Mackerel: sky over Durham and fish in my fridge

Mackerel Sky

Lamb or Sheep clouds

Thursday we had a spectacular mackerel sky in Durham, where I took these pictures, that lasted for at least an hour. So unusual for England, where heavy undistinguished clouds are more the norm. Lots of people I talk to don't know what a mackerel sky is, so I looked it up on Weatheronline to provide more information. They are high clouds, forming between 6-10,000 m (20-33,000 ft). High winds disrupts cloud formation to make them streaky or puffy: the former look like stripes on a mackerel, the latter look like sheep. And indeed, these sheepy clouds are called schaefchenwolken in German (lamb clouds) and nuages moutonneux in French (sheep clouds).
    I always learned that high clouds don't rain, but Weatheronline says that a mackerel sky foretells rainy weather and storms, as any sailor or fisherman can tell you. It forms about 400km in advance of the rainy patch. Sure enough, Friday was cloudy with some pretty dark ones up there.

Smoked mackerel & banana

   Despite the rarity of mackerel sky, England can lay claim to some other, pretty nice kinds of mackerel:  honey-smoked mackerel, smoked peppered mackerel, even chili smoked mackerel. These are filets sold vacuum packed in supermarkets and are the perfect quick food, hot or cold. They can be mixed with cream cheese to form a tasty dip, or I like to eat them stirred into a ripe mashed banana. How disgusting, you might think, but a friend says it is a common food in places like Madagascar. Well, I've never been to Madagascar, but a trip there to see the birds and eat mackerel/banana sounds just the thing.

Mackerel sky over Durham

   When spending long spells in other countries, I really miss smoked mackerel – it's such a cheap and plentiful fish, I'm surprised more places haven't taken up this way to serve it. Personally, I don't like cooked fresh mackerel (too fishy) and can't think of anything much more repulsive than tinned mackerel like they sell in the States (well, maybe tinned pilchards are worse). Anyway, with the push to eat more Omega 3s, think of the lowly mackerel, with or without the banana!

Bulbs already sprouting in December!

Bulbs* sprouting in December

My spring bulbs are pushing up through the ground! Most are only an inch high, but two daffodil bulbs have leaves 7 and 5 inches high. What will happen to them through the hard winter we are supposed to have?

Caught out by deep snow in the past two years, we finally bought a snow shovel (less back-breaking than using a short coal shovel to do the walks). But we noticed here that few people ever do shovel their walks. Maybe because snow has been so uncommon in the past? Maybe because this is not as a litigious society as America? Maybe because with the NHS, people don't have to worry about Health Insurance paying for broken legs?

The growing bulbs go along with the idea that the global temperature is in a warming trend. Scientifically, this in indisputable, and I'm glad to see that one of the foremost Climate Change skeptics – Richard Muller, Professor of Physics at University of California Berkeley – has redone the analyses of temperature and found that they are indeed correct. So he is not a skeptic anymore but a convert. How many others do we need to follow suit before some action is taken?

Meanwhile, enjoy our see-saw weather!

*The patch of grass in the photo is stuff from the bird feeders strung above: probably rye grass and sunflowers, needing clearing out periodically.

Musings on Sun, Rain and Mountains

I stepped out of the house yesterday noon into bright sunshine, and it was raining! And freezing: the temperature was only 48° (9°C). I guess our heat wave has ended... It rained two more times today while the sun was shining. Needless to say, the wind was blowing as well. Crazy weather! I guess it's due to Hurricane Philippe in the North Atlantic (but isn't that supposed to bring warm air from the south?).

A friend says there is a saying in Korean for when the sun shines as it rains: "Horangi changga kanun nal". A direct translation says "A day when the tiger gets married", meaning a rare occasion indeed!

Sometimes there is low cloud cover all day in Durham. The clouds sit over the coastal plains but not over the Pennines to the west. (They say the Pennines are mountains, but they look more like the Appalachians than the Rockies...) So there is a wee* gap between the clouds and the hills, and just before sunset, the sun will come out in that gap. The late evening sunshine is exquisite at 10.30 at night in the summer...

The cloud gap over Durham when the sun shines as it sets,
but in winter...

In fact, the Pennines and Appalachians are related: both were formed during the same mountain-building event (the Hercynian orogeny) 240 million years ago, and they have been worn down since then by erosion. At least the Appalachians are covered with trees. Here, the Pennines are mostly agricultural or high moor populated by heather, looking something like tundra (well, look at our latitude!). So they resemble the Rocky Mountains after all, but only above treeline! You can walk straight down the Pennines north to south along the Pennine Way, something like the Appalachian Trail. But don't expect to find any hotels along the path – just high, bleak, rainy moor. It would be like walking the Continental Divide.

*Durham at times was contested by Scotland, another topic