Atlantic storms return.

Last Monday to Wednesday saw the winter temperatures for Scotland, England and Wales break instrument records, reaching over 21 degrees Celsius.

Newborough beach, 25/02/2019.  Air temperature about 15 Celsius.

But by Saturday, an intense area of cold invaded into the Atlantic from Canada, giving the jet stream a huge boost.  By Saturday afternoon, we were in 95km/h gusts, which is not too bad.  Friday night had actually seen snow deposited at higher levels on the Snowdonia mountains.  But Storm Freya was then immediately to follow on Sunday, forecast to bring 115km/h gusts.

Freya, forecast to hit overhead Anglesey.  Image: UK Met Office.

With the able help of my wife, we wound down the 12m Yagi and luffed it over onto its side.  The 20m delta was retracted, as (unusually) was my 17m delta.  I was left with only a 15m delta for a station!  For the first four-and-a-half years, I had to leave the tower and Yagi up permanently, whatever the wind, in order to qualify for exemption from planning permission (which I'm happy to say occurred back in March, 2018).  During those years, we saw one storm of 85mph (137km/h) gusts!

Ready for Freya.

Luckily, Freya lost a lot of energy on its way to us, and passed further south than forecast, leading to what we would consider a normal windy day - about 80km/h gusts.

By this morning, all-band coverage had been restored!

Interesting to note that a very small, but definite positive-leading, Cycle 25 sunspot has developed on the sun.  It's quite difficult to see on the magnetogram (above, and on the other side of the equator to the much more obvious, Cycle 24 spot), but is clearly detectable at UV:

Both images: SDO, via SolarHam.