On Friday, 28 November 2014 14:53:29 UTC, Graham Easterling wrote:
The easterly wind topped F7 this morning on cliff tops, gust of 48kt at St Ives, 39mph at my station well back from he sea front.

This strength of wind straight from the east in late November, and yet the temp has peaked near 15C! Max of 14.8C in Penzance, 14.2C even in the near gale on top of the Island St Ives.

No dark easterly either, virtually cloudless from 11:00-14:00. Great windsurfing conditions at Marazion http://www.easterling.freeserve.co.uk/marazion.html

Possible to sit in west facing shelter, in the sun, and have a pint.

Has anyone tracked the air backwards? if so I'd be interested.

Back in 2010 during an easterly on 29th November, it was 11C colder.

Graham
Penzance

Vindicated! Thanks Graham.
There are two factors here which fascinate me. I have never seen a Tc flow coming from so deep in the Sahara as this morning's chart indicates, although the chances of such air getting here are effectively zero .http://www.westwind.ch/?link=ukmb,ht...racknell+13 2
But what modified air we have already got may very well allow for considerable warming today. We may break a date record.
The other factor is this airstream's potential for producing a foehn.
Yesterday Innsbruck briefly reached 15C in the afternoon, and at 3am today three Swiss Alpine villages just S. of Zurich were each at 19C-although Zurich itself stayed at 3C. I expect the phenomenon will be more widespread today, although such a dry airstream may not have had the opportunity to pick up enough moisture while crossing the Med. to produce a well-developed foehn.
I've experienced two foehns. The first was when skiing in the Bernese Oberland. After 4days of crisp subzero skiing we set off into slush and a temp. of 12C. The sun was shining through thin low-level ice just above our heads, producing the best multi-coloured iridescence I've ever seen. That, combined with the crack of snow cannon and subsequent roar of avalanches made for an eerie day's skiing.
The other was while sitting outside at a bar just N. of the Oberland massif at the end of February. The fag-end of the foehn cloud-basically aC- was dissolving as it fell off the massif. The temp. was low to mid 20's C, and the air was as dry as a board, so dry that when I wound my film on-this was forty years ago!-I heard the crackling of triboluminescence and the film was covered in sparks when I developed it.
The final feature was that air was dead calm for minutes at a time, and then suddenly massive turbulence erupted for 30 seconds or so with wind speeds of probably 15-20 mph-then it would go dead calm again.
You're never bored in a foehn!