Arctic Hare

Absolutely perfect summer's day here today. After a bit of early cloud, wall-to-wall blue skies pretty much throughout. Warm without being unpleasantly hot (max 23.7 °C) and a light breeze to counter the heat of the July sunshine. Still beautiful as I type, albeit getting a bit cool to sit still now. Fabulous evening for a walk though. Give me this in summer over 14 °C or 35 °C any day.

After that 49 in Canada last year, who knows anymore? Seeing 42 or so in the UK, even on one ens member, is mad enough.

Interesting for me in the Midlands to see the contrast between those in the SE who are having a really good summer so far (assuming you like it warm and dry) and those in the NW who are having a rather different experience. As you'd expect I guess, here in between the two blocs it's somewhere in the middle. Right now, just on personal opinion and not on hard data, I'd call this a decent but not great summer so far. Too much irritating light rain to be better than that, eg it was overcast, gloomy and spotting about 8:30 am yesterday morning.

35.8 °C, Cambridgeshire, Sunday 17th.

Personally speaking over 30 °C is usually too hot for me, especially if I need to be even slightly active. The thought of 40 °C fills me with considerable dread, and the thought it may become more than a once-in-a-lifetime event within a couple of decades more so. That said however, if at some point it's going to be record-breakingly hot, then I'd marginally prefer 40 °C to 39.7 °C. No real difference in effect, but a more "interesting" record I suppose. 2006 was a very nice summer for me. In these parts it was only rarely stupidly hot, but it was really nice summer weather most of the "extended summer" from May to September, barring a relatively ordinary August. I'd definitely prefer a repeat of that summer compared with a couple of days of three-figure-Fahrenheit and nothing else of much note, and by a long long way.

Miserable day here today, down there with the very worst summer days. Daytime max* of 13.2 °C and rain almost the entire time, barring a short stretch in the morning when it was merely overcast and dull! Of course this was the Saturday of the Bewdley Food Festival, held outdoors by the river... I hope the stallholders have a rather better experience tomorrow, as it must have been quite grim today. * I record midnight to midnight, but today it was unrepresentative as the max was 19.2 °C just after midnight. Didn't get anywhere near that during daytime!

Max here today was 29.1 °C, easily my 2022 high. Could be quite some while before I break that, quite possibly not at all this year. As has been pointed out, this wasn't anything staggeringly exceptional, but it was certainly a hot day for this neck of the woods. Luckily I didn't have a huge amount to do so could sit outdoors in the shade with a book and cold drink!

A pretty decent day today. Fair amount of cloud at times, but reasonable sunny spells between. Max 26.2 °C, which is a new high for me this year. It will almost certainly only last 24 hours, of course! Tomorrow's heat might be a little too much for me, so although I hope we break 30 °C I'm quite glad that this won't be an extended heatwave. Would have liked rather better weather for the weekend, but at least it won't be a washout.

Very grotty here today. Max 11.9 °C which is rotten for June, no sunshine, drizzly stuff continuing long after the serious rain had gone this morning. I feel sorry for the people around here who had their Jubilee street parties today. I hope they had a tent or somewhere else undercover to go to!

We needed a bit of rain I'll slightly reluctantly agree, but it's still nice to see blue skies again today! A little edge off the temperature because of the breeze, but 19.1 °C is still feeling very pleasant. Tomorrow looks like being a fantastic late spring day, too.

Beautiful couple of days here. Yesterday saw the first 20 °C of the year, with the thermometer topping out at 20.4 °C. Maximum so far today is 19.8 °C, so a decent chance of two 20s in a row. Plenty of sunshine too, a really pleasant spring day all round.

A new 2022 high for me today. Not quite as high as some people's here, but I'll take 17.4 °C with hours and hours of sunshine! Took a little while to get going, the March sun isn't quite strong enough to burn through the cloud quickly, but once it was out it stayed out. Easily warm enough to sit outside with a book at lunchtime. Hard to grumble! As mentioned above though, not sure I'd want this setup at the height of summer with 30 °C plus likely. Much better in spring I think. All for sunny warmth in summer, but unless there's some actual record-breaking on the cards I prefer somewhere in the mid-20s as a rule.

Yeah, it's been really chilly. Sure today was always going to be a bit cool and cloudy, but here at least it's been entirely overcast all day and it's currently 8 °C, both considerably worse than the MetO regional text forecast - their "A fine morning, with plenty of sunshine across the region" has been proved completely wrong. I guess we might get a *little* bit of brightness later in the afternoon, but it's still disappointing. On the plus side it does look likely to be better for the next few days, especially later on in the week. Chilly nights leading into warm, bright days is my idea of what spring should be all about. Let's hope it sticks to the script in reality!

Well, that was more like it! After the remnants of mist and cloud lifted early on, this was about as good as mid-March gets in these parts. Max of 14.5 °C, gentle breeze, pleasant sunshine. I did a lot of walking in my spare moments today and it was truly wonderful weather for it. Really made me feel optimistic about the spring ahead. Too much to hope for something on the level of 2020 I'm sure, but more days like today (gradually warming as the weeks go on) would be very welcome indeed!

