--YAY!!--
Daylight saving starts tomorrow!.
This normally means that this is the end of Winter and colder temperatures and the days get longer at the evening end of the day.
Not meaning to gloat at you guys going into Winter, but it's been a long cold miserable time, since last Summer and I for one will be looking forward to some good Summer weather, am sick of being stuck indoors just these past few months, roll out the BBQ, bring it on!

I know that feeling: It's great to know that spring is on the way!

Only a couple of weeks now until our clocks "fall back" an hour and we start shutting ourselves away indoors after dinner.

The rural area where I live takes on a totally different character winter and summer.

Summer time it's light until late, the tourists cruise their boats up and down the Broads (inland waterways), kids are playing on the beach or riding their bicycles and enjoying themselves. Then winter comes along, the back lanes turn into muddy swamps, and the wet and windy weather sweeps across the open countryside. Mid-winter it's not unusual to start turning lights on at 3:30 pm on an overcast day.

Yeah Paul!,
Like I said mate, I'm not willing to gloat, but there are parts of Australia (in the Outback) where the sun shines every day of the year, but we are talking temperatures of up to 40 degrees C+.
New Zealand is slowly becoming like this, hard winters and longer hotter summers, extremes to say the least.
The Cabbage tree outside is in flower and that means it is going to be a dry summer, it's only flowered twice since I have been in Ashburton and the last time it did we had the BIG DRY of 1998, all of our rivers dried up and the Ashburton water supply actually stopped for two days.
I don't like the look of this!.

PaulUK:

About that time British Airways runs commercials about how theaters and other tourist spots are not as crowded in London and how it is a great time to go there


Out in San Francisco, that means the rainy season as we get close to winter. It's very rare that we get snow.

Btw, anyone besides myself have those "radio controlled" clocks? Ours' takes a 60 kHz time coded radio signal and it automatically takes care of dst changes.

[This message has been edited by GeneSF (edited 10-15-2003).]

Gene — "Systems" GPS clocks have the reset feature. I do not know if consumer-type handheld GPS boxes do also.

Apparently some GSM-standard cellular phones have the capability of updating their displays moving between cellular nodes in different time zones. PCs can be set via Simple Network Time Protcol that also automates the process — a freeware utilty like NetLab 1.4 will enable the function.




[This message has been edited by Bjarney (edited 10-16-2003).]

Radio controlled clocks are pretty common here, both wristwatches and alarm clocks. We have 2 radio controlled alarm clocks we always use to set all other clocks. I think they get their signal from an atomic clock in Frankfurt/Germany.

Bjarney: I have three consumer GPS units, I'm sure all except my most ancient, a Garmin 12XL, should have that feature.

Texas Ranger: That station is DCF77 www.dcf77.de

On winter time, I spent a few days up in Anchorage, Alaska during December. The sun there rises around 10 am, hangs low in the sky, then sets at 4 pm. That and the cold keeps folks in for so long, they get "cabin fever", described as a "12ft. stare in a 10 ft room"

[This message has been edited by GeneSF (edited 10-16-2003).]

[This message has been edited by GeneSF (edited 10-16-2003).]

Until everybody sees those ads and decides to go at the same time!

The weather's not holding up too bad here for the middle of October. It's getting chilly at night now and autumnal winds are definitely on the way, but we're still getting some days bright and sunny, temperatures comfortably up into the 60s.

Winter's just going to feel cold after the heatwave this summer.

Radio-controlled clocks appeared as projects in quite a few electronics journals in the 1970s, most of them here picking up the powerful standard time signal from the transmitter at Rugby, England.

Winter just arrived. I had the questionable pleasure of walking/slipping on snow and ice today. Brr...

I'd like to live on the southern hemisphere october-march and on the northern hemisphere april-september.

i'm in germany, and i like it. nice weather and hot in the summer, nice winters with snow.

Was it only a few days ago I said it was still quite pleasant during the day?

The last two days it's been chilly, windy, and miserable here. I think winter is on the way.

I don't mind low temperatures if it's calm and dry. Those frosty January mornings when snow lays on the ground but the sun is shining and the air is still are rather invigorating.

I just don't like the gray, drizzly, windy weather that drags on for weeks.

