Max (Celsius)

Min (Celsius)

Rainfall (mm)

AIRHEAD

31.6

24.9

3.6

TRAVELLERS

31.6

23.9

5.0

RESIDENCY

27.8

21.3

7.5

GEORGETOWN

32.5

24.1

1.0

ST. HELENA

23.7

18.5

16.0

FALKLANDS

14.7

5.2

11.2

UK (Brize Norton)

17.5

0.0

0.0

UK

A mostly fine, dry and settled week across the UK as high pressure was dominant.  Clear skies over Scotland gave a low of minus 5 C in the Highlands but spring had definitely arrived in London by the weekend with a max of 19.6 C.

Falklands

An unsettled and windy week with low cloud and fog at times.

Ascension

A relatively cloudy week with showers at times.

St. Helena

A cloudy and showery week, especially over the weekend when 26.6 mm of rain fell.

The big news story of the week has been the eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in southern Iceland and the chaos it has been causing to air travel across Europe.  This volcano has been active since 20^th March 2010 but in the early hours of Thursday 15^th April 2010 it began erupting violently with a large ash cloud with tops reaching 35000 feet.  Unfortunately, this eruption coincided with an atmospheric pressure pattern which had a direct impact on the direction in which the volcanic ash travelled and subsequently resulted in the grounding of the majority of Europe’s aircraft for the first time in history.  Centred to the west of the British Isles in the mid Atlantic was a large area of high pressure which produced a clockwise flow of air through the atmosphere from Iceland right across the North Sea and into north western Europe and Scandinavia.  Through the weekend this area of high pressure extended further into mainland Europe and subsequently, with continued eruptions, the clouds of fine ash were blown further east.  Due to the nature of high pressure systems and the fact that they are slow moving and can take days or weeks to break down the original cloud of dust ultimately became trapped in the atmosphere above Europe.  As the ash began to descend observations from across the UK reported layers of ash between 3000ft and 15000 ft and each layer between 200 ft and 500 ft thick.  Fortunately though by this afternoon (Monday) as the eruptions begin to ease an area of low pressure to the north of the British Isles and the east of Iceland has started to disperse the ash layers by introducing a series of frontal systems which will act to ‘wash’ the ash out of the atmosphere through associated rainfall.  So in the end, weather has played a significant role in this natural disaster by initially causing large negative human impacts but later coming to our aid in the recovery process!