Richard2901

A horror show of a May. What is most shocking, is that asides from the first week, there hasn't really been any outstandingly bad days it is just poor all the time. More or less every single day is rubbish. May 1997 was the wettest of the last 45 years - but there were still several pleasant warm sunny days with light winds and temps of 17-20C. Last May, the dullest since 1993, also had several days like that. These type of days, which should be a bog-standard occurence in every May, have been entirely absent from this dreadful month. I haven't recorded 18C and at Dyce the highest temperature has been a disgusting 16.9C - comfortably the lowest since 1983. No day has managed 12 hours of sun, reflecting the constantly unsettled conditions and tendancy to cloud up in mid-morning. This is just abysmal for May and last happened in 1979. Doesn't look like we will see a 12-hour sun day in the next week either. Worst aspect has been the wind and the relentlessly unsettled conditions. The first week was exceptionally wet. Since then there's been just 18.2mm but it's rained most days - just one dry day since the 15th - though with no more than 2.8mm on any one day. Truly dire and a familiar story in recent years where rain has become more frequent but there has been a massive reduction in the interesting stuff- heavy downpours and thunder. Sundays have been atrocious, replacing Saturday as the worst day of the week. First two were wet and sunless then last week was sunny until 10am, cloudy with showers thereafter. Today mostly cloudy with a horrible NW wind rattling away. Just when are we going to see lighter winds? At least if it was SW rather than NW winds it would feel warmer, sunnier and more pleasant. Can't stand these cold, cloudy and nasty north westerlies. Makes it feel like March or October.

Vile month so far and looks like replacing last May as the worst of the century to date. The few decent days have felt like March, the majority of days like October and the worst days as grim as November. Rainfall is almost at the monthly average already and more than half of the sunshine will have been before 10am. As is always the case at the time of year with Pm air, skies fill with cloud during the morning to ruin what should be the best part of the day So far all but 4 days have been at least 2C colder than the average of 13.6C and and the nasty cold winds that never seem to let up any more are making the dire temperatures feel even worse. I've also recorded the two coldest May temperatures in at least 10 years: -1.4C on the 2nd and -1.9C last Friday but my lowest May max of just 6.3C on 17th May 2012 is safe for now despite a good effort to beat it being put up on Sunday 3rd Still the glorious spell of May 2012 came out of nowhere - it coincided with my first UK holiday in nearly 5 years and right up until a couple of days before I left the models were suggesting a continuation of the garbage that had prevailed for the previous 6 weeks. So May 2015 may yet prove not to be a write-off month but it is certainly looking that way at the moment.

Already over 70% of the whole monthly average rain total has fallen here in this rotten May. I've had 68mm of rain since the 24th April - which would be a high monthly total - and there's not been one completely dry day. Temperatures have been dire only reaching 10C twice. Apart from yesterday managing 16.7C it hasn't reached 9C this month This is a disgusting spell of weather to have to endure at the time of year the weather should be at it's best. So bad is this spell of relentless unsettled weather that the rainfall deficit from the first 7 weeks of spring has been completely cancelled out and by the end of today the seasonal total will be running above average. It certainly seems to be following the pattern of 1906 when the sunniest April on record was followed by, what was at the time, the wettest May on record until being surpassed by 1969 which currently holds the record.

This week hasn't been great but at least there has been sunshine as well as showers and cool winds. A lot better than the disgusting dross coming up at the weekend that's for sure: Saturday - Cold and dull Sunday - Cold, dull and wet Monday - Cloudy with average temperatures That seems to be what the models are suggesting. 3 days of totally useless write-off rubbish for the May holiday weekend as the wind sets in from the vilest possible direction of SE Saturday and Sunday look as awful as Good Friday with a near nationwide grey-out. This year has been exceptionally sunny and dry so far but only during the working week. Worst of the weather has always been at the weekend. 42% of this year’s rain has fallen at the weekends and 3 of the 4 wettest days this year been Saturdays or Sundays Even worse it looks like Tuesday will be a glorious day and Wednesday too. No doubt Thursday as well before four days of grey gloom/rain set in on Friday as I have a long weekend up in Aviemore. If there is any warm settled spell you can guarantee it will begin when I get back on the 12th and any cooler/cloudier blips will occur at the weekends. It's just incredulous.

