Cheshire Freeze

Sorry, I should have clarified..... During the summer months, evaporation potential is much greater than during the winter months due to the angle of the sun and it's concentration of surface heating of the land. Therefore it comes down to perception and practicality- a short intense downpour may produce a localised accumulation of rainfall but it is more likely to run of over the land and into drains......'overland flow'. This is in contrast to a more persistent bout of rainfall which would be more likely to infiltrate the ground and be transported across the water table via 'throughflow'. Short, intense downpours do little to fill aquifers and reservoirs whereas steadier bouts of rainfall tend to help a little bit more. Therefore although localised places may see signifficant short term accumulations through thunderstorms, the perception would be that it had not been that wet as it wasn't persistent and the practicality of that rainfall would be limited due to most of the water being wasted as run off. p.s to quote Disraeli, 'There's lies, damn lies and statistics' In this case if 1mm over the monthly average fell in one short, sharp downpour and nothing thereafter, the fact that most of the water would flow into the drains and what was filtrated into the ground would most probably be evaporated very quickly, the perception would be that it was a dry month.

You have pretty much summed up my gut feelings on proceedings at the minute. A wet early season followed by some warmth in July and August. May and June look wet to me.

A hot summer with interludes of torrential downpours would still be classed as dry as 1. the rainfall would be localised and 2. short, intense downpours do little to infiltrate a couple of centimeters below soil surface. I'm envisaging a mixed summer.....1976 out of the equation for me sorry. I do agree there will be some fine summer spells and I do think we will break into the 30's on a couple of occasions.....but I don't see 1976 and I don't see any drought problems; except for local exceptions towards the SE.

I don't think it's as cut and dried as that though. If it was, long range forecasting would have been cracked a long time ago. GP is excellent with his long range forecasting though so it is a concern as a dry summer would not be much fun from my perspective.

Just been on TWO and seen that someone else from Crewe has reported rotation on the storm that passed through here earlier........I'm glad I saw this because I thought it was my eyes deceiving me earlier so I didn't mention it.

Today has been a breath of fresh air; being able to radar watch in anticipation and view the approach of a dark cumulonimbus cloud bank. Also seeing rain fall at that intensity I have missed so much. Like others have said, last year was dire for convection and storms, though I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time in August last year when some absolutely cracking storms broke out around the Manchester area, leading to scenes like this...

What happened to the days where we would get 2-3 convective days together rather than a brief 8 hour window

Vicious little storm that was, roads are like rivers here now

First rumble of the day that i've heard!

Showers losing their intensity from the west; heaviest showers now being seen further east......the Humber area and parts of Lincs look especially lively

Seems to be getting its act together just west of here at the moment. Quite a pokey looking cell now

Yes, developed as it passed here.....few REALLY large drops of rain and some hail but it seemingly exploded to life about 10 miles east of here (Congleton way)

You lucky son of a........hahahaha. If you type in cw1 in the postcode function of NW Extra radar, you shall see how the showers like to creep right up to us, stick their tongues out then head over towards Stoke.

Showers seemingly developing 20 miles too far south....some lively ones across the county border into Shropshire pushing into Staffs. Lost count of the number of times we are either too far north or too far south for convective developments.

Managed to catch a sneaky shot of a lightning strike. This image is taken from a video of a storm I witnessed last year in Manchester.

Missed his last forecast but what I will say is what a sad, sad situation we find ourselves in now with BBC weather forecasts. How can they justify removing Rob from our screens? What a technically brilliant forecaster who managed to involve 'joe public' in the forecasts he gave. It wasn't his looks, or flashy presenting style that involved people, it was his desire for the subject area of meteorology that was so infectious- you could tell he wasn't blindly reading an autocue. This guy knew what he was talking about and what I liked about him was the fact that he could think outside of the box and amend forecasts if they didn't seem to be going to plan- somrthing that the others can't seem to do as they are probably rigidly following a script. Intelligent guy is Mr Mc Elwee.

Yes i'm using the beta aswell and it is very very glitchy. Noticed it will automatically stop responding and restart itself and is not that quick of a browser- not in beta form anyway.

Oh yes, I have to agree with your thoughts on the sun. Let's look at this logically-over 99% of our heat energy is directly attributed to the sun(I think) ; put it this way, regardless of how much man made carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere, if the sun was to disappear we wouldn't last very long. That is why I think changes in solar output, no matter how insignificant it may seem, can have major rammifications on the climate of our planet, more than any amount of fossil fuels that are burnt.

I'm not afraid to say it, a cool and wet summer would do me. Not a huge fan of heat but I enjoy the convective element to summer so fingers crossed for some decent storms this year.

Very good news indeed. That should serve to disrupt the vortex, could be a get out of jail card from the strengthening vortex we are likely to see over the next week to 10 days.

To be honest, it's all well and good quoting the teleconnections mantra but as far as I am concerned we don't have enough knowledge or enough sophistication in computer models to understand how certain variables will interact with one another. We tend to use a simplified method whereby we isolate variables; a kind of reductivist approach whereby a cold stratosphere= strong PV a kind of black and white approach. However what about the effects of low solar activity when interction takes place between this and a cold stratosphere? Truth is no-one knows, and even though people like GP and Chiono can have their best guesses, it's not a given by any stretch of the imagination.

Another couple of photos here taken this morning.

Here are a few from round these here parts Taken about 1 o'clock today

Good to see this warming, or at least not cooling to what was expected. I suspect we aren't going to see that stratosphere behave in a signature way to a nina pattern. Could bode well.

It's actually not very good for you to be sat in temperatures like that. How anyone can feel comfortable with an inside temperature of 12 c baffles me. Ideal room temperature is about 21c, or so i've read. Must have some hardy souls on this forum