claret047

My wife and I, middle son, daughter in law and 3 year old grandson went to the National Flower Show at Hylands Park, Chelmsford today. (if the name seems familiar it is where the V festival used to be held. It was an enjoyable afternoon although it was ruined somewhat by the weather. We had just arrived for the afternoon session and queuing to enter when it became very dark and the wind got up. It was accompanied by driving drizzle which made sign in very challenging. The paper tickets which the steward was attempting to scan were becoming very soggy as were we! The afternoon was interspersed between cloudy and dry and dull and drizzly, with the wind really gusting at times and blowing some of the taller plants for sale over. It also became very chilly in the wind as the afternoon wore on. Looking at the MAD thread it looks as though later next week the weather may improve. Hopefully that well be the case. I see the new modern garden features are rusty looking things. Old watering cans and small tin baths at outragous prices and if you wanted a rusty areoplane about 2 feet long with a propellor be prepared to shell out £60. I resisted the temptation. Some of the stuff in all honesty I have thrown out in a better condition!

Stroudley said " Meanwhile, the 2nd fence panel has just been come down from the neighbour's fence..." That is a long way for the fence panels to travel! Seriously though the weather here is absolutely dire. There is the 3 day National Flower festival that has begun today at Hylands Park, Writtle, here in Mid Essex. Although there will be some undercover facilities much on display will be outside. I and my family have booked to attend on Sunday afternoon, hoping that the rain forecast does not arrive until late evening, although knowing my luck I would not bank on it. Kind Regards Dave

Rained on and off all evening and at times overnight after a thoroughly dismal day and was still raining when I got up this morning. Stopped raining about 9 a.m., but still cloudy.

We have had continuous rain, heavy at times for almost all of the day. Certainly very different to what Carol K was showing on her graphics this morning where we were not even in the area for rain and her telling us what there was being slowly moving south. At least it is doing my allotment some good and I will not have to go there this evening to water. Kind Regards Dave

Hello there. I trust you and your family are well. Many thanks to you, BFTV and others for making this thread so very interesting. I am sure others concur with me. I can hardly wait for late Autumn when the thread comes back to life again. Kind Regards Dave

Good evening folks, Cold here and we have had the occasional light shower, but hardly enough to dampen the ground. The nagging north easterly wind makes it feel bitter out in the open. Will it ever warm up? Hopefully next week will be better. Our central heating has gone wrong and we have a heating engineer coming to sort it out next Thursday. (It has been a problem that previous engineers have been unable to resolve and going on for about 2 years, although until now it had been working, albeit unreliably.) My guess is after Thursday the weather will warm up. In the meantime we will be using a small fan heater to warm the living room and wrapping up well. Kind Regards Dave

Living in Stoke perhaps.* Unfortunately the world does not revolve around the Potteries and some area in particular Eastern Scotland, parts of Northern England and some areas of East Anglia and Southeast England have done better than they have for many years. It does sadly look as though come the end of the weekend even the most easterly parts will be under milder air, with only the outside chance of a return to colder the second week after as a Scandi High attempts to build. Winter might be over, but it is too early to be definite in that assumption. *Joke alert.

Pardon my ignorance Malcolm but what is that red squiggly line running from the North Sea then across the Essex/Suffolk border?

You may well be correct as this is the usual default winter position in the UK. On the other hand until the last two runs there was no turning back from further significant cold streaming in from the east. Carol K this morning was convinced the mild would be repelled over the weekend and make little progress into the UK. Call me Mr Positive but there is always a route back. At the moment snowing quite heavily here and hopefully is set to do so for as few more hours. Kind Regards Dave

Hello Malarky. Be careful what you wish for. There is nothing worse than suffering with "the runs" Make sure you wear bicycle clips just to be on the safe side! Seriously though and back on topic the weather in the short term looks good for eastern most counties and from Thursday onwards those in more southwestern parts could join in with the fun with a more organized band of snow away from coasts and particularly with elevation. This is when the uncertainty increases. Will the mild weather plough through. will in the eastern half of the UK although the uppers are warmer with a feed of lower level air off a freezing continent remain very cold and dry, followed by an even colder plunge from the east northeast? I guess it all depends on the formation and location of high pressure to the north and east of the UK, especially a Scandinavian High which is currently being mooted as a possibility. What do the more expert on here think will happen? What is their current view as to where FI is? Kind Regards Dave

You are so lucky. It is all very light snizzle, here in the northern outskirts of Chelmsford. Most disappointing and it appears to be brightening up a bit now. It was a good job I didn't tell my 3 year old grandson it was going to snow as he would be very disappointed. Kind Regards Dave

Is it High Beach or High Beech. I remember being involved with a construction project at the school some years ago and discussed this with the head teacher, even she was uncertain. It would certainly be a beautiful place to seek out a winter's scene. Not weather related but I possess a book about non league football grounds that are no more. It included an article on one at High Beach (Beech) and the ground o0wns the record for the most people attending the football ground. It was not for football but for speedway in its heyday. Kind Regards Dave

My name is football related, but it refers to Chelmsford City. I am a life long supporter and the Club's Safety Officer as well as their Covid Officer. We should have a match on Monday evening at home to Billericay Town, what are the chances weather wise of it going ahead? Kind Regards Dave

Where in Chelmo are you? Up in north Springfield we have had nothing BTW I love reading your positive but at the same time realistic posts. Kind regards Dave

I am not sure if I am or not. I seem to be on the line. Where are you?

Hello there. Did your father attend what was then known as Westlands Secondary Modern, but today is called Hylands School?

