Wansteadium

See more at Geoff’s blog, WansteadDailyPhoto.

It’s a big welcome to a new weather website for Wanstead, wansteadweather.co.uk, run by @wanstead_meteo, aka Scott, whose tweets will have become familiar to those of you who keep an eye on the right hand side of Wanteadium pages.

His new site, drawing on gauges, meters and whatnot at his home in Aldersbrook, displays a huge amount of observation material and Scott’s tweets also offer his thoughts about what is in the pipeline. As well as having launched his new site, he will be writing regular articles here on Wansteadium too.

It seems clear that as affordable technology makes very localised monitoring possible that the weather can become more of an obsession than it already is. Wansteadium, for instance, has long harboured ambitions to map the microclimates of Wanstead (is the Nightingale Estate colder than the Counties? Are roads around Wanstead Park frostier than those in Snaresbrook?), and Scott confirms there is something to get one’s teeth into here.

“I’ve lived in the area since around 1997 and only realised that Aldersbrook, where I have been since January this year, is in a frost hollow,” he says. “The other night it was 1.7C colder here than in Woodford Green and probably Wanstead village too, though there’s no way of checking. The other night there were thick fog patches on the Flats yet nothing elsewhere. Very eerie.”

We’ll let you know if we get a microclimate scheme off the ground, but in the meantime, Scott has some data about windchill, solar radiation and evapotranspiration which you may be interested in.

The next couple of weekends will see assorted Christmas fairs and sales in Wanstead schools and churches (see inchoate list below). In an act of some one-upmanship, the Wanstead Church School fair on Saturday is to have some real reindeer. Wansteadium wonders if it might be wise for parents of impressionable children to agree on a line to take against toddlers’ inquiries for a range of questions, since curious (and devious) youngsters will no doubt seek verification from their peers and consistency may bolster parental solidarity. Obvious contenders for agreeing a line on include:

• Are those really Santa’s reindeers?
• Can they really fly?
• Which one exactly is Rudolf, and why isn’t his nose red?
• Are they the same ones they had at Westfield?

Answers welcome below. And please send details of any other fairs etc to events@wansteadium.com. And remember, you can always add details of any event in Wanstead to the Wansteadium Calendar.

Wanstead Church School Christmas Bazaar
Saturday 24 November 11.00AM – 2.30PM
New attractions for 2012: Meet the reindeers and Christmas owl. Visit Santa in the winter wonderland grotto. Christmas choir performing
Visit our famous cake stall/mulled wine/crafts/chestnut and marshmallow BBQ/games/treasure hunt/face-painting/amazing sample sale/nearly news toys and books/Chocolate and booze tombola/Grand Draw Entrance from the High street £1 Adults Children free

Wanstead High School PTA Book Sale
Wanstead Library Saturday 24 November 2.00pm – 4.30pm. Books on sale at bargain prices.

Fewer flames, a smaller sign, and now without “internal illumination”. This is the new, more modest BBQ Express. Those Wanstead residents who expressed discomfort with the previous version may well feel somewhat satisfied.

Before

After

An inquest has been opened into the death of a 16-year-old who died from a head injury after falling from scaffolding in Camden Road, Wanstead, on Wednesday. The teenager, Alfie Perrin, was from Enfield.

Police have appealed for witnesses to the accident, which is being described as unexplained. As was demonstrated in the video which featured in Wansteadium on Thursday, a large crowd gathered when the air ambulance arrived at the scene. The investigation is being conducted by the Metropolitan Police and the Health and Safety Executive.
More from the BBC here, and the Wanstead Guardian here.