Friday 30 September 2011

Friday 30.09.2011

Last day of September and the woods were gleaming and steaming like a jungle,the overnight dew evaporating away in the warmth of the morning sun.
Lots of green still.


One sharp frost and the trees will turn overnight but for now basking in this Indian summer (why an Indian summer?).
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2 comments:

  1. Eponymous30 September 2011 at 20:23

    I'm going to take a wild guess and say because it rains in India during the earlier summer months?

    That is just a guess however.

    Monsooning in Glasgow now anyway.

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  2. Keeps Walking1 October 2011 at 17:03

    OK - had to look it up after that - here`s what Philip Avery of the Met office had to say about it in 2003:
    "Indian Summer is becoming one of those phrases that is bandied about in a very casual manner when in fact its derivation gives quite a precise definition. Safe to say that a couple of warm, sunny days, after the summer break and the return to work don't actually cut the mustard when it comes to an Indian Summer.

    The Meteorological Glossary (published by HMSO) is usually taken as the definitive guide on such definitions. It offers the following: 'A warm, calm spell of weather occurring in the autumn, especially in October and November. The earliest record of the term is at the end of the 18th century, in America, and it was introduced to the British Isles at the beginning of the 19th century. There is no statistical evidence to show that such a spell tends to recur each year.'

    Some sources think that the phrase stems from the North American Indians who relied on a spell of fine weather anywhere from late September to November for harvesting.

    You may also hear the theory that merchant vessels plying the Indian Ocean would have one of their load lines marked 'IS' (for Indian Summer), to show the maximum load level for ships in the post monsoon fine weather period in the latter part of the year. There is much doubt over this derivation of the phrase as it has been traced to a time before Samuel Plimsoll's standardisation of such marks in 1875.

    So if the weather stays fine with you for the next few days, enjoy it for what it is. What it is not, though, is an Indian Summer."

    And as it`s the 1st October and raining I guess what we`ve just had doesn`t count.

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