kold weather

Its a pretty impressive summer rainfall event, especially for the SE and I'd be interested to see the return rate for this much rainfall in the SE section, especially for a summer month. From a brief scout its rare to go above 25mm for a daily average, but I'd guess we have a fair shot at going above that, especially as we still have a good 90 minutes left of the day.

Still coming down here at a decent rate, but nothing compared to that corridor of heaviest convection. Given the strength of the convective line, some areas are going to clearly going north of 50mm for the day which is a very impressive total.

Already a decent swathe of the country in the 15-20mm bracket today with more to come. So likely to see a decent rise today, and again for the next few. Could be a very wet month in the EWP if this type of pattern locks in.

getting strong memories of June 2012 at the moment. Very wet afternoon with some heavy rain. Will be interesting to see storm totals once done come around Thursday time.

Ben Noll has recently tweeted saying latest ECM long range is hot for Europe. Also looks drier than normal from anomaly map. Just something to think about...hot Europe may not necessarily mean hot here of course even if it is accurate.

Those USA heatwave indexes are not really usable like you are. They are relative to the 10 year mean and are compared to what would normally be expected within a 10 year return rate, so the 30s had some pretty severe events RELATIVE to the mean...but the mean is just about everywhere still heading northwards, so for example a marginal heatwave event on your chart in the 20s/30s would not show as a heatwave event in the 00/10s as it would no longer be a 1 in 10 year event, but a lower number (EG 1 in 8 years, etc). This is probably a more useful chart with regards to extreme heat events as they are a true reflection of hot days within the states: As you say there does seem to be a little bit of uncertainty due to different understanding of indexes. Hot days are roughly at the same severeity as the 30s, night time mins are soaring way above...which makes sense as the 30s was broadly caused by a desertification type event (dust bowls , hence dry air which normally leads to higher maxes and relatively not as severe mins compared to maxes) whilst the warming now is purely from the global masses warming up around the states and the SSTs also heading northwards from all direction, hence why mins are holding up increasingly well. So the 30s was caused by a relative small scale event on a global scale, whilst the warming now is being caused by warming happening from at least 3 sources (Atl/Pac and the Arctic). As for hurricanes, I don't personally think there is yet a solid case for saying there has been an increase, there maybe an argument for storms undergoing faster RI but as each basin measures intensity differently (Indian Met is horrid for example, very often way to slow at upping strength!) which always makes it hard to compare. Still I don't think we have been accurately looking at TCs outside of the Atantic before 1960s (1940s/1950s should be fairly accurate, BUT they could easily miss those subtropical storms/NE Atlantic storms that often get caught these days) so past years are highly likely under-represented. Unfortunately Humans are selfish and we self-preserve as best we can. We (global collective here) lack the courage probably required to make the changes that will be required, and sadly our planets ultimate fate probably will be something akin to Venus (ok not that extreme!) but a kind of runaway warming. To an extent some areas may benefit (we maybe one such area in theory) but many will suffer and unless serious infrastructure work is done now, some parts of the world will likely be too extreme for natural life as we know it right now What event will prove to be a tipping point, I'm not going to pretend to know. We could be just a few years away, or perhaps still 50-100 years away, in which case we may still be able to tech our way out of it...my gut though says its closer to the former than latter...but in terms of human live, its probably still too far away for us to wrap our minds around it.

Certainly a chance that this the highest we will get this Easter, though a chance tomorrow does get to 26c. Monday looks just a tick less impressive but it won't be far off those figures.

Already several 20c+ recorded, should easily sail past the bottom few forecasts. AROME going for a local 24 near Heathrow, and also 23-24c locally on the south coast.

Models really starting to agree on this current warm spell extending through next week as well which would lead to a 10 day period somewhere in the 13-15c range which will help to rocket the CET to well above average. Given we have been as low as 7c, I suspect this April will be joining Rogers list of years that went up by more than 2c in the second half.

Seems to be two situations on the model, one allows the upper trough to push the warm air far enough east that we end up in a set-up with lots of rain and probably CET dailys close or slightly above normal. The other solution has been hinted at by both ECM and GFS and keeps the warm air in place which keeps maxes in the 15-18c range and so makes some of those larger jumps in the CET possible.

Well for a start that isn't even accurate: Fair to say that since 1970 there has been quite a notable shift upwards compared with before for a much longer period of time than previous upticks. In fact as I said yesterday, there is even a stalling of increases in Co2 emissions around 1940-1960 which does coincide quite nicely with that flatlining of temperatures on that chart. I'd say that actually rather neatly puts blame on Co2. I think its really clear that whilst natural factors do play a part, to shift the average so massively above where it was previously over the last 30 years withut any hint of a decent drop that you'd expect in natural variability.

