NOT singing in the rain...

It has not been a good day on the City of Hull and the East Riding. Its been raining for about 12 hours continuously with the heaviest since about 7am this morning, as these rainfall radar images show, one from this morning and one from this afternoon. I can vouch for it, having had to go out twice in it and I was indeed wet, Wet, WET! However, the flood has taken its toll, BBC Humber. All so sad. What a horrible way to go.

My neighbour's back garden is a lake, just to enlarge the pond he already has...

The main problem with the landscape around Hull is that it's rather flat and so drainage is always going to be a difficult thing to solve when excess rainfall events happen. I would expect that when the rainfall observations are reported, that around Hull will see totals pushing 50mm (2"). Further North, on the Yorkshire Wolds, there's already reports of 60-75mm (up to 3") up to 4 pm today and it looks like the rain is going to last longer still, another 4 hours possibility. Anyone want to estimate it for later on when it stops???

The month of June has been wet alround, and if somewhere in Yorkshire doesn't record 200mm (8") for the whole 30 days, then I shall be very VERY surprised.

Twitchy...

Friday fast approaches, when I go and try to persuade Transport for London that I should be employed by them. I shall be travelling down on Thursday morning, to get me rested in enough time and I shall depart Saturday night (cos I could only persuade Employment Services to make out the warrant for that long).

However, this will mean the rest of Thursday and most of Saturday with Alicia, so if you are reading this in London, watch out...! :)

Clad as I will be in a smart new outfit - suited and booted - how can I fail??

(I didn't get it)

Rain and more rain.... [squelch]

For what is nominally a summer month, you wouldn't believe the rain of the last 24 hours. Just since midnight (14 hours) many local rainfall stations are reporting in excess of 25mm (1 inch). I even saw a report of one, not far from my parents place, reporting 66 mm (2.6 inches)! Thats in excess of what many places around here would expect to get in the whole of the month.

Roads are flooding in and around Hull, with some closed, Boothferry Road is closed at the railway overbridge, due to the sheer depth of water - which will always gather there when its like this. Place west of Hull have been having similar amounts and what the rivers will be like in a day or two, when the runoff reaches them, won't bear thinking about.

I'm off now, but I shall take the camera to see what's about, as I travel first to Hornsea, then to Scarborough for tonights astronomy meeting, so more tomorrow sometime. Probably....

Funny old thing, time.

As my sister is away, I'm currently minding her house, and very pleasant it is too, to be able to sit in front of a big widescreen TV with satelllite channels to watch, in PEACE. Of all those channels, there's only the history channel, one or two of the sports channels, the kids cartoon channels (Ok I know....) and a channel called ESPN Classic, which shows sporting action from the past 30 years or so. tennis, rugby, football and cricket feature quite prominently.

Yesterday, I caught a re-run of some of the 1976 Test series between England and the West Indies, the final Test at what is now the BritOval or something, on that channel. Anyhow, although the game hadn't changed that much, the players of the time were fascinating to watch, plus the state of the ground...! As most will remember, 1976 in Britain was one of the driest and hottest years ever, up to that point. The outfield was brown, the grass was dead and people were in hot weather gear, namely just a pair of shorts for the men. Oh, and the West Indies absolutly THUMPED England that summer...

This summer is completely different. This time its England handing out the beating over the West Indies, and the pitches are lush and green, when they can get out on them, as tomorrow's first day looks like it could be a washout...

Funny old thing, time. Things change, yet they stay the same, sometimes anyway.

Busy time at the footy club...

Many of you will know of my writing for the Hull City VitalFootball site, which I do for the fun of it, I might add! As a consequence, myself and site editor Matt were invited to an important press conference yesterday concerning the takeover of Hull City. It was something to be treated on the same level as the professional journalists of many years standing, from the local paper, local tv and radio and further afield. Made us feel quite important!

Anyhow afterwards, I spoke to one of the staff on the local paper whom I have dealt with before in my astronomical society days, who happened to remember I was a City fan too. As a consequence, I appear in todays paper, and here's a link to the online version. The printed one is worse, they found a picture of me to place alongside it. If I'd known they were going to do that, I would have supplied them with a better one!!

Should anyone want to read our notes from the press conference, which were pretty comprehensive, then click here.

News....

Just a note to tell you all that I'm hoping to get taken on by TfL, the London Transport organisation, and will be going through the final stages of their recruiting procedure on June 22nd. I have known for a week or so this date, but wanted to make sure everyone else was told... :)