Many thanks for all those recollections of the 1962/3 winter as they bring back a flood of memories to me. At the time I lived in Writtle, near Chelmsford and attended the local secondary school. I lived in a council house built just after the end of WW1- under the "homes fit for heroes" government initiative. The council decided our houses needed upgrading both internally and externally and had removed all the pebble dash from our house just before Christmas. It was possible to see daylight through the gaps between bricks. With the onset of the very cold weather on Boxing Day and it lasting for many weeks it was not possible because of the ambient temperature to replace the pebble dash. It was absolutely perishing cold indoors. In the mornings we had to break the ice in the toilet bowl and the inside of the windows were covered in ice. It was certainly not a pleasant experience doing my homework in my bedroom. When we returned to school from our Christmas break the weather did not relent. The school adjoined fields with crops of cabbages. Pigeons were desperate for food and devastating the crops. The farmer decide to start shooting them and many dead and injured birds were landing in the school grounds, This was very upsetting for the children and the farmer agreed to stop the killing. I can remember going home each night to listen to the weather forecast on the BBC Home Service (Radio 4 would be today's equivalent) and the presenter would state on numerous occasions that in the outlook- milder weather coming in from the southwest would win out. but it did not happen and the US long range forecasts that predicted the severe would be long lasting proved correct. Are we due a severe spell? Things are looking up in that respect but as it is starting fairly late in the winter it would not be of such longevity. I will be glued to the 16.00 and 18.00 model output. Kind Regards Dave

You are probably correct. My youngest son's birthday is on 8th February and we had invited some of his friends for his 3rd birthday party, but several were unable to attend due to the deep snow, Looking at the GFS, GFDS// and UKMO it all looks almost too good to be true. Let us hope the ECM starts to join in with good charts too in a little while. Kind regards Dave

Hello Daniel. Thanks for your comment I tried to "like" your post, but for some reason I was unable to do so. Kind Regards Dave

Good afternoon everyone. An absolutely horrible day here in mid Essex. As the song goes "What a difference a day makes" Yesterday was warm enough to sit outside without a coat on to eat lunch on our patio, sheltered from the breeze by our garden shed. Today it has been relentless light rain and a blustery wind. Between 11.30 and 12.30 I took part in the RSPB Bird Watch, getting an aerial view of the garden from our bedroom window. The weather was obviously too dire for the majority of birds to venture out as I only had 1 blackbird, 1 blue tit, 2 collared doves and 4 woodpigeons visit my garden in the whole hour. To cheer myself up I looked at the MAD thread, but without success. Some posters are either in wind-up mode or can't hell themselves from being negative, although they regard themselves as being realistic. For some if their were -20 uppers covering 98% of the UK and at T+384 it showed -15 uppers they would declare the run to be a nightmare. Sadly I am hooked on all the drama and will be checking the 12Z later this afternoon. If the weather clears at all before nightfall I am thinking of walking down to our local river to see how bad the flooding is, With all the rain we have experienced the ground is totally saturated and cannot soak up any more. Enjoy the rest of the day. Kind Regards Dave

Sorry this is not weather related, but my son has just started his own channel called Travelling Everard and he has done walks around Cambs/Beds + 1 in London where he was earlier doing a site survey. All this of course before the last Lockdown happened. I will get him to look at your channel as he is interested in this sort of thing. Getting back on topic. Here in mid Essex we have a lot of flooding over the fields and the parks are too muddy to walk in apart from the footpaths on which you have to walk around the puddles. I am looking forward to seeing how the forthcoming cold spell unfolds. There is a general consensus among the models that it is going to happen, but whether it is a polar blast or a BFTE is uncertain. On the MAD thread there are the usual suspects who wish to pour hot water (not cold!) on what the models show and look to likely ways it will break down, before it has even arrived. Kind Regards Dave

To the more learned on here is there a way to calculate the temperature at ground level, should we ever be fortunate enough to have -24 @ 850 as currently shown on the charts to our northeast well into FI? I like to dream! Many thanks Kind Regards Dave

Still fairly dull here, although hard surfaces dried overnight. Hopefully the sun will make an appearance about noon as forecast. Looking forward to tomorrow and seeing snow on the ground. As far as the further outlook is concerned hope springs eternal and we may be on the cusp of colder weather after the 20th. The MOD thread is getting excited again, but by tonight the Prozac will be consumed by the handful as a trend back to milder conditions at +500 hours makes an appearance and the mild rampers state it as a definite to happen. Going out for a walk shortly as it is nice to just get out of the house for a short time and will definitely do so tomorrow if it snows. Stay safe. Kind Regards Dave

What a horrible day. It looks like we have a few more hours of this to endure and tonight we could have a lot of fog about with all this dampness. Earlier this morning I walked over my lawn to the top of my garden to feed the birds and it was the squelchiest (if there is such a word) I can ever recall and we have lived here since 1972. Yesterday we felt quite festive in spite of the dull drizzly weather as we had two Christmas cards arrive. one of which had been posted by a friend who lives in South Woodham Ferrers on 3 December. Apparently there are at least 100 postal workers in the Chelmsford area either with Covid or self-isolating. In addition my wife went to our local Aldi and as she went towards the checkout to pay for her purchases she noted that their were plum (with pink gin) Christmas puddings in a dump on special offer of 9p. We enjoyed it as our sweet yesterday evening. Perhaps we should have also got the Christmas Crackers we had not used out of the loft and gone the whole hog. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day. Kind Regards Dave

I heard it in Hylands Park, Writtle, near Chelmsford and wondered what it was as it was very loud. Where did it occur?