Happy July 4th to all American readers!!
Well it took a while but summer seems to have arrived, with four very hot days in a row, although that seems set to change 
as many of our students would say, or text. If you are set to visit us and want to know what the weather is going to be like for your trip or just coming to the Lakes on holiday, the two sources we use for accurate, or as accurate as weather forecasting can be in the Lakes, are the Mountain Weather Information Service and the Met Office. The MWIS is the forecast we use day to day, although it only provides forecast for three days whereas the Met Office forecast is not as specific although does go further into the future. The centre has been collecting data for the Met Office every day since 1993 when we became a field centre, although thankfully they have installed an automated system for collecting data last year, this means we no longer have to trudge out to the field below the centre in all weather at 09:oo every day of the year, Christmas day included! The data on temperature and rainfall is collected by a variety of apparatuses and sent remotely to the Met office, who send us an electronic copy of the data at the end of each month. We, sadly, get quite excited about this and have a little game of guess the highest and lowest temperature or total rainfall of the month. Last month, as you may have been aware if you were present in the North West was not too June like, with the total rainfall reaching 92mm with only ten days receiving no rain at all, while the 5th June saw the temperature only just rise above 10°C .
Meanwhile in cyberspace we have now not only got a twitter account (@blencathrafsc), a blog but now have a Facebook fan page, just search blencathra FSC field centre in facebook and then like us, please!
