hot and dry weather

[Ali]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince 
Winston)" <catlady at w...> wrote:
 
>>> What was the weather of the sumner of 1996 in Surrey, England? A 
couple of people on Main List have presented quotes about the summer 
of 1995 being a heat wave and drought season with a hosepipe ban in 
RL UK, leaving me to ask whether the summer of OoP was hot and 
droughty because of the nigredo stage that John Granger mentioned, 
or because it was commenting on RL summer of 1995.>>>

You asked for it didn't you? My husband is a Meteorologist, so we're 
a bit weather obsessed in my house. Yes, weather obsessed even by 
British standards, which makes us very sad!

Thames Water who supply most of Surrey have not had a hosepipe ban 
since c.1989. There have been hosepipe bans in other parts of the 
country though.

In terms of what the weather was like, July 1996 actually saw higher 
rain fall than average. August the 2nd 1996 had a lower than average 
Max temperature - recorded at 20.7 c in Crowthorne, Berkshire which 
is quite near Surrey. Please see 
http://www.lyneside.demon.co.uk/aug1996.lst for a breakdown of daily 
temperatures for Crowthorne for August. This site actually details a 
fellow Meteorologist's personal recordings of weather, but is 
recommended by my husband who is quite pedantic about these issues!

It might (or might not) interest you to know that a "drought" used 
to be announced by the Met Office in Britain once an area had not 
had rain for *2* weeks. Now, it is left to our water companies to 
define droughts, and they tend not to. We apparently have far fewer 
hosepipe bans than we used to as the water companies are better at 
conserving water. Thus, although 7 months of this year have been 
hotter (and drier) than average, we have no hosepipe ban. The fact 
that my lawn and many of my plants are nolonger green and lush (in 
fact they look downright dead) is another matter all together!!

I would agree with Steve that JKR is not trying to link the 
Potterverse into RL. The dates, moons and weather simply do not fit. 
I don't think that she is particularly interested in dates or 
numbers as the constant theories are the number of Hogwarts' 
students bear testimony.

Ali