Mikel Nimbus

That sounds like a good explanation and the reason why there were so few apples this year. Just out of interest, does that mean the leaves are still alive despite -5?

So I have this apple tree in my back garden. I've come across a few apple trees in my time and I'm sure they always drop their leaves in autumn/winter, just as this one in my back garden has always done. The difference is this year (currently December 13th) it is still pretty much in full leaf despite some hard frosts over the last couple of nights down to -5.2. Most of the leaves are as green as they were mid summer with maybe 10% slightly yellowish. Any tree surgeons know what is going on? Is it dead or has it genetically mutated into an all weather fruit machine? Picture of tree attached.

-4.2 here. Seems the models have been quite conservative in predicting overnight minima across the SE. BBC had us down for -4 but its reached that and it's only 0030 hrs. Several other locations are knocking on the door of -5

If you like insomnia, being covered in sweat and big bugs in your house then I highly recommend it. 30.5 a short while ago.

Here's the radar when the video was taken. I've estimated that it was somewhere over Southgate at the time. https://forum.netweather.tv/gallery/image/16057-random/ And here's the video. Gutted because my Iphone is as slow as a donkey and while the recording app was loading the funnel lost some of its size and was in its dying stages by the time I started filming. Also the pixels mean you have to look closely for the rotation but believe me it was certainly there. A short while later a low hanging cloud formed visibly sucking up moisture into its base. Wall cloud maybe but difficult to be sure from that distance and low light. https://forum.netweather.tv/gallery/image/16058-img-2589/

Wow. Didn't expect anything from today but have just caught my first UK funnel cloud on the southern tip of the storm that just passed through! Spotted over New Barnet about 30 mins ago heading East towards NE London. The wall cloud got interestingly low as it moved away and the storm pulsated but it got difficult to tell as the light went down. Will upload the video I've got a bit later.

I know what you mean. Have had all my windows and doors open for hours and it's still 27.1C in my bedroom right now. From past experience it's unlikely to go much lower than that tonight. Looking forward to the cooler weekend weather and a decent night's sleep already.

Made it up to 31.5 here today. I hope it cools down a bit tonight, I think I can take about one more day of this heat before I want it gone.

Touched 31c a bit earlier but now hovering around 30.7 Warmest day here so far.

9.4mm here so far

No chance of Thames Streamer today my friend. For starters we'd need an easterly wind with much cooler air for showers to get going. This is a frontal feature coming in from the west. The Feb 09 streamer I seem to remember left decent amounts of snow as far inland as Oxford and beyond!

South of the Thames seems to have been the real sweet spot for storms today. The radar has looked stunning. Parts of Herts haven't done too badly either. As usual, light rain in north London not amounting to much.

Same here. I enquired into the MSc course at Reading, as they do take on students from other disciplines but without A Level maths/physics they said they wouldn't consider me. Asked if I could do the preparatory self teaching package but they seemed to say that option is rarely given out and that I should go and complete A-Level maths then come back and apply.

Cheers Paul I am using a USB hygrometer/thermometer device (as below). I've written a program which communicates with the Temp/Humidity and the GPS sensor and it sends the data to a web server automatically. Surprisingly, that was the easy part. The difficult part is working out what to do with the system and the data so I can investigate something and write a dissertation. Perhaps a usability study into whether such a system would benefit weather enthusiasts/forecasters when "nowcasting"...

Hi all. I'm turning to my fellow weather watchers for help and inspiration here. I am currently doing an MSc degree in Mobile Computing and am planning to make my project somewhat weather related. I'm creating an inexpensive system which consists of attaching temperature, humidity and possibly air pressure sensors to moving vehicles as they go about their daily business. The data collected from these sensors on various vehicles (the more the better) are given a longitude and latitude value by a GPS sensor. This data will then be uploaded via 3G to a website which will show on a map the "Live" weather conditions across the country. The original idea of this was to investigate whether this method of "crowd sourcing" meteorological data would give more accurate live data for a given location than using a service such as the BBC weather website. On the BBC website you input your post code and are given the current temperature based on the nearest Met Office fixed weather station. These fixed weather stations can be sparsely located and make it difficult to take into account local geographical effects on temperature especially within an Urban Heat Island setting. Therefore, you can often see discrepancies of several degrees from what the BBC weather website says and what the actual temperature is at your location. I'm still trying to win him over but my supervisor says he does not think this is an interesting enough research question, although he himself is also stuck for ideas. He wants me to come up with a different research question based on this system of collecting weather data in this way. Can anyone think of alternative ways in which this crowdsourced data could be used to answer interesting questions or solve existing problems? Any input is greatly appreciated and no answer is a stupid answer. Mods please move if this is in the wrong section.

Looking interesting to my south over Central and West London. Sure I saw the top of a Cb on the Wimbledon coverage just now as well.

I think it's a UFO. Shame there's all that cloud behind it making it harder to see.

Think I'll scream if the SE miss out again while putting up with all the humidity. According to GFS, that band now over France wants to clip Kent just after midnight so could have some fun with that.

Still 28 degrees in London but feels SOOOOOOO much fresher in the last hour or so. Dew point has dropped from 22c down to 13c and the skies are turning clear blue. I would have suffocated if the south east Sauna had lasted any longer.

140.6mm here in North London. Just 4mm short of being the wettest month ever since I began collecting data in 2004. Also had our highest 24 hour rainfall total with 40.6mm on 11th June.

Reached 27.9C on my fan aspirated Davis a while ago. Now hovering around 27.3C. But we missed that thundery trough line by a few miles.

Wow, thought I'd be the only one who saw it or that I was just going mad. Well done for getting it on video.