AderynCoch

Anything has to be better than last "winter". I don't want to end up feeling like this again:

I was at Sheffield University between 2003 and 2006. That wasn't a great era for snowfall but I certainly noticed the difference coming from Liverpool, with a number of marginal snowfalls which wouldn't have happened there (November 2004 and late February 2005 spring to mind). Ironically the most disappointing winter I had in Sheffield was probably 2005/6 even though it was colder than the other two, because there was a lack of actual snowfall (though March wasn't bad). The main campus is on the edge of the city centre (somewhere in the 100-150m asl range) but the halls of residence and student areas are situated to the west at about 200-250m asl, where the land rises sharply into the Peak District. I developed thighs of steel walking home from lectures. These places must have got absolutely buried on 1st December 2010, when even the city centre managed 40cm of snow.

14.9

Many of us have been saying over the past couple of weeks that summer's not over yet. Can't say you weren't warned! Personally I'm just glad the cool, windy, rainy days and shivering nights are being left behind for the time being. Not ready for that yet.

As stupidly cold as recent nights have been, I can't imagine experiencing a frost in August. I don't think I saw colder than Katesbridge did last night for the whole of last "winter".

I'd kill for some August 2008-style minima right now. It's freezing cold.

Try being near a coast exposed to the NW...

Low pressure per se isn't what's bothering me (though I'm definitely a high pressure man in summer), it's the overall synoptics (southerly jet, Greenland High, Scandi Low). This is an unusually cool spell of weather for the time of year, even by our lowly standards. Seeing a high of 15C on the weather forecast with NWerly winds day after day is the absolute pits, though thankfully there are signs of improvement around the corner. And spring was boring for the most part. A warm March and April can't possibly compensate for a disappointing August.

I don't get this "we can't complain after June and July" argument. You'd think we've just had a repeat of 1976 the way a lot of people are talking about it. As it is the first two months of summer were in the "good" category as far as I'm concerned. I'm obviously not complaining about that, but it's not enough for me not to be bothered about August disappearing down the autumn drain. August 2006 was a poor month but it didn't nearly bother me as much as this one, because I really was spoiled up until then. This year simply hasn't been as good, and it will be an average summer at best if August doesn't pull a rabbit out of the hat before month's end.

NASA's New Horizons probe is about to cross Neptune's orbit (25th August) and is now less than a year from its closest approach to Pluto on 14th July 2015. Observations are due to begin early next year, with images of superior quality to Hubble's expected within 10 weeks of the closest pass. It feels like yesterday when it first launched in January 2006 and did a flyby of Jupiter in early 2007. Since then the probe has been in deep sleep mode bar occasional scheduled checks and calibrations. I had a bet with myself that it would get to Pluto before Arsenal won another trophy, but last season's FA Cup put paid to that. New Horizons is also scheduled to perform observations on other Kuiper Belt objects, and may even be redirected to stage a flyby of one of these mysterious planetoids after the Pluto objective is complete. I'm very fond of this mission. It only just got the go-ahead due to funding issues and given the current cutbacks at NASA will probably be the last such grand project for a long time.

Yep, the sun came out and stayed out pretty much as soon as I made my previous post. Moan and ye shall receive it seems! But what a horrible morning it was.

Well today is absolutely awful - freezing cold, no sunshine and lots of persistent, autumn-like rain (as opposed to short-lived downpours). I can't wait for this Octoberish, summer-wasting crap to go away.

Would it surprise you to know that 30th August that year was the joint-warmest ever by CET mean (19.4C, along with 1804)? Having said that it's also the only date between 15th June and 8th September not to register 20C. 3rd October managed a higher figure in 2011 (19.8C). I do remember that last week being quite warm and humid, but sunshine was certainly at a premium. Then September got off to a very wet start.

A real constrast to the following year. There must have been a difference of over 20C in daytime temperatures.

22nd December 2009 It was a proper thunderstorm and all, with violent pink lightning.

It felt surprisingly warm this afternoon with the sun cracking the flags and the showers nowhere to be seen. That annoying NWerly wind has gone for the time being too. Autumn my fat hairy behind!

That dreaded phrase "locked in" has cropped up over the past few days - and it ONLY ever happens when the weather is disappointing. We've had a fair bit of warm weather this summer but never has it been "locked in" for the forseeable future - along comes the first real cool spell and all of a sudden there's no sign of change on the horizon, with the ghost of Bertha hanging around in the worst possible position like a turd that won't flush. How often do you see these synoptics get locked in when its winter? The dice always seem to be loaded against us.

"Back To School" *shudder* That was enough to put a dampener on August 1995.

And yet it's fine for you to be lumped in with East Anglia? You're a lot closer to Birmingham than Norwich. As for that radar image you posted, if the clouds are moving north then you must have got all that rain over Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire. Or did it just magically appear out of nowhere?

1985 of course. Though it's no longer the record... I'm familiar with the term "extended summer" to refer to May-September, less so with "extended winter" to refer to November-March (but the latter definition can be inferred from the former). I don't really think of autumn and spring in the same way, because they're basically transitional between the two extremes of summer and winter.

No, Leicester is in the red area too. You don't live that far east!

Yeah, Atlantic fronts reaching Birmingham but dying out 95% of the time before reaching Leicester? And the west of the country didn't have lots of rain last summer. It was below average almost everywhere.

It could be better, but the weather hasn't been too bad of late. Just a couple of days ago today was forecast to be a washout but it's been sunny and humid, with the heavy rain fortuitously passing through overnight. Tomorrow is looking decent too. Just the one real stinker so far since the weather turned, and that was the 1st.

I'd be wary of assuming the remnants of Bertha are going to cause us a washout. Remember when ex-Gordon approached us in September 2006? He stayed out west and gave us some very high temperatures for the time of year (29C in Nottingham on the 21st) before drifting away northwards. And that's assuming ex-Bertha even reaches us. She's currently moving through the Bahamas and the 5-day forecast only takes her a few hundred miles east of Newfoundland, by which time the cone of uncertainty itself is hundreds of miles wide - and even that's contingent on the Day 4 position being correct. http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at3+shtml/204057.shtml?5-daynl?large#contents We can be confident that Bertha will move around the western edge of the Bermuda High and into the North Atlantic - this is a very typical path for Atlantic hurricanes - but what happens thereafter is still up in the air. Even if she does make it over to this side of the pond a small margin of error can make a big difference, as Gordon showed.