2nd October - Today's News: 3 Killed in Jamaica Floods

Flood claims 3 in Jamaica

Amazing footage from Russia of the moment driver us truck by lightning as he drives down busy highway.   Ouch!   Mind, I've not witnessed a groundstrike at all in years!

Bulgaria sees record heat for 5th consecutive day

Wine prices to rise after dry weather in Spain and Italy - fortunately I prefer non European wines

Thus far, autumn warmer and wetter than usual in Finland

But it looks like wet winters a thing of the past for Australia

I see Piers Corbyn is up to his usual games, claiming:

TOP RED WARNING End Sept-Start Oct (R5+, Sept29-Oct1) – WeatherAction expects major extreme events around the world which will be notably more extreme than expectations of standard Meteorology from one day or so ahead

The result is top success for this WeatherAction 'Toppest' (R5+) Sun-Earth extreme events Special Warning Sep29-Oct1. 

Events started with 30MeV and 10MeV proton bursts on 28th Sept.

The Spanish deadly floods 29th with associated Jet Stream split and huge swing to 'Super South' for the South sub-stream in Europe and storms which hit Scotland* on 30th were some consequences confirming the forecast to the day (* forecast from 6 weeks ahead)

Of course, the rain causing the Spanish floods was actually early on the 28th, the weather in Scotland at the weeked was nothing out of the ordinary and there was, if anything, an unusual absence of any particularly extreme weather events around the world on either the 29th or 30th, compared with any other given period.

And on the subject of outrageous claims, a great assessment of the Daily Expresses very many misleading weather headlines over the past year can be found on Scott Bryan's blog - needless to say there's nothing there we didn't already know, except the astounding figure of 111 front page news stories about the weather in just 12 months.

Irreversible warming will cause sea levels to rise for thousands of years to come, new research shows

Tropical rain may have formed Utah's Great Salt Lake

Plastic debris reaches Southern Ocean, previously thought to be pristine - as I have said before, the anthropocvene will be marked in the geological record by a global layer of microscopic plastic particles ..... our legacy for all time.

Having said we need a way of storing electricity generated by wind farms if they are to be of any real use, it's been suggested that liquid air 'offers energy storage hope'.   Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

Does it snow on Venus?  Unusual 'cold spot' suggests second planet from Sun joins Mars in having carbon dioxide flurries - though the dense atmosphere and resulting high temperatures near the surface mean these melt long before they reach the ground.

And Earth is undergoing true polar wander, scientists say.  But don't get too excited.  According to this summary

 "...they suggest that for the past 40 million years the Earth's solid outer layers have been slowly rotating at a rate of 0.2 degrees every million years"  which is, um, very, very, very slow.