Monday 21 January 2019

Tale of Two Halves

The weather has certainly turned much colder. It looks like it could be a month of two halves, the first half mild, and the last two weeks much colder. I was hoping that the change to much colder weather would at least get rid of the dull and dreary weather of the first couple of weeks of the new year, but we’ve unfortunately swapped the mild temperatures for cold ones and kept the dull and dreary conditions.
Temperature & Rainfall Records 01-21 January 2019
We visited Potteric Carr on Friday afternoon for a walk around the nature reserve. 
It was a cold, cloudy day and any still water was still ice covered early in the afternoon.
There’d been some posts on Facebook showing some starling murmurations at the reserve. Thousands of starlings gather at the reserve and produce magical flying displays before they settle down to roost for the night.
Unfortunately for us they chose to carry out their display some distance from where we were standing but we still managed to get some photos and video of their display.



4 comments:

  1. Nice footage of the murmuration(s)!
    On the weather front, this must be the fallout from the Christmas SSW?

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    Replies
    1. I think any fallout from the SSW will bring much colder weather rather than just normal winter stuff. There's still some suggestions in the models that February could be exceptionally cold. The blocking high pressure system the SSW might set up hasn't happened just yet.

      It's already -1.9°C at 20:00 as I'm posting this reply. Another 10 hours of getting colder unless the clear skies cloud over!

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  2. Very dry, cold and windy here, too, although the temperature doesn't show it. Wind chill is not shown, but a wind advisory is in effect with snow level in the nearby mountains forecast to be down to 3,500', 1066.8 m.
    I once saw a murmuration of starlings in Missouri. An unforgettable experience.

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    Replies
    1. 28.6°F at 20:00 here so it's certainly going to be our coldest night this year. Last night's frost never thawed out through the day.

      Apparently the starling murmurations at Potteric Carr were much better earlier in the week before we decided to visit. We were much closer to one at Old Moor Reserve last winter and the noise from the birds was deafening.

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