, indicating an improvement in personal fitness.

I am, for the most part, a rather sedentary character even if my silhouette belies that, and at 52 am in the thick of "heart attack season". Too, I am more of a sprinter than a marathoner, and tend to function more in the anaerobic realm than the aerobic one; hence, I usually get winded before other things may go south. However, I can function aerobically, and did so today, so I'm not a complete loss. I'm just tired from it. If I went to the trouble of instrumenting myself I'd probably get scared by the numbers; so long as I don't start feeling strange I figure I'm fine.

I find that well-paced "old school" work songs are great pacers for this sort of thing -- sea shanties in particular. Pick the pace and hold it and gauge breathing to match. I find that Navigator by the Pogues works particularly well. And, yes, it's quite likely I "shifted a few tons" today although the pace was a bit quicker than the mentioned song (I must've been using something else).

[Kirbstone]

Yes, I dare say Sea Shanties predated ergometers & heart rate monitors by several hundred years. They did set a rythm and pace for sustained aerobic (modern word) working.
Having sung with my German shantychor for several years it was a logical step for us to take part in two sailing trips on the Baltic in old gaffers where everything had to be hauled up & down and the shanties made some sense.

The trick of training is to push the onset of anaerobic as far into the task in hand as possible. We divide our sessions into parts described as UT1, sustained gentle, UT2, sustained energetic, AT, approaching the anaerobic threshold ( in my case, Heart rate 167), TR, transition rate into anaerobic, and Vo-MAX, eyes bulging, tunnel vision, legs burning terminal effort, (HR somewhere around 190!)
Our typical regatta 1,000 meter sprint races should be aerobic for 800+ meters, transitioning into anaerobic only in the last couple of hundred meters. If one hasn't trained at all and sat into a boat to race, one would be anaerobic after just 300m, the rest of the race being sheer agony and zero performance.
Having trained hard one can indulge in serious wellie right off the starting blocks & all the way down the course, usually with the opposition in full view and behind.

T.

[crfriend]

Yes, I dare say Sea Shanties predated ergometers & heart rate monitors by several hundred years. They did set a rythm and pace for sustained aerobic (modern word) working.

And good old fashioned "work songs" still retain the qualities that made them so useful in the past. I forget which one I was using today, but "Navigator" wasn't it because I was slinging the snow much quicker than that pace.

The trick of training is to push the onset of anaerobic as far into the task in hand as possible. We divide our sessions into parts described as UT1, sustained gentle, UT2, sustained energetic, AT, approaching the anaerobic threshold ( in my case, Heart rate 167), TR, transition rate into anaerobic, and Vo-MAX, eyes bulging, tunnel vision, legs burning terminal effort, (HR somewhere around 190!)

Interestingly, it's quite the reverse for me. I start from zero and go to full exertion almost immediately, sustain that pace for a while, and then begin the aerobic phase where I actually need to do proper sustainability. There's a slowing during the transition phase as I find pace and then I hold that until I simply run out of wind. I actually try to schedule the "heavy lifting" for early in the session before the transition. So, if I was rowing, you'd get one heck of a launch to get away from the competition and then modest performance after that.

[crfriend]

And here we go again. We got three feet of snow last week, and it's coming from the sky again as I write this. Here's the view from the "weather window" in my study:

weather-window-study.jpg

I know what I'm going to be doing later, and I am not looking forward to it.

[Sarongman]

It's raining here again at the moment, with another low tracking down the coast. There was a previous system that dreched us last week, and caused more flooding in New South Wales, incuding a tornado in Kiama which destroyed a few homes and rendered a few more uninhabitable. An interesting snippet on the news last night (taken by a lifeguard) was of a waterspout coming ashore and heading straight for the observation tower he was in and unroofing same. The commentary became increasingly panicky!!

It's a pity for the Victorians that these systems head out to sea before getting to them. Maybe Jack is getting some benefit over "the ditch".

[john62]

For the first time since Christmas it has finally rained in Victoria and the day temp. is below 30C, now it is just to humid, hard to please.

[Kirbstone]

After the longest wettest period anyone can remember we've just had ten dry days, with more to come. The hedges are already greening up and we're well endowed with daffs and early blossom.
Still cold, though and what wind there is is coming at us straight from Scotland (N.E.) and that is always cold. As I walked my dogs on Sunday morning there were no fewer than four hot air baloons in sight, they having taken off at dawn, I expect. Chilly!

T.

[Kirbstone]

Well,

In between we've had our best Summer in a great many years with garden shade temps. that I personally never saw in Ireland before......and they went on & on through the whole of July and August was also mostly good, with our afternoon temps. holding into the low to mid 20s C. until yesterday.

Rs Shade Temp. in garden July 2013..jpg

What a change this morning! They were predicting a drop, but not actual frost! This morning our garden temp. was 0 degrees C. and we had Jack Frost visible on the lawn and on our car roofs &c....Sept. 6th. That also must be a record!

T.

[Jack Williams]

Crazy wether all right!
It hasn't made it to 30c here for a summer or two, but you really notice the heat here in Auckland because of the high humidity we normally have.