Our first meeting of 2004 was addressed by Piers Corbyn and was about “The Sun and the Weather“. He started by explaining how the Sun’s activity could be correlated with global temperatures, and went on to explain how it was possible to make long range forecasts by comparing the current solar cycle, stratospheric wind phase, lunar cycle and Hale cycle with past occasions when the same relative points in the cycles had been reached. He also showed how the method was particularly good at predicting extreme weather conditions like tropicals storms.