January 2012

Features

So You Think You Know Southwold?

A nice gentle quiz this time, to ease you in after the excesses of the last few weeks. . .

First to last month’s business. Question: which house in Southwold had those distinctive beach-hut tiles under its first-floor window?

Answer: 80 Stradbroke Road.

This time, where is this seagull? (I told you it was nice and gentle this time – Brian Burrage, our in-house oracle, adds: ‘If anyone doesn’t get this, they should be ashamed of themselves.’)

As always, the feature under scrutiny will be visible from ground level in Southwold.

Thanks to Brian for his continuing contributions, and a Happy New Year to both him and all our readers!

View to the North

As the year draws to a close, we have had the first sprinkling of winter snow. After the mild November, it has felt very cold. The road after the snow had frozen was particularly treacherous and even my car, which has four-wheel drive, employed the ABS to stop.

However, nature has responded to the previous warm period and I was surprised to see snowdrops in a garden in North Road. At the same time that the snow began to fall, the number of gulls in the fields to the north of North Road has increased and on occasions, when they rise and fall, they resemble a snowstorm. There have been far fewer geese around so far this year, but perhaps the cold weather will bring them back. On one occasion, there was a group of barnacles accompanied by four red-breasted geese. On the same day, there were half a dozen teal. I have yet to see the wigeon and shoveller ducks that are usually here around this time of the year. Also, there has been an absence of lapwings, although I have seen some on the way to the Harbour. The swans that are normally present in December are frequently seen majestically rising from the fields and their characteristic wing beat heard above the noise of the wind blowing the reeds. The marsh harrier has also made a fleeting appearance.

There are still crab apples on my tree, despite the attentions of the blackbirds that I mentioned last month, and I am hoping to see waxwings; they have been reported already this year in the Ipswich area.

At the beginning of the month, there were some superb sunrises.

There have also been some very wet and windy days and in mid December there was a spectacular double rainbow that formed a full arc across the Marshes. The heavy rainfall has, at last, begun to fill the Boating Pond, the edges of which have also received some tidying. I understand that permission has been given to increase the levels using seawater. I hope that we will see an increase in the wildlife it supports in the coming year.

In late March, I installed 13 solar panels and I expected that this would cause an immediate and prolonged period of cloud cover. How wrong I was, it was very sunny in the months between March and July, and I have already generated over two megawatts of power, which has reduced my carbon footprint quite considerably. It is a pity that the sunny weather did not continue into the summer holiday season. Maybe we will be lucky next year. I wish all my readers a peaceful, happy and prosperous New Year.

Halcyon

halcyon@southwold-northroad.com

www.southwold-northroad.com

The 70th in our series of articles specially written for The Organ by astrophysicist Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson.

Planets, eclipses, meteor showers and high tides in 2012

Jupiter starts the year as a prominent evening object towards the west, setting at about midnight. It sets progressively earlier during January and February, disappearing into the evening twilight during April. It then reappears at dawn in July and will be seen again as an evening object towards the end of the year. Mars starts the year visible in the middle of the night near the constellation of Leo. It reaches its brightest on March 3rd, then fades, to be lost in the twilight in the summer months. Venus is prominent in the western sky for the first half of 2012. It will disappear into the evening twilight in mid-May and then reappear as a morning star in July. The best chances to see Mercury is in the first week of March, low in the west after sunset. Saturn is at its most visible during April, in the constellation of Virgo.

There will be a total eclipse of the Sun on November 13th, but it will only be visible in the Pacific. There will be an annular eclipse of the Sun, when the Moon does not completely cover the Sun, on May 20th–21st, visible from China and the USA.

The best meteor showers to watch out for this year are the Quadrantids on January 4th, the Perseids on August 13th, and especially the Geminids on December 14th. Each of these meteor showers corresponds to the earth crossing the orbit of a comet, which has shed dust particles all along its orbit.

The biggest tides of the year are January 13th, January 26th–27th, February 9th–13th, February 23rd, March 9th–12th, April 8th–9th, August 3rd–6th, August 19th–22nd, September 1st–3rd, September 16th–20th, October 16th–19th, November 14th–16th and December 14th–17th. With several big tides occurring during the stormy months January to March, 2012 is again a year to keep an eye on the weather forecasts and watch out for storm surges happening close to the highest tides. Some readers will have been disappointed to find that the tide tables that used to be sold by local newsagents have been discontinued, though the information can still be obtained on the internet.

Residents of north Southwold and south Reydon will have received a number of phone-calls from the Environment Agency with flood warnings at the end of November due to a predicted 1.3-metre surge coincident with a high tide. I believe they are working from an out-of-date flood-risk map because, as I have pointed before in this column, a high-tide surge would have to be well over two metres to put this area at risk of flooding. It’s a different matter in Ferry Road, where a one-metre surge at a time of exceptional high tides could overtop the banks of the Blyth.

Stars’n Tides now has an e-mail address for you to send comments and queries: starsntides@southwoldorgan.com.

Past Stars’n Tides articles can be found at http://astro.ic.ac.uk/~mrr/starsntides/

© Michael Rowan-Robinson 2012

It's the Wine Talking
by Leslie J Brinton of 'In the Pink' 01986 872579

After a couple of weeks of pushing the boat out, you may find that, if not sinking, it is getting a bit sluggish at the very least… as far as one’s wallet/handbag is concerned.

So let’s look for something decent but affordable to quaff to cheer us up in these long, dark January evenings.

Brightening up the taste buds with a sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, where they are in the middle of summer, should buck us up no end: try the Wither Hills Sauvignon blanc 2011 from the Wairau Valley made by Ben Glover. Not as two-dimensional as some cheap NZ white wines, this vintage is quite lovely.

At 13.5% alcohol and widely available for £8 or £9, but discounted frequently, for example at the Co-op recently down to £6.49, this is a painless way to invest in a light pick-me-up.

A Happy New Year to all readers.

Leslie J Brinton

inthepink@southwold.org