Paul,
I'm in certain agreement with you there, mate!.
Just on the brink of good Spring weather, we have nasty rain and really cold temperatures.
It is forecast to snow tomorrow, I hope that Summer isn't going to be like this, otherwise, are you guys looking for a correspondent on the Electrical systems in Fiji!.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 10-25-2003).]

Daylight savings, known officially as British Summer Time, ended here in the early hours this morning (Sunday).

It won't be long until many people will be coming home from work in the dark again.

In a field a couple of miles up the road the locals have already been stacking up a bonfire ready for November 5.

Hey Guys,
I wish I'd never opened my mouth!.
The temperature here reached 43 degrees yesterday at 3pm and it looks like it may go even higher today.
I drank about 6 litres of water chilled in the fridge yesterday, there's no respite from the heat, no matter where you go.
Overnight it was still 22 degrees.
It's too hot to even think straight!.

Ah! Transvaal/Natal Christmas nights - I remember them well!

Better than this
-3.6C

Been there since Christmas day and keeps shifting around.

43C is a bit too much though - what's the humidity like? Messina on the Zimbabwe border at 45C was fine as it was so dry.

Had 53C on my dial in the bottom of Telfer Gold Mine Pit, Western Australia - that felt hot and you had to keep blinking or your eyes dried out!


Light experimentation has shown that ice cold beer works very well in these circumstances

[Edited 'cos I still can't spell!]

[This message has been edited by Hutch (edited 01-02-2004).]

Hutch,
I'm reading the Humidity meter at this time(1702hrs) and it reads 95%.
It's very hot and sticky.

yuck!

I make that 127 deg. F! I like to be warm, but that's a little too hot!

Trumpy: 43C / 109F on the South Island?! I thought such temperatures were only ever reached up in Auckland and the north. Looks like you're getting the heatwave we had here last summer.

Paul,
I don't think it's ever been this hot here, at least while I've been around.
It's so dry over here, that there is a total fire ban.

It was kind of steamy I must admit but we were in the bottom of a ~100m deep pit in the ground with bare white rock wall all around that focused a midday sun right on us – glad I was just visiting and didn’t work there!

My best recollection of heat was just after I’d started work on a South African gold mine. At a planning meeting, the Ventilation Officer, after dodging the issue for some time, finally had to admit that he didn’t know what the exact temperature was in a certain working place because his recording man had passed out! Sorry if I’ve told that one here before.

Hope you get a break from the heat soon Mike. Please send some this way!

South African mines are notorious for their high temperature, aren't they? I remember seeing a picture of a SA mining worker in a big owen used to train the worker to stand the heat before letting him work in the mine itself.

They’re not that bad in general C-H. You are battling with Mother Nature with very deep mines nearly 4000m down (13000 ft for the metrically challenged). With the natural heat flow from the earth, at these depths the virgin rock temperatures can be in excess of 50C. Out of necessity, South African mining companies pioneered mining refrigeration with massive fridge plans both on surface and underground. South Africans also pioneered earth leakage protection devices too – just to keep it electrical . These fridge plants chill huge quantities of water and consume an enormous amount of power. With the hoists, fans, fridge plants, compressors, lights and equipment each of these mines consumes a small town’s worth of power and its recent massive price increases has been a major concern for the mining houses down there as after labour, it is the next greatest input cost.

As well as cooling the air down with heat exchangers, the chilled water (nearly freezing) is used directly in the air-powered rock drills (as the lubricant) and keeps the working place comfortably cool. It is away from the working ends in places with less than adequate ventilation that problems can occur. If there’s no ventilation, you’re not supposed to go there. Somehow though, many geological problems always seemed to be somewhere that someone had cut the juice to the fans – or simply relocated the fan.

[edited for clarity]

[This message has been edited by Hutch (edited 01-04-2004).]

Hey Hutch,
Take all you want of the heat, mate, there's enough here for everybody!.
It's this time of the year here that us Firefighters dread the most, it just makes you feel that you are only one siren call away from a really catastrophic fire.
The winds here are drying everything out to the hilt, rain is about a month or two away, according to the long-range weather forecasters.

Weather forcasters? I always call them weather guessers.