In their latest cyclone warning bulletin the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology Tropical Cyclone Warning Centre in Brisbane revealed this forecast track for Tropical
Cyclone Ita:

Forecast track for Tropical Cyclone Ita at 7:57 pm EST Sunday 13 April 2014

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Severe Tropical Cyclone Ita has now reduced in strength to category 1. Here's a report from 7 News about the arrival of Ita in North Queensland:

Cooktown bore the brunt of the damage. Many properties are without power, and a few without roofs, but thankfully there are currently no reports of any loss of life in Australia.

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The mass media have (for a change!) recently been full of reports about floods in South West England (amongst other places!). Here we offer our own perspective on recent events, together with a few additional bits of information that don't seem to have been widely reported as yet.

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It's not often that we devote an article to a learned academic article, but then again it's not often that such an article is published concerning one of our hobby horses here at econnexus.org.uk. It's also not often that an academic paper is published just as the sort of weather it discusses is obligingly demonstrating itself. It's unheard of that such a journal article is introduced by a video! As the St. Jude day storm was causing flood alerts on the River Exe and many other Devon rivers yesterday Dr. James Screen of the University of Exeter had a new paper published in The Institute of Physics journal "Environmental Research Letters" entitled "Influence of Arctic sea ice on European summer precipitation". Here's his introduction:

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The storm of St. Jude is almost upon us, and the official forecast has eased slightly. The latest Met Office news release now says:

The storm is set to deepen rapidly just to the south west of the UK late today, before moving into western areas in the very early hours of Monday morning.

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South West England is already very damp. Following a number of flood alerts earlier in the month, the Environment Agency issued several amber flood alerts in Devon yesterday,  followed by a red flood warning this morning for the River Char near the Dorset Coast:

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As recent summers go, we've had a cracker. All that's changing now though. I went for a bike ride earlier this evening, and things were reminiscent of this time last year. The roads were covered in soil and stones washed from the fields. The road along the ridge above here had but a narrow piece of tarmac visible above the brown ponds on either side. Here's a picture I took at the top of the hill:

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Following up a line of research suggested to me by The Telegraph earlier today I followed a link to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. This is the sight that greeted me:

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The Australian Climate Commission have just released two reports on climate change and the measures being taken around the world to address it. The first is entitled "The Critical Decade: Extreme Weather". Our headline covers the sort of extreme weather we're most familiar here in South West England, but the Climate Commission present a long list of other examples of recent extreme weather in Australia:

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It was a nice sunny day today in South Devon, for the first time in a very long time. Here's some proof:

Blue skies and still waters at The Turf Locks on April 6th 2013

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