[Bismarck] I've been watching the weather radar and seeing the intense storms drifting northwards from you to us over the past week, but either petering out before they arrive or slipping off course as they cross the rivers. It was mostly hot, or hot and and muggy last week, but there was lots of rain on Friday and much cooler and fresher Saturday/Sunday. Back to 20C and murk today, Monday, first day back after a week off work. *shrugs*

(pen) See lightning strokes in real time. Try this

[Rosie] Oooh. I also use www.buienradar.nl, plus the weather station belonging to the neighbour over the road, which has its own website and tweets - telling me if my washing is getting rained on while I’m 40km away at work.

(pen) And if it is?

[Rosie] This morning, yes. No rain on the rain radar but I forgot to check the drizzle radar.

This morning's weather, according to Dutch parlance, is 'sour apples' - autumnal weather when it should be summery.

(pen) It will very soon be sunny like it is here, 24°C and a bit of a breeze. Nice.

Just come back from thereabouts and had rain most of the time, but it was warm rain.

It got up to 30.2° today in the grounds of Plas Huws. Just after 5 pm a southerly breeze sprang up and the temperature dropped an almost instant 4 degrees. This must be the sea breeze - unusual because it doesn't normally reach this far north.

(Rosie) A wee bit different here in my humpy.
If you are interested I've posted a very broad but hardly usable short resume of the last 30-years from my location here

On the (delayed) Paris train, with eight Dutch people in the carriage making enough conversation to invade my noise-cancelling headphones. Jajaja!

(Duj) Your annual average in the parched Australian outback is higher than mine in the Elevated Surrey Wetlands, which is 822 mm. (35 yr). But your rain-days are less than 2/3rds of mine. I've never had a rainless month but this June came closest (1.2 mm) which by UK standards is the square root of a mouse's ear'ole. Good; the "lawn" stops growing so less work. Heat Is Work and Work Is Heat and it's quite warm enough.

True, Rosie, but here it tends to come down in lumps. This, as you well know, results in run-off which is good for the creeks and rivers, but not for much else. Here will be found records for three consecutive years each of which is different. It also, though not deliberately, includes the heaviest rainfall I have recorded over an Australian Meteorological day (0900 to 0900).