andreas

Sunny interludes still for the moment in Crystal Palace - but this is the view to the west.

Well I can start as someone who is also not in any way a professional meteorologist. High pressure generally means stable air - with little risk of rain at its centre. Winds go clockwise around a high pressure cell 'anticyclone'. So if we have a high pressure centred to the north of the UK and Ireland, it will potentially be feeding quite cool air down towards us from near the Arctic regions. The 'retrogression' is a movement against the typical flow of the atmosphere in our part of the globe - so it would move the centre of the high pressure towards the west. If this came to pass it would increase the likelihood of allowing a colder airstream with more of a northerly component to affect the UK and Ireland. That's my understanding, anyhow.

Indeed - and if it had gone back to the 1980s I think it would have shown some summers that didn't reach 30 degrees....

I must say - and I nearly posted on Model Output Discussion until sense got the better of me, that this does so remind me of when I first started getting properly interested in the weather in the early 1980s. High pressure to the west, low pressure gouging down into North Africa, a classic set up for interesting times.

Yes not central London but looking back to June 2012 according to my records in Crystal Palace the maximum was 12.3 on 4 June and 12.9 on 5 June. With a northerly / easterly airstream and no sun it can still be very cool.

It's been a long time since I remember having tulips and cherry blossom still around in early May. As for the may (hawthorn) itself it's barely started flowering, whereas in some recent years it's been all but over by now.

Well... in my lifetime I've experienced two proper snowfalls in April - four inches on 26 April 1981 in Cheltenham (when max temperature was zero so it didn't melt until the following day) and about the same (ten centimetres) on 6 April 2008 in Crystal Palace, when it did melt that afternoon. So in principle possible, especially on higher ground in the north etc.

Yes, well it's raining heavily. Otherwise all pretty calm (well here at least)!

Nice - although it doesn't make a summer...

I can well believe you. I looked back in my diary and on a bus journey in Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire on 12 January 1987 the driver had to keep stopping as the windows were freezing up inside! In Cheltenham the maximum was -7.

Ah - the cherry blossom might have been snowflakes after all - unless there is a large cherry orchard nearby... Yes it is snowing again.

Getting very breezy here and I thought I saw a few flakes of snow in the rain - but then realised it was cherry blossom.

Just on the right side of the margin: 0.7, DP -0.9 so a good covering - I'd guess about half an inch.

although in fairness the mod thread can be forgiven for focusing on interesting weather

You may be right - and I am sure so many would be delighted if that were the case, more generally

It feels like snow coming in overnight to me - though there is the advantage here of a bit of altitude. Temperature down to 0.2, DP to -1.9 - well, we shall see what transpires, as always, the fascination of the weather.

Good morning. Currently 2.4 degrees, dew point 0.3, a few snowflakes in the rain!

Sadly the type of synoptics which when I watched the weather thirty or forty years ago would have almost definitely brought snow in the southeast appear now set to deliver us cold rain and sleet. I may be wrong - and I hope I am - but at the moment that's what seems most likely.

Here in south London it's been the first winter since 2014/15 when we have had a proper cold snap in each of the winter months. That's a little underwhelming I must admit...

I have consulted A Practical English Grammar by Thomson & Martinet and they say that 'an' is used before words beginning with a vowel, a mute h (e.g. hour) or individual letters spoken with a vowel sound (e.g. an MP, an 's').

I do hope so - I am managing expectations here in south London by thinking it might be warm rain that turns to cold rain with the odd snowflake in the mix...

That is a huge jump - and I am sorry to say, really scary.

It's many years since I remember the bird baths re-freezing during the day time - as they have done this morning. A cracking day of hazy sunshine, temp -0.2, dew point -1.5.

I've just spotted a few snowflakes - we have already exceeded winter 21/22 for snowiness. temperature -0.1 , DP -1.2, fingers crossed.

I was young too - it snowed a lot, then thawed out over Christmas. But early in the New Year (January 1982) the snow came back big time as did the cold - mid-January one of the coldest days of the past seventy years, sub -10 maxima (yes maxima) in southern England.