28/08/2015 Weather World


28/08/2015

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Now Nick Miller looks back at this year's extreme weather, including

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conditions that tested the world's best golfers, in Weather World.

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Storms, science and the stories behind the weather making news.

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Coming up, Cumbria under water again.

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The floodwaters are up to their living room windows.

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Can you believe these people have decided to stay indoors?

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Events today appear unprecedented, even surpassing the 2005

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It is the second time we have gone through it.

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Hard for the children, hard for the women.

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This reservoir has completely dried up.

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It goes to show how severe the blight is.

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Making waves to prepare for a warmer, wetter future.

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This time I am in Scotland at historic St Andrews,

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I will be meeting the people who try to make this course playable

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Heavy rain and strong winds have brought chaos to parts

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of the country as hundreds of people are forced to flee from their homes.

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The weather pattern was all too familiar.

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For the third time in over a decade incessant rain slammed

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We have got the highest tier of weather warning

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And floodwaters inundating the towns and cities

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After 13 hours of rain, nothing was going to stop this

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The barriers are somewhere under here.

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There is concern the nearby bridge is in a dangerous state.

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It is a bit scary with the houses being so high.

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But it is the sheer volume of water that did the damage as the UK

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enjoyed its wettest 24 hours on record, with 341 millimetres

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of rain falling in the Lake District.

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The events today surpassed the 2005 and 2009 floods.

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The amount of rainfall and water levels is vast and we are working

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very hard to protect the properties and particularly the lives at risk.

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That is a sofae going down the river.

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The situation there must be pretty awful.

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That water, at nine o'clock this morning, was just at the bottom

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Within half an hour it was rising rapidly.

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The floodwater is halfway up their living room windows.

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Can you believe that people have decided to stay indoors?

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And from the Lake District the floodwaters swept

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Nearly 48 hours after a record-breaking deluge caused

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these floods, Carlisle's roads looked like canals.

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Thousands of homes have been ruined in the east of the city.

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After being stranded for two nights in the dark without power,

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the casualties were still coming this morning.

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The ones trying to tough it out finally gave in.

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And if you have lived here for more than ten years this is the second

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I don't even know if I can speak because it is the second time

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As the clean-up operation began, the community spirit kicked in.

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How important is it for you to do it?

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I think it is very important, helping the community when there has

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There is so much that needs to be done.

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But every home here has been flooded.

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To help families, the Government has promised ?50 million,

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This is what is left of Natalie's home.

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She says her insurance will not cover the damage.

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So any help we could get would be greatly appreciated.

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This is the Lake District village of Glenridding being flooded

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for the second time in the same week, as more rain follows Storm

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For the Brown family, who have owned this shop for 30

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It was not just northern England but Northern Ireland

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Storm Desmond's impact felt far and wide.

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But it was Cumbria and the Lake District hit hardest.

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We were driving along the banks of the River Eden and we came

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Have a look at the destruction caused by the force of the water

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Many caravans have been smashed together and smashed

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It is more akin to the sort of thing you would see in Tornado Alley

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What is going wrong with our weather?

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Scientists say the strong El Nino may have contributed to the stormy

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start to winter and record winter rainfall may also be linked

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The latest research says that under the same weather pattern an extended

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period of rainfall is sometimes more likely because of the emissions

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This is from Britain's first officially named storm,

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What may look like snow is actually foam whipped up by strong winds.

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Here we are at the famous St Andrews golf course.

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When they host the Open here, the best players come to take it on.

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But they are taking on the weather, too.

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An early morning deluge and a three-hour delay to play

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As the floods were swept away, more bad weather was about to sweep in.

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We have another suspension in play this morning.

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The golfers have been out there for half an hour.

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But the winds are so strong, the balls are moving around

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Let's talk to someone who was here that we don't,

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The wind picking up today but that weekend was wild?

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Even on the tournament days it was pretty windy.

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Can you ever prepare for wind that strong?

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We can prepare for normal windy conditions like today.

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We have got a unit here called track man.

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Today with the wind downwind, the ball travels further but moves

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We have also got a function in the unit that we can normalise

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It should have a relatively straight flight.

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We will aim towards the monument and we will look at

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It travelled to the left-hand side like I mentioned.

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If we look in the unit we can see the ball flight.

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If we normalise here on the left-hand side,

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you can see how the shot was straight without the wind.

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You can have a go accounting for the St Andrews wind?

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Coming up later, we look at how they deal with rain here.

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Sometimes it can rain so much, so hard, you cannot

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I am rolling down some sort of creek in the middle of this weather.

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Kerry Packer filming his personal flood drama in Texas.

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A storm he is lucky to survive by climbing a tree.

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With weather like that you would think we have not to worry

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But there is an expanding area of interest above our

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I will find out all about it in a moment inside this observatory.

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There has been a lots to look up and wonder at in recent months,

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including the night in September the moon turned from silver to red.

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Viewable by billions around the world, a super Moon lunar

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In Europe, the highlight of the year was the solar eclipse seen

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from the Faroe Islands, turning day into night.

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Caught on camera in Norway in October.

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Humpbacked whales swimming beneath the Aurora, or the Northern Lights.

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I have come inside the observatory to find Scotland's largest

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All well and good if you want a close-up of the moon and stars.

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But for a good handle on space weather, you need access to data

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from satellites which you download onto a simple laptop.

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Space weather is all about these huge explosions happening on the sun

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and injecting huge clouds of energetic material,

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particles travelling towards the Earth at high speeds.

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Why do we care that it is coming our way?

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All this energetic material interacts with the magnetic field

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on satellites, and that disturbs communications.

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Things like GPS, air traffic control and even just your Wi-Fi.

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I guess it is really useful to know it is coming our way

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There is work being done here to get better at that?