Finished on 224.5 hours sunshine here for April easily beating 2011 (211.8hrs) and 2007 (202.5hrs) to make it the sunniest April for Aberdeen since 1906 which remains the sunniest on record. There is a good chance of April being the sunniest month of the year again unless May proves better. Given up expecting anything from the pile of dross formerly known as summer. July 2006 is the only summer month to have been sunnier than this April since the turn of the century and April is now the 2nd sunniest month of the year after May. Rainfall was only 13.2mm up to the 23rd but a very wet final week, with 32.8mm, has taken it close to average (so similar to what happened in April 2003 and July 2013). Despite the fact that it was drier than average it was the 3rd wettest April in the past 10 years, only 2008 and 2012 having been wetter than average in that time.

Yet again what should have been a noteworthy cold night ruined by wind. Clear skies and snowcover and all it managed here was a pathetic -0.6C. I've had lower in May without snow and given it was down at +0.4C at 7pm yesterday it is very lame. It got down to -0.4C as late as the 20th May in 2012 following a double figure max the previous day. The lowest temperatures are always recorded in Northern Ireland or the Western Highlands nowadays rather than the likes of Aviemore, Glenlivet, Braemar and Aboyne. The wind just never lets up in the east

215.8 hours of sunshine here in the past 30 days which is the highest 30-day total since summer 2013 2015 is certainly proving a welcome contrast to 2014 as far as sunshine goes with 530 hours so far. This total wasn't reached until 26th May last year. Even the upcoming poor spell should be nowhere near as dull and depressing as the grim end to April 2014.

Don't seem more frequent to me. In the 1940s/ early 1950s it reached 26C on 17th April 1943, 27C on 16th April 1945, 26.7C on 4th April 1946 then the record of 29C on 16th April 1949 plus 26C on 30th April 1952. Much more impressive than recent years as far as I'm concerned. Some of the other Aprils of the 40s managed 23-24C as well. Needless to say there has been no warm spell at all here with every day since Saturday seeing temperatures around the April averageof 11C. The one exception was yesterday when it reached 16.3C. This was also the worst day of the week with only an hour of sunshine. Warmest day of the month here was the 5th with a maximum of 18.7C which is only a little bit better than the average for the warmest day of April.

We have had no decent snow here since December 2010 whereas parts of the south had a week of lying snow in February 2012 and we got nothing. The Channel Islands got a pasting in March 2013 and we had snizzle coming out of slate grey skies. The last two winters have delivered nothing but the type of slop I'd expect living on the south coast. This decade has been utter hell. Snowless winters and the most miserable summers in history. It used to be NW Highlands, the Western Isles and Northern Isles that missed out on heatwaves not the whole of Scotland and Northern England This week really doesn't look good at all and perhaps will be the first time for, what seems like an eternity, that the weather improves in time for the weekend. Plenty time yet though for the high pressure to move into a much less favourable position or disappear completely.

Sums up my thoughts on 2014 as well. Very poor year with little real warmth just lots of average days with grey skies and very mild nights. No cold at all. Spring was the worst of the century to date. Lots of murky foggy weather and the dullest May for a long time. Another repellant feature of the year from hell, that had nothing going for it, was the exceptionally bad weekend weather with weekends consistently seeing significantly worse weather than weekdays from March through to September. Summer 2014 was not good. Mixed at best. It was in no way comparable to summer 2013 - the only good summer in recent years. 2nd half of June was atrocious here with grey overcast day in day out resulting in the 7th dullest June on record - not much sunnier than June 2012. August was wetter than any summer month between 2007 and 2012 - the wettest since 1963 in fact with only 1986 having a colder 2nd half in the last 50 years. July was simply not good enough to make up for that.

Snowstorm in winter, calm and settled in summer.

Very boring March. Close to average temperatures for the fourth successive month and, like the previous three months, it was down to near average temperatures all the time instead of a mix of cold and warm spells like you would expect. Only a few warmish days and nothing remotely cold at all really. Maxes of 6-11C almost every day. Coldest max just 5.5C which is the second highest in my record after 6.6C last year. Between 2006 and 2012 the highest coldest max I recorded in March was 4.6C in 2012. Even less wintry than March 2014 with only a bit of sleet whereas last year there were snow and hail showers on the 23rd. The number of frosts was average, with seven in total, but most were slight. Not reached -5C in March since 2010 whereas only 2007 failed to between 2006 and 2010. Very little spring-like weather either as most of the sunny days had a nagging cold wind continuing the theme from winter. Also little in the way of convection with rainfall finishing below average (65% of average). Sunshine was slightly above average (109% of average) despite a dull easterly middle of the month. There was however a lack of completely sunny days as the highest daily total was only 9.7 hours which is the second lowest I have recorded after 8.0 hours in 2013. However 9.8 hours were recorded on 27th February 2013 so this total is the lowest total I have recorded for the sunniest day in the first quarter of the year. All adds up to another extremely unmemorable month for me

