Arctic Hare

It's a dull, boring, snoozefest of a month in these parts. "Dull" in both senses. It's a little more useable in some ways than March, given it's not raining all the time, just some of the time. But it's stupidly cool day after day (I really don't care about overall daily means in everyday life; mild nights matter very little if you're in bed) and I think there have been two days all spring where people have been sitting in beer gardens unless they had to be out there (eg smoking). I just want some sunshine.

It would take quite something to be worse than summer 2012, but I think you've just managed it!

A lovely day yesterday, then back to a rather meh one today. At least finally a slight warmup seems on the cards.

Tbh I think you've put your finger on it. March 2013 for example was really cold, but at least in these parts there was a good deal of snow which added interest. Storms add interest, even if I don't much like them. That classic April mix of bright warm sunshine and sudden heavy showers with hail adds interest. But grey and overcast and low teens for day upon day upon day... in every sense that is just dull.

This is literally a "Moans, Ramps & Chat" thread, though. It's specifically not supposed to be for pure calm, unemotional, objective thoughts. IIRC this thread was set up in the first place to stop general emotional stuff filling up places like the Models thread. As such, this particular thread is one place on these forums where it is okay to be agitated and irritated by the weather not doing what we want. Within site rules of course. On another note, I think mean daily temps are often a poor guide to how good things feel. To give a very simple example: a week when every day was overcast with a max of 14 °C and a min of 10 °C would have a warmer daily mean than a week with clear skies, maxes of 18 °C and mins of 5 °C. But the second would, for me at least, be massively preferable.

A beautiful day here today. Wall to wall sunshine and as long as you got out of the wind it felt really quite warm. Even sat in the garden with a book for an hour this afternoon for the first time this year, though a jumper was a necessity. As said above, though, the depressed temperatures are getting really tiresome. Low teens, low teens, low teens, low teens, low teens, every day. It's 20th April and I don't expect miracles, but the odd day of 17 °C or so shouldn't be too much to ask for by now.

On the actual topic of this thread... I'll leave the alert on for the 23rd and then see how it goes. If the authorities do the sensible thing and really do use this only for very urgent situations, then I'll leave it on. If they start using it every time there's a chance of 60 mph gusts or something, then I'll switch it off with no regrets.

Back to dull and chilly today after the one niceish day yesterday. Low teens max isn't disastrous for the time of year, but with no sun and a brisk easterly it's still much too cold for me to go out without a coat or sit outside for a coffee. Naturally now it's blue skies and sunshine, but it felt as though it was on the verge of raining for much of the afternoon.

A goodish day today. At last. Still chilly in the wind, but a fraction short of 15 °C and a decent amount of sunshine made it feel actually fairly warm walking briskly uphill. I know it's not going to last, but this breathing space is something, at least. As for NW Scotland, indeed. If you're (very) lucky it can feel very warm indeed there in summer with such long daylight hours. I remember once being in Tobermory on the Isle of Mull, one of the wettest places in the entire UK, and absolutely baking in wall-to-wall strong sunshine!

Met Office West Midlands text forecast this evening starts "Mainly dry with sunny then clear spells through the evening". In reality, unless there was some in the very early morning there hasn't been one minute of sunshine in Bewdley today.

Oh sure, I'm not a great believer in the power of pattern matching. But I just wanted to give a little hope (including to me...) that it can sometimes go from a very underwhelming spring to a very impressive summer. I'm fed up with the current situation as much as many people are, admittedly. I know there are those who prefer it cool, but by this time of the year I'd like to see the odd day with 17-18 °C and reasonable sunshine, which is very pleasant. Not that I'll get it any time soon. Best I can hope for is a couple of days of sunshine in midweek, and I won't say not to that, even if I will have to get out of the brisk ENE'ly for it to stop feeling cold...

I don't know offhand (though I'm sure someone here will!) but if you're looking for some hope for warmth, Trevor Harley's site points out that nowhere in Britain reached 20 °C until 3rd May in 2006! And that year brought us a 19.7 °C CET July... Edit: Also per Trevor Harley: the latest date seems to have been 25th May. That was in 1983, another month with a very hot July and a hot August.

