Steam Ban Nationwide

KWVR 2018

 

If weather forecasts are on the mark, it looks like the steam ban could well end this Friday ... July 27th. Best evict the spiders from your wellies folks.

 

I hope that is just' near you' because I could do with decent weather on Saturday, 28th - there is the small matter of I am getting married! !!!

Steven

 

In which case .... Best wishes for Saturday Steven. Best point out, you need to blame the Met Office though ... t'was their forecast!

Last time we had a real deluge here, after a prolonged dry spell, a manhole cover in the road outside my friend's house was sitting precariously balanced atop an impromptu fountain of rapidly escaping water (spectacular, if rather scarey) which suddenly found it's way into Hove's drains from the South Downs, resulting in many basement flats in the area being flooded to about 30cm. I'd only once seen anything like it before, on my former school's end of term sports day ... naturally! Unfortunately, the photo I took on the recent occasion is on my old phone.

 

BBC Radio 4 forecast this morning predicted isolated thundery showers, possibly Thursday, very likely Friday. IIRC, they said more likely in Wales and western England than the east side. Could be up to a month's worth of rain in 48 hrs in some places! Start filling those sandbags... I suspect that's not enough for a general relaxation of the steam restrictions. We'd need a week or more of "normal" rain to damp everything down enough, and start turning the verges green rather than pale brown.

Good luck @Bean-counter Have a great day on Saturday!

 

Steven - if it’s any consolation, my wife and I got married during the July 2007 floods, and spent twelve hours the day before trying to drive the 60 miles from home to Oxford (where we were married) because every road in the area was impassable, starting with the A34 which was under several feet of water in places. So rain happens, but we are still married!

Good luck on Saturday.

Tom

 

Some people have all the luck. Having their sports day flooded off!

Paul H

 

OK so they forecast thunder storms on Friday not the whole country and then next week it's warming up again to be hot one day of rain is not enough so we got one day of Thundery showers then the heatwave returns to run steam we need it to cool down not for just one or 2 days and quite a lot of rain as the ground is so dry the rain has noware to go

 

Cigarettes can cause a lineside fire to I had to tell someone off for smoking on the verandah coach you might be outside but you only need to throw your cigarette end on to the lineside and you have a fire smoking on platforms and throwing the cigarette end down on to sleepers that have had oil grease creosote etc soaked into it that's a fire risk but then on a preserved railway you cant ban smoking on the platform like on the national network

 

Sadly, I think you're absolutely right.

 

Recall the old wisdom about a British summer ..... "a few days of sunshine, followed by a thunderstorm". As I write this, I'm certain I can smell a storm coming. A spot of donner und blitzen would certainly be most acceptable after the past couple of nights.

 

There were a large number of storms to the east of Chez TGH today, according to Blitzortung.org...

 

We had about 20 mins worth of rain in Cambridge around 1500, didn't do much good though, it just made it rather muggy for a while!

 

Lots of "furniture crashing around upstairs" in York at the moment with heavy rain already this morning and more imminent.

 

A couple of brief, heavy showers around Oxford yesterday evening. Forecast is for light rain tonight, tomorrow morning and most of Sunday, with temperatures up to about 20/21 this weekend. Probably not enough, though. Next week looks cooler than of late, a bit more cloud, but little or no rain. Could be a while before steam's allowed out by itself...

 

Hove had a very slight rainfall last night. There's thin, broken cloud cover at the moment and it's quite a bit cooler than the last few days, though no immediate sign of any more rain just yet .... and we could use some.

Due to the South Downs, inland forecasts have never been too useful here. I've always found the shipping forecast is generally more applicable .... if the wind's from the west, sea area "Wight" applies, if it's from the east, go with "Dover" or "Royal Sovereign" (bit new, that last one!).

 

Meanwhile, the Llangollen Railway have announced that they'll be running Diesel or DMU services until further notice.

 

After putting out several small fires outside Carrog station at lunchtime I had to send 80072 light engine down the line to extinguish another one.
The local fire brigade are extremely busy with a large fire on Llantysilio Mountain which is now starting to engulf the Horseshoe Pass, so they don't really want to be called out to our railway. The weather forecast is for rain tomorrow & Sunday.

Bob.

 

It's the 28th today Think about it lad, it's not too late.

But best wishes from Mr & Mrs V.