‘Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May/ and summer’s lease’, as the Shakespeare sonnet famously puts it, ‘hath all too short a date’ – though this week’s ‘Indian’ summer weather gives the lie to the Bard, at least for the moment. Does this happen every year? Is the weather noticeably changing? And can you guess the time of year these photos were taken?
I’ve often thought it would be nice to have a detailed record of the weather, so as to be able to compare one season with another, and I’ve recently found a set of data on Weather Online which I’ve copied off into a form which I find quite useable.
Daily wind strength and direction are available, in separate months for the last ten years, as Word documents gathered into folders for convenience, which makes it easy to compare one season, one month, one week or even one day, with another. Shakespeare, eat your heart out!
Should you wish to have access to this information, just let me know. How else will you remember, for instance, which Thursday in July 2003 was the windiest?
Steve Fraser
Submitted on 4th September 2012