Ascension : The Met Office Report
Submitted by The Islander (Met Office) 15.04.2010 (Article Archived on 29.04.2010)

Statistics for the week ending Monday 12-Apr-10

Statistics for the week ending Monday 12-Apr-10 

	Max (Celsius)	Min (Celsius)	Rainfall (mm)
AIRHEAD	32.0	26.1	Trace
TRAVELLERS	32.4	24.6	1.4
RESIDENCY	27.5	21.6	3.6
GEORGETOWN	34.4	25.4	1.5
ST. HELENA	23.6	18.6	15.4
FALKLANDS	16.5	3.1	Trace
UK (Brize Norton)	17.8	2.5	0.4

UK: An unsettled and windy start to the week but became fine and pleasantly warm by mid week with spring sunshine as high pressure became dominant.

Falklands: An unsettled week with strong to gale force rotor winds in the beginning of the week.

Ascension: Quite a cloudy week at times with a few slight showers.

St. Helena: A showery start to the week with some gusty winds followed by a mostly dry end with periods of good sunny spells.

While on a night shift recently I went outside to do an observation of the weather and cloud but got distracted by the beauty of the sky at night.  While hunting down various constellations I caught a shooting star out of the corner of my eye, but by the time I turned to get a proper view it had disappeared.  A shooting star is by definition a streak of light in the sky at night caused by a meteoroid which hits the earth’s atmosphere and air friction causes it to melt, vapourise or explode.

It is a common misconception that meteorology is the study of meteors and related astronomical phenomena when it is in fact the study of weather processes and climate.  Despite the fact that today meteors and meteorology belong to separate fields of science, they do actually have shared origins.  Both words ‘meteorology’ and ‘meteor’ are from the ancient Greek word ‘meteoros’ meaning ‘high in the sky’ and was first used by the Greek philosopher Aristotle.  Therefore in the early days of Greek meteorology any object falling from high in the sky could have been termed a meteor and this may have included raindrops and snowflakes as well as flaming rocks!  Today however, the term ‘hydrometeor’ exists which covers weather related meteors, including all precipitation types and even wind blown snow and sea spray, while the term meteor is reserved purely for objects which enter the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space.