On 25/05/2012 02:48, Tudor Hughes wrote:
On May 24, 11:24 pm, Adam wrote:
On 24/05/12 17:49, Kate Brown wrote:

On Thu, 24 May 2012, Simon Bennett wrote
On 23/05/12 22:04, Tudor Hughes wrote:
It's been like it all day -
dirty and yellowish and not a trace of Ci or Cs.

This is all we've had in Thanet since this 'heatwave' began. Not lovely.

Here in Blackheath it started off grey again but the sun was burning
through by 10 and this afternoon the sky has been a pale but real blue.
The cars are all covered with a thin layer of dust. Was it Sahara sand
in the air or pollution or what? It's jolly lovely now.

It is the wrong wind direction for Saharan sand. My guess would be
pollen. I have been suffering with hayfever this week.

Surely there can't be that amount of pollen in the air. We'd
all be dead, or at least wish we were. My guess is that the haze is
simply dust of European origin. The particles are small enough to
selectively scatter the blue, giving the fiery red of the setting sun.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.

.... can't comment on your situation further east, but for several days
now (at least 7), deposits of pollen hereabouts have been prodigious -
even covering cars underneath car-port cover (mine for example) that
haven't been moved in that time. We've all been suffering throaty/raspy
coughs too - what sort of pollen I wouldn't like to say, but after a
heavily delayed start, the trees have burst into activity with the
dramatic rise in temperature and sunlight levels.

The 'milkiness' in the sky though - that, as Tudor says, is surely
ex-industrial/ploughed farmland haze, perhaps with some from further
away (North Africa?) - but I haven't looked at any trajectories or
dust-storm reports.

Martin.


--
West Moors / East Dorset
Lat: 50deg 49.25'N, Long: 01deg 53.05'W
Height (amsl): 17 m (56 feet)
COL category: C1 overall