2006 the snowiest by far followed by 2001. These two stick out a mile way ahead of anything else. After that 2004 had good snow and hard frost at the start but nothing falling apart from sleet. 2010 had good snow inland at the start of the month but nothing on the coast but did have the latest date I can recall for a 10cm snowfall on the last day of the month. 2008 had a potent northerly at easter but at that time most of the snow melted during the day. Still managed a colder min than anything since January 2013 though. 2013 had a good snowfall lasting from the 10th to 13th but the rest of the month was awful. The run of Marches from 2001 to 2008 were the snowiest since the 1960s in contrast to the 1990s which had very little. I struggle to recall any March snowfall in the 90s apart from 13th March 1996 and the beginning of March 1998. 1993 had a 20cm snowfall on 27th February but I don't recall much of it lasting into March. The 2010s have been dire as well. It is looking increasingly likely that this will be the 4th March in 5 years with no lying snow which is more evidence of how this decade is turning out even worse for snowfall than the 90s. Up to 2010 we only had four snowless Marches in 15 years (1997, 1999, 2003 and 2009). I had 35 days of lying snow in March between 2001 and 2008 but have only recorded 10 days since 2009, all but one of which was in 2013.

The model output is so vile and disgusting it makes me want to swear. Absolute filth. Doesn't look like a single passable day in the next week with the wind coming from the worst possible direction. Sunless, wet and depressing. Intolerable on top of all the other spells of rank south easterlies we've been forced to suffer over the past 15 months This has been an outstandingly boring late winter/early spring. Windy every day for almost a month, barely a frost and hardly any days reaching 10C, zero convective activity of any sort. It is pathetic. This current spell is the most dismal since November and clearly is going to get even worse. 2015 just continuing where 2014 left off in spewing out the worst possible garbage at all times

The current model ouput is horrid. The past few weeks have been execrable with a complete lack of anything remotely interesting combined with rotten lousy damp grey weekends. Local media full of nonsense about how it's going to be warmer than Majorca this weekend. I can only assume there must be another Majorca somewhere in the arctic circle. Model output suggests lots of cloud, a nasty wind and unremarkable temperatures. That's certainly what it was like today. Worse than 90% of days in the winter just gone Worse still next week looks like a depressingly dull and grim southerly flow when I have days off I need to start using up. Awful autumnal gunk which seems to be the only season we ever get these days. Any interesting or pleasant weather that appears in the model output always gets watered down to nothingness with each run. Really depressing and as bad as winter 13/14 being stuck indoors all the time. Can't take any more of this after last year being the worst for outdoor activities I have experienced due to endless foul weekend weather from March to September

Not a good spell of weather coming up - possibly the cloudiest period since November. Certainly looks like yet another dire weekend - the 4th in a row. Foehn effect appears to have been watered down to give 11C and cloudy dross with strong winds which will not be pleasant in any way. Then Sunday looks atrocious as yet again a front is stuck over the whole of Scotland instead of just the NW Last year was ridiculous with barely a single decent weekend between March and September. So far this year is even worse with nearly every weekday sunny and almost all of the grey dull and miserable days coinciding with the weekend. Depressing in the extreme.

Don't normally see it reached until May here but April warmth is long overdue. Just had three April's on the trot fail to reach even 17C - the first time this has happened since the 1970s when there were a number of unusually cool April's. Only just scraped 20C in May last year but wasn't reached until the last day of June in 2013 - the latest since 1932, which was the last time it wasn't reached until July. Have a feeling it will struggle to get to 20C again this spring. Just seems a terrible era to be living in for any sort of extremes be it warmth or cold

It has been an awful winter again with just 11 days of snow lying, at 9am,and a max depth of 6cm. Most of the days had just 1-2cm. The most shocking thing is that 4 of the past 9 winters had even less snow when a winter as rubbish as this should only be expected about 1 year in 5. 1997/98 had about the same amount of snow despite being one of the mildest on record. Despite an exceptional amount of clear skies the number of frosts was only average with 33 in total but they were much more transient than usual with a pathetic lack of hard frosts. Other than the February high pressure spell I can recall few mornings when the ground was white with frost. In my 10 years of records only 2007/08 and 2013/14 had a lower average duration per frost than this winter and only 2006/07 and 2013/14 failed to beat the pathetic absolute low of -4.0C.