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All of these events on the sun are driven

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You want to model the behaviour of the sun's magnetic field

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so you can give people as much warning as possible to prepare

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Still to come... being done here.

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A cliff becomes a waterfall again for the first time in living memory.

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But it is the Mediterranean that has been the focus this year as hundreds

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of thousands of migrants have crossed it into Europe.

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Some have not made it, falling victim to high

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Strong winds batter the Greek island of Lesbos as more bodies

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Despite the bad weather, the boats kept coming,

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their occupants helped ashore by volunteers.

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Others were shocked, soaked and shivering.

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This constant flow of people may have slowed in the last 24 hours

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But this shows women, children and men are prepared

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to risk their lives whatever the weather.

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Once into Europe, the onward journey for these people is becoming

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increasingly difficult, as autumn and now winter

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This is the scene from Macedonia in October.

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Abdullah and his family escaped from Syria.

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Very hard for children, hard for women, hard

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And for those that remain in Syria, winters can be harsh.

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This was last winter with snow and freezing temperatures.

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This winter Damascus has had a record cold night.

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But it is heat and man's contribution to the warming

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of the planet that could affect us all, say scientists.

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In the media, the ground turns to dust from three years of drought.

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2015 will likely be proclaimed the hottest year on record.

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A warmer atmosphere can be a better one, too.

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I am here in the Netherlands to understand the force of a flood

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The waves are travelling the length of this tank, 300 metres.

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That is what you need to create the world's largest artificial

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waves, reaching a height of more than five metres.

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Waves mimicking sea conditions can be made to order.

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For any part of the world it can create a hurricane or a tsunami.

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The fightback against flooding starts here.

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These man-made waves will help engineers design the very

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If scientists are correct, our future could be

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The prospect of a different future lead to this.

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Nearly 200 nations making a landmark agreement in December to work

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to limit global warming to less than two Celsius by the end

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Sometimes when you want to make a change, it is necessary to turn

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It is not for the better but it is simply for the best.

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This agreement should be the turning point in our story, a turning

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Climate change brings the possibility of bigger,

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more frequent storms, and the prospect of

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The UK and Scotland has a lot of coast that could erode.

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One man interested in that is Tom from St Andrews University.

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This is one of many hundreds of sites around the coast

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In the cliff face you can see some of the buildings.

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You have to imagine a whole range year that has fallen into the sea.

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This is one of many hundreds ranging from prehistoric sites

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to the remnants of the Second World War.

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We are working with local communities to record some

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This is accelerating because of bigger,

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We hear stories from locals that there is more damage

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We know that with any one single storm there is the potential

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That is why we are asking people to keep their eyes and ears open

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This could keep you busy for many years?

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It means we have the chance of getting some fantastic

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We are talking a lot about how we are influencing

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What about natural weather variability?

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One of the main aspects of that recently has been El Nino.

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Seen from space, Patricia, the most powerful hurricane ever

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recorded, heads towards Mexico in October.

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But Mexico was ready and lucky, as the storm made landfall

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The severe flooding swept into the USA.

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It derailed this train in Texas as water engulfed the tracks.

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Dramatic rooftop rescues in September as a tropical storm hit

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Tens of thousands were left homeless.

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The power of the flood is there to say.

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Stronger tropical cyclones are one weather outcome from El Nino.

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A natural occasional warming of the Pacific ocean.

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This El Nino is one of the strongest we have seen.

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The ripple effects have been seen around the world

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China and Beijing's skyline in September, barely visible

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The city had its first ever red alert for pollution.

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El Nino means fewer weather systems to help clear and clean the air.

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In India, El Nino is blamed for a drier south-west monsoon.

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But the opposite in Chennai in December as the north-west

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monsoon produced several days of rain and flooding.

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But in Africa El Nino is being blamed for a drought.

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Here in Ethiopia the rains have failed again, leaving parched earth,

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scrawny cattle and millions of people in need of food aid.

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At this well things are getting desperate.

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People travelled here from miles around to give

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But the water table has fallen to almost nothing.

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30, maybe 40 metres down, it is full of silt and mud.

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The worst drought since 1982, with millions facing water

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Under normal circumstances I would be waist high in water.

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This reservoir has completely dried up.

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It goes to show how severe the drought is.

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I'm about to go where the public does not see.

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The slightly less glamorous side of things but very important.

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Now we are looking at what happens to the rain.

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A lot of it falls and a lot of it finds its way from the course

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Some of that will find its way back onto the course

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This controls the water that goes onto the golf course.

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The water goes through these five pumps.

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A maximum capacity of 500 cubic metres of water.

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It goes through the pipe work and heads out through the wall

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onto the golf courses to give us the irrigation we require.

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At the Open Championship you had a deluge.

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Yes, it caused us a wee problem as it came in such

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Sometimes when the weather arrives like it did you have

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Before we go, here are a look at some of your weather pictures.

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All of these photographs were taken by BBC Weather Watchers,

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a new online club telling the story of the UK weather.

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Simply sign up for a BBC ID and give yourself

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Add your home reporting location and away you go.

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You can upload a photo of the weather.

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And even add rainfall amounts if you're feeling particularly

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Sometimes even the worst weather can produce something breathtaking.

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The same Storm Desmond that brought devastating floods to north-west

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England brought life to this waterfall in the Yorkshire Dales,

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thought to have been dry for centuries.

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That is something that none of us in the village have

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A dust whirlwind in Australia, where this one was caught on camera

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And finally, with winter now well under way, spare a thought

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for the American groundhog, called upon by tradition each

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February to predict whether spring might come early.

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Last winter in Wisconsin this mayor got something he was not expecting,

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from Jimmy, now a hero among groundhogs.

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That is it from wet and windy St Andrews.

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Merry Christmas. Sadly very little good well from the weather over the

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festive

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