UK Weather Rain and Snow Radar

Flooding in Sigginstone, South WalesWith all this bad weather we’re having at the moment I’ve found that the UK Met. Office’s rain radar service has been invaluable to see where the really heavy rain and snow is.

It updates every 30 minutes and even has an animated sequence of images over the past 6 hours or so so you can see the direction that the rain clouds are moving.

It’s really cool and can be found here – http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/radar/index.html

It covers the UK, Ireland, North France and North Belgium.

Update: Thursday 16th December 2010 – you may find this new page useful – http://www.south-wales.org/2010/useful-information-for-south-wales-snow/

Cardiff Bay Sunset with Jupiter and Venus

After several days of grey and gloom there was an amazing sunset in Cardiff Bay tonight – a gradual change from blue to black in the sky colour, but most amazing of all was that two planets were easily visible.

In the photo you can see Venus to the lower right (almost in the centre of the frame) and Jupiter above and to the left.  Venus is currently about 1.09AU (astronomical units) away – that’s about 101,321,918 miles!  Jupiter is about 5.66AU away – that’s about 526,130,324 miles!!

Click on the photo for a bigger view.

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