Weather

It's been an eventful few days, with some of the excitement provided by meteorological upheavals. The east coast of America does not usually get the more dramatic kinds of weather, but in the last week or so (coincidentally, since we were here) has experienced both an earthquake and a hurricane. It just so happened that for both of these events the damage was mainly to property and trees, and thankfully the number of human casualties was low. We were in Michigan for most of the time, where the weather was sunny and warm. A highlight for us was a boat trip on Lake Michigan in an old-fashioned schooner. Conditions were perfect and there was enough of a breeze to see the ship put through its paces - wonderful.

The coverage of Hurricane Irene on the US news and weather channels was extensive (I thought the British could talk about the weather but this was something else). A lot of it focused on New York, one of the worst-affected places, and highlighted all the preparations which had been made. This does seem to have paid off, and although there will be a fair bit of clearing up to do, it could have been much worse. The tone of it was not unlike election night in the UK, waiting for the results to come in, and with the weather equivalent of Peter Snow's / Jeremy Vine's swingometer.

Our journey today involved driving in some wet conditions, but we made it to our hotel in Philadelphia safely. The hotel is rather quiet, as the airport has been shut. But everything is working normally in the hotel, and they didn't suffer any loss of power. So we are now enjoying the calm after the storm and reflecting on these natural phenomena which remind us that our control over events is less than we sometimes think.