Friday, 26/7/19, 0420 , BST. Dawn breaking and clouds partly opened during a distant thunder & lightning storm following days of very hot weather - the max-min garden thermometer registered 90 degree in the shade! The Crescent Moon with Copernicus right on the terminator was photographed and then noticed, a hand-span or so down to the left, a the bright red star... the return of Aldebaran. Observed from the bedroom window and the open back-door, using 12-36x50 T50 Olivon spotter on a lightweight tripod. A short-lived but interesting spectacle. Regards maf.

Very strange conditions last night.
Some stars were visible but before nightfall there were very odd sky colours and in the day unusual high level clouds.

I measured 36.5C with an accurate thermometer. I should have used my clinical mercury thermometer.
I think it reached 37C or over 98F in the shade.
But clouds came.
I think that without the cloud cover we would have seen 40C somewhere in southern England or close.

42.6C in Paris is high as I suppose it was also humid.

Doesn't bode well for the future.

Regards,
David

The "very odd clouds" might be due to the high moisture content in the mesosphere. Did they appear to be noctilucent to some degree David? An atmospheric state that's been with us for quite sometime.

_________________
brian

No Brian, the odd colour clouds. were probably at around 15,000 ft.
It looked like the odd effects one gets from volcanoes.
It was before NLC would be visible and the sky was murky also.

The weird cirrus cloud looks like a white seahorse in the sky on my photos, but I don't have anybody to help me post them.
What is odd is how isolated this largish cloud is. Almost overhead here.
25,000 ft or near.
This was in the daytime.

They reckon maybe 38.7C at Cambridge university botanical gardens. Maybe a higher one will turn up from yesterday. But the instruments have to be calibrated.

I am pretty sure that near Heathrow it would have got to near 40C if the clouds hadn't arrived some time after 3pm BST. It did reach 37.9C at Heathrow.

My air conditioner temperature indoor reading was a steady 30C, which is the highest I have seen.
This has worked for ten years now, although I have to use the remote control as the panel switches seem not to work sometimes. De Longhi.
My bedroom last night was 27.1C steady. No air conditioner, but north facing.

We are lucky to have a 200 year old large oak tree to the south. Removing it would be a big mistake as it shades the whole building. Perhaps 60ft tall and very wide canopy. It does stop my seeing Jupiter and Saturn.

Regards,
David.

If the cloud was horse-shaped, you might have seen Pegasus on its way to Olympus.

_________________
brian

David, from today's Spaceweather.com (Sunday, Jul. 28, 2019)

"STRANGE SUNSETS OBSERVED AS THE ARCTIC BURNS"

Could this be what you saw?

regards,

_________________
Brian
52.3N 0.6W
Wellingborough UK.
254mm LX90 on Superwedge, WO ZS66SD, Helios 102mm f5 on EQ1, Hunter 11x80, Pentax 10x50
ASI120MC Toucam Pros 740k/840k/900nc mono, Pentax K110D
Ro-Ro roof shed

Thanks for that Brian.

It could well be that or volcanic activity or both.

I thought that it was the extreme heat.

The colours were strange.

There was a heat burst in Licolnshire also.
I think this was the same as microbursts that my friends experienced in Finland where many tree were blown over. Luckily they were not injured.

Another friend was blown upside down in a light aircraft on landing but managed to recover and land safely.

Regards,
David