23rd June 2012 - Floods After Heavy Rain in Northern England

This month is becoming worryingly like June 2007 - largely due to similar synoptics with a southerly jet stream sending Atlantic depressions across England, rather than safely up between Scotland and Iceland.   NW Scotland has had a very dry month.    Flooding hits northern England after torrential rain as Yorkshire Dales flash floods leave cars stuck and sirens sound after flood warnings for Caulder and Colne.    There were also flash floods as Scots are lashed by storms.   The west coast rail line is closed and had I gone to the Highlands for the solstice, as I often do, I might well have been planning on travelling home today.

Also been wet in SW Canada bringing more Fraser River flood fears: some B.C. residents have evacuated, others watch warily

1,500 homes evacuated in Utah due to wildfire sparked by target shooters, spread by high winds

In New York, lightning strike atop Empire State Building punctuates sweltering day in city

'Wicked' winds cause chaos in NZ

Indian Met office allays fears over sparse rainfall as the Monsoon so far fails to deliver

Arctic climate more vulnerable than thought - whilst some might point out this means any current/future warming and melting is not 'unusual' it doesn't go to say it's something we, human civilisations as a whole,  necessarily want to see happen on a rapid basis ....!    And a new study suggests top predators key to extinction as planet warms - the extinction of the woolly mammoth does seem to have impacted on lower order species, perhaps because of consequential changes in plant diversity, at the end of the last glacial epoch.  So there may well be somthing in this.

Melting sea ice threatens emperor penquins, but some better news as elephant seals help uncover slower than expected Antarctic melting