SUMMER 2004 - PART 1
(THE BEST BIT?)

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Well what a contrast to 2003 so far! After a fair start, things went downhill in June and July has been dire for summer-lovers. Not that good for storm-lovers here in Wales, except for a spectacular flurry of activity on the afternoon of July 6th (Summer 2004 part 2). Other parts of the UK have had a lot of thunder days, and only recently (July 22nd) what appears to have been an HP Supercell storm hit parts of the East Midlands with flooding, lightning and probable tornadic damage - it's under investigation by TORRO personnel.

The odd heatwave came and went in June with occasional mouthwatering convective instability charts, which were contradicted by upper air charts indicating descent rather than ascent! Here, very high-based convection, producing virga, is just discernable through the heat-haze!
The same period saw a lot of very high-up cumulus, seen here late one afternoon over Plynlimon...
One causative factor for the highly unsettled summer weather has been the farther-south-than-usual position of jetstreaks - very fast high-level winds that are a major driving factor in the weather systems lower down in the troposphere. Here it's racing along above the Mid-Wales coast between Aberdyfi and Tywyn, with bands of cirrus clouds composed of ice-crystals.....
July 1st finally saw a bit of convective activity in my neck of the woods although this turned out to be fairly "messy". I headed from the Mach-Llanidloes mountain road southwards to near Rhyader but nothing much came of it....
.......but a wonderful mixture of high clouds gave me something to point the camera at instead! Taken near Tylwch on a side-road off the Llandidloes-Rhyader back-road...
Here cirrus clouds radiate out from a point above the remnants of the convection, taken looking back south again from above Dylife....
...and again in portrait format....
...on the same afternoon looking N towards Machynlleth. Blue sky, blue sky and more blue sky! Where are those storms??
Finally a bit of an abstract one of high cirrus and an old jet-trail! Can't remember when this was taken except it was over Machynlleth, sometime in June 2004!! Part 2 deals with some "proper" weather!
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