After a very pleasant, mild, bright day yesterday we're back to sludge and murk and rain today. 8.7 °C as things stand. The forecast looks better for a little while from tomorrow, at least.

A couple of largely dry days here, which we *really* needed. The Severn is now at 5.18m (top of normal range is 3.30m) and still rising, though fingers crossed it doesn't have that much further to rise. The modern-era record is 5.56m in November 2000, and it now looks unlikely that that will be broken. Still very concerning situation though, especially for people on the eastern bank where we still only have temporary defences, though those have been improved a bit since 2020. Quite a few people in that area are evacuated and sleeping in temporary accommodation tonight. The only minor comfort I can think of right now is that we had similar conditions in Feb 2020 and then of course that glorious spring. A repeat of that (though without the lockdown!) would be pretty welcome. The ground is absolutely saturated so any more seriously wet weather in the remaining part of winter and into spring could easily bring severe problems back quite fast.

/assets/images/govuk-opengraph-image.png Severe flood warning for River Severn at Wribbenhall, Bewdley - GOV.UK CHECK-FOR-FLOODING.SERVICE.GOV.UK Flooding information and advice for the area: River Severn at Wribbenhall, Bewdley. Worrying times in parts of Bewdley this evening. Some residents being advised to evacuate as it can't be guaranteed that the temporary defences on the east bank of the River Severn won't overtop. Certainly merits the Severe Flood Warning as overtopping there has happened before and is devastating. We really, really, *really* need some properly dry weather soon, both here and upstream in Shropshire & Powys. Similar warning out for parts of Ironbridge, but I don't know that area well so can't say much about it. By the way, please be very cautious about relying on the river level projection (eg for Bewdley) on the EA website. It's a computer model and is often about as accurate as the icon-based hourly forecasts on the Met Office app. As with weather, the text-based sitrep by the experts is much more useful.

Just calmed down again here after the squall passed through. A week or 2 ago I was thinking about going out to see some relatives this afternoon. Glad we decided against it!

Very glad I'm not outside right now! Tree down on the A456, Blakedown area. I wonder whether we may see a few of these that were weakened but not felled by Eunice on Friday.

It's a tricky one. This is what has in fact happened with flood warnings. Some years ago the levels for those were yellow, then orange, then red at the top. Nowadays it's Flood Alert, Flood Warning, Severe Flood Warning. However my distinct impression is that, apart from people living right next to the river, most people take no more notice of a Flood Alert for the River Severn here than they do of a yellow weather warning. Someone on here yesterday suggested taking something from the American hurricane alerts and splitting Watches and Warnings - so over there you can have a Hurricane *Watch* and a Tropical Storm *Warning* at the same time. So with this setup, the Met Office could have issued a "Red Watch" for SE England on Thursday night but kept the Amber *Warning*, and only moved to a "Red Warning" in the early hours of Friday, when the actual red was issued. I know some people say this may be confusing and I get that point, but having both Watches and Warnings seems to work in the US. I think a bigger problem may be what I mentioned above, that like "Alert", the word "Watch" doesn't feel urgent to many people while "Warning" does. Realistically with the unpredictability inherent in UK weather, there's never going to be a system that works perfectly every time. I think the Met Office did a pretty good job with Eunice and while you can debate whether certain specific calls were exactly right, they were spot on that this would likely be a very damaging storm in many southern areas.

Taking stock a bit now things are calmer. For this area, my immediate estimate is that this was about a once-a-decade storm. We definitely don't get winds like that most winters! A *lot* of fallen trees, including across major roads. It's not that rare to get 1 or 2 of those, but there must have been a dozen just across A roads, *very* rare for a single day! So definitely a very notable storm here and worthy of serious warnings, railway closures etc. Will I remember this in 20 years time? Not sure. For IMBY the most amazing weather event of my life was probably December 2010 with the Severn completely frozen over by Boxing Day. This storm isn't quite on that level. Maybe 1 step down. But I really hope it's a long time before we have winds and their effects like this here again!

Slight lull here now, though I won't drop my guard as many here have seen this, only to find winds whamming back in a bit later on! At the moment, from what I know of impacts around here, I'd say the MetO's amber warning was spot on. It's certainly in the upper part of amber though, definitely not the kind of storm we see every winter or even every 2 or 3 winters.

Meanwhile in another part of the Midlands! Trees down all over IMBY. At least four Worcestershire A roads reported to be wholly or partly blocked by fallen trees just in the last 45 minutes. Many years since it's been this bad. Edit: make that five!

My nearest Met Office station (Throckmorton) has a 56 mph gust recorded for 12:00. Will be interested to see what the 13:00 and 14:00 reports say, since here in Bewdley it's definitely stronger now than it was an hour and a bit ago. Wouldn't be especially surprised to see 65 mph recorded. Nothing compared to the worst numbers in other places I know, but it really is exceptional to get above the mid-high 40s here in Bewdley.

The Worcs Highways & Travel Twitter is just non-stop fallen tree reports now. Five in the space of about 15 minutes.