Electropherii

[MICHAEL WILLIAMSParticipant @michaelwilliams41215]

[MICHAEL WILLIAMSParticipant @michaelwilliams41215]

Its a splendid evening for electrostatics down here where I live with big sparks coming off everything plastic .

Anyone that wants some night time fun can perform the well known range of electrostatic demonstrations tonight with very simple equipment knocked up in minutes from junk .

MikeW

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Hi Mike,

Where's 'here'?

Interesting day for 'atmospheric disturbances' of another kind in Birmingham today!

Neil

[MICHAEL WILLIAMSParticipant @michaelwilliams41215]

Hi Neil ,

Location in pm .

No electrostatics today – rain coming at us sideways at high speed .

Did anyone see recent documentary series on strange weather systems – brilliant it was .

MikeW

[Martin WParticipant @martinw]

Mike

I take it that its not in the UK then unless you were unlucy enough to catch a shower!

MartinW

PS  Surprising how much smoke a small Chinese Lantern can produce these days.

Edited By Martin W on 03/07/2013 17:27:06

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

I could see that plume from Basset's Pole, if anyone knows their brummy geography that's a fair haul from Smethwick.

They used water from the canal to put it out. The huge headache for the Canal and River Trust and Environment Agency was where it ended up afterwards!

They were very cagey on the radio about health/pollution effects, but it turned out to be a polyethylene recycler. If it had been a PVC recycler I think we would have seen mass evacuation. Pretty worrying when you realise there have been about 30 fire at waste transfer istes in the West Midlands in recent years… as an environmentalist I have to worry about the carbon/pollution footprint of all this recycling!

Back to the original post, has anyone notioced how little lightning tehre has been so far this year, despite the heat & wet.

Neil

[Martin WParticipant @martinw]

Neil

If you look on the Met Office site you can access a current weather map where one can look at the current and recent past of rainfall, primarily the UK, and lightning, UK and mainland Europe. Recently there have been large storms in Europe generating a lot of activity; it really lit up the maps (forgive the pun but it struck me as slightly amusing oops).

Cheers, back on topic in a flash .

Martin W

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Martin,

I didn't realise you could zoom out to that degree. Lots of fun around the Baltic and the Alps today.

It seems quiet around the UK though.

It would be a very 'Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician' project to make a 'sferic' lightning detector out of two large coils at 90-degrees, linked up to a microcontroller. It would give direction and you'd have to estimate distance from amplitude.

Neil

[Martin WParticipant @martinw]

Neil

The very old system, CRDF or cathode ray direction finding, used crossed coils at several different stations in the UK and Mediterranean and the flash bearing as displayed at each station was used, triangulation method, to plot the location of the selected event. It was a slow procedure and many flashes were obviously missed. The new system works on an effectively reversed hyperbolic navigation principle and I had the pleasure of being part of the team that developed it and brought it into service. This has since been upgraded and while the principles are the same the latest SFERICs system is more sophisticated but works on basically the same principles of Arrival Time Difference at a variety of stations located at strategic locations.

Cheers

PS

Try looking at the infrared cloud pictures on the same site and look for the very white, not good English, patches especially if they look slightly isolated and round shaped. Then compare these with the Lightning reports and often you will see a correlation as the tops cumulonimbus clouds rise to great heights and are very cold, hence the white response on the infrared pictures.

Martin

Edited By Martin W on 04/07/2013 00:29:51

[Danny M2ZParticipant @dannym2z]

On a more serious note.

Many of our local (Australian) bushfires and the recent tragedy in Arizona have been caused by lightning strikes in arid areas caused by years of drought.

We have fire towers (slowly updating to IR technology) where spotters take bearings etc. to a fire and then bail out if required.

An Australian bushfire is something that you don't want to contemplate. Each (Northern hemisphere) summer firebombing helicopters are seconded here from the U.S.

'Elvis' is our most famous Sikorsky visitor and it's mighty welcome btw.

When the cumulonimbus clouds get close, I pull down my graphite fishing rods and head the boat home to the workshop.

Regards from the land of the kangaroo

Cu later * Danny M *

[Danny M2ZParticipant @dannym2z]

Oops!

