Daily Archives: Sunday, May 14, 2023

  • Bristol Live exclusive – Scillies move south

    Today’s Bristol Post contains a hidden exclusive tucked away in an article about the local weather forecast.

    Met Office predicts Bristol temperatures set to soar higher than tropical Isles of Scilly

    Tropical Isles of Scilly?

    Last time your ‘umble scribe looked, the Scilly Isles were an archipelago 45 km south-west of the Cornish peninsula. This means either the British Isles have migrated south towards the equator or the reverse has happened, i.e. the equator has moved north towards dear old Blighty, as there’s is now way in which the Scillies merit being defined as tropical. In either case plate tectonics has been working overtime or planet Earth has tilted drastically on its axis recently.

    The definition of tropical is from or relating to the area between the two tropics.

    The two tropics are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at 23°26′10.5″ (or 23.43625°) N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at 23°26′10.5″ (or 23.43625°) S. The Scillies lie at a latitude of 49°55′N. On the other hand, it’s not a hidden exclusive but bad journalism, possibly influenced by belonging to the Reach plc stable, which also includes the Daily Brexit (which some still call the EXpress. Ed.), a title long renowned for lurid and misleading coverage of matters meteorological.