Almost certainly, though if the AMO does flip negative and we get a few decent la Nina events then that may balance things out globally for 10-15 years. These happened during the 60/70s which combined with a flatlining of Co2 (maybe due to ww2?) In the 40s and maybe the dimming GW said helped to slightly cool the earth...but it was hardly as drastic as the upswing since then. What's really amazing is nearly every 5 year mean for the Arctic sea ice has ticked down a touch. Worrying for sure!

Interesting there WAS a flatlining of Co2 concentration that occurred between 1940-1960. it only got back to the average long trend by the 60-70s period. That was a period where we had both a COLD Atlantic thanks to the -ve AMO and quite a few La Nina events (especially in the 70s) which likely also took the edge of the global temperatures. Those two things alone may explain to a large extent why the global temperature didn't straight away start following the Co2 trend after the flatling of Co2 concentrations in the earlier period. Once those two negative features eased off (indeed 80-95 was full of El Nino events and the Atlantic turned back +ve AMO around 1995) the inhabitors that masked the background warming suddenly turned unfavourable and allowed warming to accelerate. Since then global temps have slackened a little in terms of the trend and the warming we are seeing globally now seems purely driven by AGW factors. I think what should be most worrying is that the last 5 years have ALL been the top 5 warmest years ever. Of course you can have one of flukes...but 5 in a row to all go top 5...more than a coincidence IMO...and normal trends don't work that way either, natural trends would have at least some more variability. All we see is upwards march over time. PS - as for Arctic ice being gone by 2020...I've not seen that mentioned in any report. Some that I've just seen say we will be down to about 1 million km by late 2030s and ice free summer by 2050...but that's VERY different from 2020!! Indeed a report from 2012 said that the Arctic ice has retreated FASTER than their models had predicted.

What is perfectly clear is that the extent both in winter and summer is decade on decade falling in the Arctic. Sure some years are healthier than others, but really is very difficult to ignore the trend when it keeps relentlessly going down on average. Comparing the ice extent from 1980s to today is quite illuminating and really does show the downward shift, especially when you use a timelapse to see each year and how it steadily drops. The AMO shifted warm in the mid 90s (95 is the general agreed date and coincides with a very active hurricane season) which you could use to argue did cause a downward swing in the Arctic ice. Harder to use that same argument for the 00s and 10s however and yet the sea ice average is still ticking downwards over the years.

I think globally 30 years is about the limit, but I'd love to see a 100yr mean used in the UK say 1900-2000. It's long enough that a couple of freak months either way won't impact the mean much and would really highlight the exceptional months when they come.

Has to be said the GFS is having a shocker temperature wise so far. Temps expected to be around 13-15c at this point across much of the south. Truth is actually 8-10c. Quite a large error 6hrs out!

Yeah that April made up for a fairly lacklustre winter in terms of below average temperatures. Wonder if we are heading the same way now as well. With that being said, would only take a solid warmer spell at the end of April to undo quite a lot of a cold first half it appears we will have.

GFSp has been delayed till August because it is too cold in the lower atmosphere and I've seen this problem alot recently, often being 1-2c colder than other models. Unfortunately it has all the old problems the old GFS had when it was around in the 00s

There has always been a climate range which usually shifts and waxes and wanes over centuries and even longer than that there are broader shifts which trigger melts/ice ages. The question is are we accerlating that pattern into hyper drive by increasing emissions. For now I'd still argue we are within the current long term climatic range, but every year that passes we seem to edge higher and higher into the extremes of that range and it won't take much more for it to get into territory that is a big outlier for the climatic range and can't be explained as anything other than AGW. By that point it may already to be late for some people in prone areas.

There does seem to be an increasing trend towards extremes regarding different conditions. I'd say that it's not quite balancing out though, there is increasing warmth going into the system which is slowly pushing up overall temps, though clearly in the right amplified setup you can still get cold continents. Watch for another El nino as well which may get us close to the warmest year ever globally.

Saw IC lightning on my way down the A3, presumably from one of the channel cells, good to see one so early, but caught me by surprise!

I suspect to a degree we are just mirroring the opposite what the W USA has had, which is near record cold and record snow. So clearly the flow is very meridonal to allow to extremes to be occuring. What does seem likely is that background warming is making it easier for us to tap into temperatures that would have been unlikely. However for balance, I think Feb 98 with it's 19.7c would have likely matched the 21c if those setups occured at the same time as Feb 19, given that tht previous record was still in the first half of the month and two weeks of extra sun makes a decent difference at this time of year. Still exceptional though, for sure and as I said, I think we will see plenty more daily/monthly records fall in the next 5-10 years.

Only 16c here today....only! A few weeks ago that sort of temperature would have been a very impressive mild temperature in it's own right, but now it feels a little plain!

So close to 70f...can almost taste it. Would think one of the stations is going to push over that magic line between 2-3pm.

Many 18c temperatures now, looks like overall this will be the warmest Feb day once all is done. as for the record, good chance it falls again today, we'll certainly be going north of the old record again as well.