Arctic Hare

WYorksWeather That legitimately frightens me. Unless we're incredibly lucky with the timing of rainfall events, that seems almost certain to bring yet another significant flood to Bewdley (which would be the *sixth* since autumn) and probably another 5 metre one. That's our unofficial yardstick for a severe flood. They're supposed to be rare. The last one was all the way back back in... January this year. Going on my experience of this town, if that comes anywhere near to verifying then yes, you absolutely will be seeing a lot of pictures of severe flooding this April. What do we have to do to get out of this mess?

Yeah, it's okay today, remarkable for a holiday weekend! The Bewdley Duck Race is on Easter Monday, and fingers crossed it'll go ahead. The river is right on the edge of what would be considered safe for it, I think (because the ducks are picked up at the other end of the course by stewards in boats and canoes!) and I'm not sure it would happen if it were scheduled for today. The EA projection has the river falling a bit over the next couple of days, so fingers crossed. April currently looks like being a horror show, so I'll pretend the models don't exist for now!

I'm actually feeling okay about the weather today. Heavy showers yes, gusty winds yes, but also fast-moving cloud formations, blue sky, reasonably warm sunshine... this is what spring is supposed to be like. I haven't even got the lamp on at 3pm! If we'd had this for the last eight months I'd be much less worn down. (In passing, hi to the person/people rather oddly taking chunks of NW posts and pasting them on a very different forum. Fortunately none of mine are ever interesting enough! )

raz.org.rain I hope it's not exceptionally hot, but a month or two virtually devoid of rain would be absolutely welcome!

TheOgre Even that might be preferable to the April 2012 being followed by a repeat of summer 2012!

Currently on the Costa del Bewdley I've just put the light on. After a short bright interval in late morning, it's been relentless rain. The temperature stands at a mighty 6.9 °C. It's miserable, utterly miserable, and we'll need whole dry *seasons* to recover, let alone weeks or months. A couple of dry days and then more rain is almost completely useless beyond the very short term. For a variety of (some personal) reasons moving abroad is not even remotely an option in the foreseeable future for me, so I'll admit it grates just slightly when so many peoplen here keep pushing that approach... but in truth anyone who does, good luck to them and I hope they feel better for it. I just hope you'll give the odd thought to the millions of us who can't copy you!

Another very mixed day today that I'd be perfectly okay with in late March if it weren't for the stupidly wet weather we've had for months. Sharp showers (just rain here), gusty winds but also some sunshine. Chilly yes, but not that bad when the sun was out.

danm Oh yeah, hence the smiley at the end of my post! Agreed it wasn't representative, though plenty of places got well past 15 °C that month.

B87 We've had 19.9 °C in the UK this very January, and it was also the last time we had a reasonably dry and bright spell. I admit the trick of getting the two to coincide may be rather tougher...

January...

That was a really excellent post all round, thank you. I want to pick out this section in particular, though, as I think the focus on temperature almost above all else is indeed a big problem. When the UK hit 40 °C in July 2022, for the vast majority of people (healthy people, at least) a week later there was no discernible impact remaining and in effect it had ceased to be a visible impact. It was just "something that happened and is now over" for most of the population. That is not the case for flooding, of course. If the river comes into your house, you're very likely to be spending months living somewhere else or even in a caravan. If the road into town is washed away, your economy is potentially in huge strife. This winter's rainfall has caused very significant problems: for example, the railway between Telford and Shrewsbury has been closed for several weeks now because of a landslip. And even on a less dramatic level, we've all seen what months of soaking wet conditions have done to road surfaces. The likelihood of wetter winters and more extreme rainfall events is probably what we in the UK should be emphasising more - a *lot* more - than more heatwaves in summer. The Met Office is doing that a bit more now with its comments about a warmer atmosphere holding more water. Serious rainfall/flooding is, for most people in the UK, a *far* more visible thing than a couple of extra degrees in a heatwave.

baddie Either will do if they're the bright type. Neither will do if they simply mean weeks on end of murk and drizzle.

raz.org.rain Urgh, hot and wet would be horrendous. Imagine non-stop humid tropical nights for weeks on end. Those of us (the majority) without aircon in our houses would barely get any sleep!

Don I'll regret saying this if it actually happens, but for the first time today I found myself wishing for another 40 °C in July. For all I don't want it to be that hot, at least it wasn't wet and grey the whole time!

CongletonHeat Yep, they've completely dropped the ball today. MetO too. I get that forecasting showers is often tricky, but that's exactly the circumstances in which you need to rely on the pros. If there's a massive band of frontal rain heading at me, even I can probably tell what's going to happen! I need the MetO etc to be substantially better than me for the *tricky* setups.

In Ludlow right now, and it's been raining for the last hour with plenty more on the radar. Yet *another* failure of short-term rain forecasting by the Met Office. It's getting ridiculous now.

This is what the Met Office told me would be "largely dry with sunny spells this afternoon"...

And (after the early rain had stopped) *another* decent day! Who are you and what have you done with 2024?

Another milestone reached today with my first max into the 60s °F of the year -- 15.8 °C is 60.4 °F. Reasonably sunny until things clouded over fully in mid-afternoon. Nice enough for a few people to be sitting in the beer gardens at the town pubs. I hope they don't get too used to that, given what's on the way later this week!

Not a bad day at all today. Very nearly completely dry for me (just one very light shower), an acceptable amount of admittedly quite hazy sunshine, light winds for the most part, and decently mild at 14.6 °C. Nothing special in the great scheme of things, but when you compare it with the last few months it feels like heaven!

Palaeoclimatology, I believe, but essentially yes! But yes, fascinating to imagine that CC may bring the need for novel classifications. My hunch is that that's quite likely.

Snowshine indeed! At eight this morning it was miserable and wet. But look at it now. What a difference a couple of hours makes! Some heat in the sun now; I feel a bit too warm in my raincoat.

Scorcher Not sure how densely populated the surrounding area is, but Lima has pretty horrific stats on that. 1,230 hours a year according to its chart on Wikipedia. July and August there average about 30 hours each. None of which, of course, changes the fact that over here we are still close to the bottom of the table.

WYorksWeather Quite frankly, and I'm sure those with more knowledge will point out I'm being unreasonable but still, I currently wouldn't trust the models as far as I could throw them. They feel like they've failed again and again in the last few months. Unless, of course, they were predicting weeks of gloom and damp, in which case they'll suddenly turn out to have the highest verification stats on record...

Yes, and straight W'lies too, though somehow this winter it's managed to rain in almost any setup!