Sunniest winter on record here by a considerable margin with 324.2 hours, the previous record being 281.4 hours in winter 2011/12. It’s very close to 50% of the possible sunshine. Almost 100 hours more sun than in autumn 2014 – the dullest since 1968 – and even more incredulously sunnier than summer 2012 – the dullest since 1912. Monthly breakdown: Dec: 93.9hrs (177%) Jan: 116.2hrs (173%) Feb: 114.1hrs (132%) December and January very impressive, February less so. In fact February did not seem like a sunny month at all to me due to almost all the dull grey days falling at weekends (14th, 15th, 22nd, 28th). A big difference between the weekday average of 4.6hrs and the weekend average of 2.7hrs, which is actually below average.

1986 was a cold year but we've had colder here in recent years. 2010 had the lowest mean maximum temperature since 1979 and the 12-months ending March 2013 had a colder mean maximum than any calendar year since 1965. It reached 14C at Dyce in both March and April 1986 whereas we had to wait until May for that to be reached in 2001. The monthly maximums of 13.1C in April 2001 and 13.2C in April 2012 were the lowest for April since records began at Dyce in 1941, the previous lowest having been 13.9C in 1951. 20 days reached 20C here in 1986 but compared to some recent years that is a respectable total. 2011, which has got to rate as the worst year for warmth around here since at least 1974, only managed 12 days reaching 20C and, apart from the first few days of June, it failed to reach 21C all summer. By contrast 1986 saw 28.0C reached on 14th July which is hotter than anything since 2006. Overall 1986 was a very sunny year, particularly between May and October, with October the sunniest on record and there was a decent variety of weather. I'd far rather have the weather of 1986 than the pigswill we've been served up over the past decade that's for sure.

Terrible end to a terrible winter by the looks of things. As with the whole of the past 15 months there is nothing in the outlook to look forward to. Just another northerly being cut off, before it gets going, by cold zonal dross which will give exactly the same rubbish to NE Scotland as earlier in the winter: endless wind, little frost, bone dry when it's cold enough for snow, rain when it's not Cold zonality is good for nothing. Windy all the time with sub-5C maxima but struggling to get below freezing at night. It gives nothing akin to a winter wonderland. It's just awful and tediously boring in stark contrast to the high pressure last week when frosts were achieved with ease and the ground white morning after morning despite maxes reaching 8-11C.

The high pressure looks awful. First of all it will be to the west allowing Atlantic gunk to spew over the top of it and down the eastern side of the country, reminiscent of the repellant second half of June last year. When it moves further south/east it should allow a westerly flow so will be brighter here but still too breezy for frost. So little or no frost likely here over the next 7-10 days. This is dire for a winter month. Just awful 2014/15 has been another lamentable winter. Not as bad as 06/07, 07/08, 11/12 and 13/14 for snow but worse than all of them for frost except last winter.

It's a similar story here. This winter has been diabolical for frost. There is a breeze all the time. Haven't managed lower than -4.0C on 27th Dec, -3.9C this year and -3.1C from this pitiful cold spell. Only last winter and 2006/07 failed to reach -5C in my 10 year records and of the rest all but 2007/08 managed at least -6C.

Yes it was an awful month. Horrible grey and cold with snow falling almost every day but seldom lying for more than a couple of hours. The only Marches I recall as having at least a week of deep lying snow were 2001 and 2006. In both cases the snow began in February so there are zero instances in my lifetime of a fresh snowfall in March lasting a week. This basically means this winter has three weeks to produce something decent and half of that period looks a write-off at the moment.

Best example I can think of is February 1969. Exceptionally snowy northerly month following on from an awful December and January. Only other years I can think of since then were 1978, 1991 and 2009. The latter though did have a good northerly in November then December and January were both dire. As for February 1983 it was an atrocious month. Just the type of vile easterly month I detest more than anything. Very cold and dull with only 53 hours sun but produced no more than 2cm of lying snow and that was it for the winter so a really poor season. Not until 2006/07 did we have another winter that failed to exceed 2cm. February 2001 does not qualify as there had already been a decent amount of snow over Christmas and New Year.