If after the current dross the summer ends up being like 2012 of all years, I may have to make serious plans to emigrate somewhere warmer and sunnier, say Iceland...

Overcast, dull, windy, chilly, drizzly, 10 °C. The second half of April, everyone.

I suspect April 2021 may be seen differently because of the unusual circumstances then. During that month pubs etc were allowed to reopen, but only outdoors. So from then until whenever it was in May that indoor dining resumed, people who wanted to socialise were spending extended times outdoors for longer than they normally would so early in the year. As for this spring, it's been pretty useless so far in these parts. Early March did at least have a little lying snow briefly, but the rest of the month was horribly wet with significant flooding, and now a lot of days this month seem to have been either wetter than expected (today, for a start...) or at best cold, grey nothingness. As has already been observed, if we'd had a decent March this April would just be meh. But coming on the back of a really poor March, the combination is also really poor.

More murky dross here today. Okay, the sun has been out, for about 30 seconds, which puts today ahead of a lot of March. But it's been so wet this month that it's felt pretty dismal and chilly a lot of the time even when the temp's been well into double figures. No real points of interest, though: no snow, no major storms, no early warmth. Not a March I'm going to recall with much fondness and indeed not a March I'm likely to recall much at all. 12 °C and overcast as I type, which pretty much sums it up.

Just about settling here in Bewdley. Very thin covering on cars, grass etc. Just starting to do so on the road. Not going to amount to much at this rate, though.

I mean, it's "usable weather" in that you can indeed mow the lawn, you can travel without problems, etc. But here in Worcs at least, the weather currently is in more than one sense so, so dull. I really have no interest at all in a spell of 4-7 degrees with grey skies and a nagging wind, which is what we've had for the last couple of days here and look set to have for a little while now. Thursday was nice and bright, but that's it. Bring on April showers with sunny intervals between. I'll whinge when I'm caught out in the rain of course, but it'll be far more interesting than the current boredom. Edit: at least a couple of thin coverings in December mean I didn't go an entire snowless meteorological winter. So that's something, I guess.

My highest max of the year so far today: 14.9 °C. Shame I couldn't get the extra tenth, but oh well. The wind took the edge off a little, but get somewhere out of the wind and in the sun and it really did feel springlike. As I walked past the local pub I started to think about sitting in the beer garden, though doubtless I've jinxed it now and I won't actually have the weather for that until May!

Not a great day, really. Just about enough snow this morning for a transient light covering (at least it wasn't just the odd flake for me) but then several hours when it was a couple of degrees above freezing, raining, and a mixed thawy/icy mess. Much milder now, in fact the thermometer has just clicked over into double figures for the first time in ages. Still raining, though. Not a day that will go down in my "greatest winter days" book. Or even would if I actually had one...

Another near miss on the ice day front: max 0.2 °C today after a min of -6.4 °C. That's my lowest max of the spell, so given today was the last chance I'm a little irritated not to get a single ice day out of it. Still, it's been an interesting few days. Not often you have a bare covering of snow falling on Sunday and still have it lying in shadier areas the following Friday!

In these parts the night bottomed out at -7.6 °C, which is bordering on exceptional for this location with no snow cover. (Well okay, there's still about 10% very thin cover on shady tarmac etc from a few days ago.) We're just not as cold in this part of Worcs as Evesham or Pershore! Today's max was 1.3 °C, which with plentiful sunshine made for very good walking weather. The temp dipped back below freezing about half an hour ago.

Didn't quite manage an ice day today, but +0.4 °C is still a very low maximum for my location. Actually didn't feel too bad outside thanks to the sun and lack of much wind. Down to -4.9 °C now, so it'll indeed be interesting to see how low it gets. It's fairly rare that we go below -5 °C at all here, so it should be a notable night in any case.

The thinnest of thin coverings here this morning, although very light snow continued on and off into the early afternoon. Nothing special to look at, especially in the overcast conditions, but in these parts you tend to take what you can get!

Miserable day here today. The coldest of the autumn so far (struggled to 7.1 °C) and rained pretty much all day after early morning. Since I'm not much of a football fan, there isn't anything about today that I will remember very fondly!