For (Northern hemisphere) insert 'Southern hemisphere'

(The 'edit' facility seems to have absquatlated this forum)

Cu Later * Danny M *

[Danny M2ZParticipant @dannym2z]

Oops again.

It should have been 'absquatulated' ( just for the spell checking police)

Lol

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

We had a large fire that burned for months here in Christchurch, a large pit full of MDF from earthquake damaged buildings spontaniously combusted, it upset the neighbours, but the health inspector said "no problem, not very toxic", fire dept., sorry we can't get at it. Think its out now. Ian S C

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

> It should have been 'absquatulated'

Have you tried Preparation H?

Ian, there was a valley full of landfilled tyres in Wales that burned for years. The water coming out of it waas a major problem.

In the US there is a mine that's burned for over a century and become a visitor attraction, and in Oz they have a several thousand year old fire in coal seam.

 

Neil

Edited By Stub Mandrel on 05/07/2013 17:25:42

[Ian S CParticipant @iansc]

There is a fire in a coal mine on the West Coast of the South Island NZ, its been burning at least 80yrs. Ian S C

[Martin WParticipant @martinw]

Hi

We are in the middle of a thumping great shower accompanied by good loud sharp cracks of thunder, very close, and the occasional visible cloud to cloud discharge. The gutters were having difficulty handling the downpour but is has dropped the temperature nicely. My next door neighbour had just finished watering his garden when the cell arrived and let go. Would have been better if it had been dark as the lightning is so much more dramatic.

Well its gone and the skiy is clearing so it will be back to summer as norm soon.

Cheers

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

This link: **LINK** was posted on another thread. It seems to load faster/better than the Met Office version and is zoomed out more (it seems to show the same data)

Neil

[Martin WParticipant @martinw]

Hi Neil

Don't know whether they are using a different system or the data from the Met Office, there is a lot of data interchange between the met services not only in Europe but right across the world, but I like the fact that it displays a larger geographical area but what is great is that it allows one to overlay the Eumetsat IR images on the map and run a time lapse sequence with the ability to select a time window that is of interest.

Cheers

Martin

PS

A good find 

Edited By Martin W on 18/07/2013 00:58:14

[modeng2000Participant @modeng2000]

I find this link good for thunder storm tracking in the UK

http://www.isleofwightweather.co.uk/StormVueNG.htm

Edited By modeng2000 on 18/07/2013 07:39:43

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

If folk use the Met Office map, try zooming right out THEN panning – it covers the same area as the german site, you just can't see it all at once!

Neil

[Billy MillsParticipant @billymills]

The Blitzortung.org link was one I posted. It's the same Time Of Arrival type system as Martin describes, the radio events are timed to the next GPS second then the data sent via the web to a a server in Germany. The network has a much larger number of receivers that "Official" sites and the data is not delayed for non-subscribers to the extent that some official ones are.

There is also a North American version on the same site.

Most other amateur networks use commercial equipment to do tradditional crossed loop direction finding at around 9-11KHz, the type of method used in the 1930's by Watson Watt at Slough.

Billy.

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

Yes I took a proper look, and I've sent Blitzortung my email to get details of the detector kit.

Neil

[modeng2000Participant @modeng2000]

Here is another good site for weather monitoring.

**LINK**

[MICHAEL WILLIAMSParticipant @michaelwilliams41215]

Not quite lightning or welding cable twitch but in a similar direction of thought :

I've often wondered how safe it is for people to live or attend schools etc in the immediate vicinity of high voltage electricity transmission lines , pylons and sub stations .

The official word is that there is minimal danger but even simple observation will tell you that there is a lot of power coming off these things into the nearby environment .

The mains hum can be quite noticable but also :

Radios especially AM ones , pick up large amounts of interference – heard as ' static ' .

In low cloud and foggy conditions both corona and sparking type discharges can be heard and sometimes seen .

(Some) investigation have shown a strong propagating electromagnetic field . ( Why only some ?? )

So – how much energy is actually coming off and how does it interact with us ??

MikeW

[jason udallParticipant @jasonudall57142]

On the subject of rf etc exposure in schools….often hear panic about mobile phone masts near school’s

Ever wondered about radar “safety” cameras? ..often called FOR near schools . I wonder what exposure these bring?

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