An uninspiring and grey day, with rising winds and occasional drizzle. The clouds lie low over the hills, sometimes dipping down to 200 feet. Nonetheless, I prefer this to the freezing rain that has affected parts of England, turning streets and pavements into ice rinks. It will be our turn next week to get wintry showers, as a strong northerly airflow comes blasting down all the way from north of Iceland.
Two hurricanes about in the southern hemisphere. Jasmine is running out of puff to the southwest of Fiji, but Giovanna has wound itself up to hurricane strength within 24 hours of actually forming as a tropical cyclone in the Indian Ocean. The warnings on that system are only issued every 12 hours, so the interval could well have been shorted. The people in Mauritius and La Reunion are turning to my wee tropical cyclones blog for information; 500 so far today already. Giovanna will bypass them far to the north as it barrels towards Madagascar on Sunday or Monday. Having traversed that island, the storm will regenerate in the Mozambique Channel.
