Adur Valley Torpedo

ELECTRONIC
NEWS BULLETIN
FOR THE

ADUR VALLEY

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Wildlife Reports

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Adur Valley News Bulletin

Adur Torpedo

This is the first published Electronic Newspaper for
Shoreham-by-Sea and District, West Sussex, England

August 1999 : Volume 1 Issue 1

News

It had been a particularly sunny July without rain for the whole of the month, although it was humid throughout.

Temperatures in the shade reached 29° C.

Photograph by Andy Horton

The rock defences on the shingle beach were strengthened with additional rocks* brought in by barge across the North Sea from Norway. The rocks were deposited on the shore and rearranged by a JCB to hinder the erosion and longshore drift.
By August the weather broke and there were overcast days, showers and at least one thunderstorm.

(* Larvikite, a type of syenite)

11 August 1999

Partial Eclipse at Shoreham-by-Sea, figures (unofficial):

9.30 am 40000 Lux

10.00 45000 ¤

10.38 35000

10.48 32000

10.54 30000

11.02 21000 ¤

11.07 13000

11.09 11000 ¤

11.10 10000

11.13 5000

11.16 4000 ¤

11.22

11.25 6000

The difference between 40000 Lux and 5000 Lux is about 4 aperture¤stops on a camera settings. There was still enough light to take a photograph, like an overcast day, like a prelude to a thunderstorm.
The times of the maximum coverage where confirmed by visual observation of the eclipse through the mylar spectacles.
On a clear day, the temperature in the sun varied from 25° C to 18° C at the maximum amount of the eclipse. The lower temperature equalled the shade temperature.

31 July 1999

Bath Tub Race

The Hills team crewed by the Martin (Tony & Jon) Brothers won in a time of 1 hour 10 mins, about a minute ahead of the RNLI tub crewed by Jim Partridge and Peter Huxtable, who had won for the previous 9 years.
The race took place in a 29° C heatwave, with a southerly breeze, and was started by Sally Gunnell.

Wildlife Reports

25 August 1999
3 Little Egrets, their distinctive all white colouring stood out from the greenery (Glasswort) and they were right in the middle of the Adur mudflats (between the footbridge and the Norfolk Bridge), sometimes hidden in the dips of the channels. The tide was low in the mid-afternoon. In addition 7 Grey Herons were perched as still as statues. All the birds were too far away for photographs even with a 500m mirror lens. The light was poor in the middle of a thunderstorm and a downpour.
There has been abundance of small Grey Mullet in the river this year.

Photograph by Andy Horton

22 August 1999
David Roberts (Shoreham Beach) reported a Little Egret, Egretta garzetta, from the mudflats near the houseboats. It was on the remaining mud at about the maximum low neap tide (minimum range, high tide 4.7 metres) at 3.00 pm BST.

Web Sites