kold weather

The east of the region has had some impressive low maxes, quite a few 3 and 4c below average readings upto the 9th June. Once you get towards London longitude though it's basically much closer to normal. With that being said we are going to have a run if 3-5 days around 8-10c above normal so we will swing much more heavily above from now. Uk as a whole currently 0.6c above normal for maxes...so yeah, its not been that cold away from the east.

Decent cumulus field out there ahead of the current cells, i fully expect more will go up there in the next hour and lift into the W.Midlands as well. Locally I'm not expecting much and I think tonight's crud will just wind up making tomorrow rather more cloudy than today instead of giving much of interest. At least it may finally end a near month lack of rain I suppose.

Ukv went for several localised 31c today, it just about nailed today and gives alot of confidence for the rest of the week.

I think that what you get when you have large chunks of the Atlantic way above normal.

Looking good for the latter afternoon, cells should develop into fairly strong systems over the next hour or so as 5he development zone lifts NW

Do sunglasses and a cap help at all when it comes to brightness? I can read books in this light for a similar reason though I'm OK out in it generally.

Weak echos near Reading. Whether or not this will be the one to break the cap remains ro be seen but it is in the right general area for iniation imo.

Providing no major conve tion kicks off in London within the next 30 minutes that date record probably falls today. UKV has done a good job on that front.

31c here just breached, hotter than i expected actually but the conversation tion has taken longer to get going so we've remained qt most 2/8 in terms of cloud, with most of that clearly seen to the north.

Far too early to be worrying about the cap not breaking, when it does go it should be pretty rapid. With that being said I was never totally convinced today was going to be a widespread type of day, I personally think more discrete cells that may to quite strong as they broadly edge NW. Still it is warm enough for sure now...

Depending on when the sky unzips could well get close or even bear the date record. Well done to UKV its basically nailed the last couple of days temperatures.

Plenty of 21-22c at 9am in the SE so we'll on pace for a 30c somewhere today. Yesterday max ended up being 29.7c so a rounded 30.

It's convective rain, those models just don't have the resolution to really pick it out. Saturday in particular is looking pretty discrete in nature, maybe a little less so Sunday and Monday.

I wouldn't be too surprised if isolated cells pop off even down here. Should make for some great photos given they should be fairly discrete. Main action probably just a little too far north/west for us lot though.

Still a wonderful 26c here after peaking at 27c. UKV did a pretty superb job with the temperatures locally and it seems more generally, especially when the global models were more around the 22-24c mark. That also does give more confidence with temperatures reaching 30-32c tomorrow and maybe the next few days.

I think this is probably the best summer day for quite some time, its warm, borderline very warm, totally sunny and with the strong June sunshine thats making it feel even warmer again, but not so warm that you can't use it without overheating/sweating. Honestly a wonderful day. As for tomorrow, high resolution models broadly agreeing with convection sparking off somewhere near London, to the north/west of it, probably triggered by temperatures close to 30c.

Sorry I don't think I made that clear, I was talking about Manchester and the beeb forecasts. Most local amauter station is now at 25c here, that might be a little high but Odiham was at 22.5c at 1pm and so 23-24c seems probable.

Interestingly already at 20.6c at 12pm, so highly likely the original forecast was more accurate! Almost certainly going to be the hottest day of the year here, already feeling warm.

The GFS has been quite keen on lifting up this blocking and replacing it with a LP chain lifting out from Europe looking at recent ensembles. I think an eye is needed on it but eqaully we know the GFS isn't great with these features, and I recall in previous blocked summers the GFS would often try and break it down only for the pattern to shift SW with time, to an extent that even if it did breakdown we'd soon be back in it again. It is also handling that cutoff low over Europe very differently compared to the other models between 144-180hrs as well.

Some of the figures for that area of the world are impressive, the last 30 days there have recorded 340hrs, which is mighty impressive. With that being said, as mentioned before, what is wild is large parts of the country managed similar figures in May 2020, it wasn't just limited to coastal parts of the west and south. Taken as a whole May 2020 was still far sunnier for Wales than 2023 has been, so it does show how relatively local the record breaking stuff has been.

Just to test your theory I've run the numbers for the last month (9th May-9th June) and it is indeed a very sunny period for SOME, though with very marked differences. For example if you lived in the E.Midlands its been distinctly average, meanwhile parts of the far south and west have done very well indeed. Whilst it has been sunny locally, May 2020 still fairly comfortably beats it out (as does May 89 in Hampshire) even when taking the 9th May-9th June period, and whilst this spell has been sunny for sure, it actually isn't quite as drastically above average as you think it is (262hrs of sunshine vs an average of 212). My guess is there has been quite a few days where we've had low cloud till about 10am-12pm and then it rolls back around 6-8pm, so whilst the main chunk of the day is nice, the rest is cloudy. Certainly thats my recollection upto maybe the last week of May when it did turn legitimately sunny.

I think down here it has been a fairly notable sunny spell, especially when contrasted to London that has had multiple days of 'only' getting 6-8hrs in comparison. With that being said, May 2020 was absurdly sunny. To put it into context the sunniest June in recent history averaged 270hrs in the SE (06), May 2020 ended up down here at 327.5. The only months in modern history that were even close are July 06 and 18, but they are still some 20-25hrs behind! Still, this spell may yet morph into a 2018 type spell which similarly started in May after a very wet spring. Something to watch for.

I'd imagine May 2020 would have been the most recent very sunny spell, with some utterly huge sunshine anomalies (it beats out even high ranking June's fairly comfortably despite slightly shorter days). As you say its felt warm without being oppressive at any point, though I get the feeling that is about to change over the weekend. EDIT - I'm not convinced there will be that much convection down here to be honest, maybe some stuff drifting up on Saturday night and maybe the odd bit here and there for the rest of the time but I think the main action will be just to our north.

I believe 2012, which recorded it in the very warm end of May spell. Its a pretty unusual thing to get in the first half of the month, more common in the 2nd half though.

I think alot depends on where you live, when I used to live in S.Essex the grass drying out was pretty much a yearly occurrence unless we had a pretty wet summer. So I do link dry grass with summer here, but I'd expect it to be considerably greener, especially earlier in the summer than down here.