JakeWorces

Beautiful day in here North Worcestershire. Blue skies all day but just a few hours ago when it was windy it felt freezing in the wind, winter coat type cold. Just a few hours later, the wind has disappeared completely and it feels summer hot in the garden, shorts are on. The 12º air temp reading is misleading; the thermometers in the house are all reading 20º thanks to the sun heating through the windows. More days like this please!

danm So yet another month of double-the-usual rainfall for us here in Worcestershire. And reading those maps, whilst it's raining yet again, off the back of four days in a tent in North Devon for the Easter break which saw heavy rain and mud every single day, it really is depressingly-relentless at the moment; the worst I can remember it ever being in my 32 years of life. Had a little cry earlier when I opened the door to dry and go for an after-work run to be greeted with heavy rain yet again, door closed, straight into bed for a depression-fighting nap. Joining others who are praying/begging for it to please stop soon.

In Absence of True Seasons It's not unusual for the south coast of Spain to get heavy rains in the early spring. March is the joint-wettest month for the region by rainfall total (along with November), and the wettest of all by number-of-rainy-days (closely followed by April), it rained almost every single day in one April when I lived there for example. However what is unusual is just how dry and sunny the Mediterranean coast of Spain has been these last few years; they're having the worst drought in living memory as the map linked below shows, and the olive harvest has been decimated as a result causing olive oil prices across Europe to double. This heavy rain engulfing the whole Iberian peninsula is desperately needed in Eastern & Southern Spain and they'll be thanking the gods for it as well as praying for much more! Those in Northern & Western Spain have had more than their fare share lately though so they won't be welcoming yet more. https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/european-and-global-drought-observatories/current-drought-situation-europe_en

aaaaand GFS has once again switched from '6 day dry spell' to rainmageddon. It really is struggling lately isn't it, with these unhinged polar swings to the complete opposite forecast from one day to the next. She needs rehab.

I see the GFS is up to its usual deceitfulness teasing us with the mirage of a 5+ day dry spell in about a week's time yet again in the 6Z... I will assume that it will switch to conveyor-belt-of-Atlantic-lows as we get closer to the time But I will erect a small shrine to the Azores High in my living room to try and manifest its arrival as suggested by it, so that the ground can finally dry out for the first time in 6 months and I can regain the will to live/step outside

The last few GFS runs were showing a long dry spell for most of the UK from 20th March onwards. Runs were pretty consistent so I was mildly optimistic. This morning's 6Z is a nightmare; 20-23rd showing multiple systems dumping more heavy rain across all of us. Seems to be history repeating itself since November; every single settled/dry spell it forecasts disappears as it approaches. Is the model now flawed in that it is biased towards dry/settled weather? It seems quite remarkable how many times it has happened now. It never seems to incorrectly call for rain however.

SunSean Me and some friends were talking about this last week. Since July 2023 it's basically been relentless grey and rain with any sunny days or periods few and far between. I got so sick of it that I took 2 weeks off in early Oct to visit friends who were bragging about how unseasonably hot and dry it was in Montréal, of course England then had its first fortnight of uninterrupted sun the entire time I was gone, whereas Montréal had historic levels of rainfall and flooding (*cries*). I'm always the first to tell people that the stereotype of England being relentless grey and rain is false, but the last 8 months it's been exactly that. I couldn't care less about the temperature really, -10º or +30º no preference, but cloudy days really bring my mood down and I can't remember us ever having such an awful long run of depressingly grey and wet weather. The first half of 2023 was fine, ending in that fab June heatwave, so I don't think the official stats will show 2023 as a whole being that bad. But I'd love to see the stats for 01 July 2023 - 29 Feb 2024, I'd expect sunshine levels to be incredibly below average. There's been way less blocking than usual, but is it just me or even during the periods when we've been directly in the firing line of the jet stream as is so often the case for England in the Winter, do the systems seem to be much closer together now meaning we get fewer blustery but bright periods of respite? This coming week looks like a classic example of this *manifests a biblical blocking pattern and historically dry March*

Equally was far, far worse last night here than Isha. My garden furniture has been re-arranged, the whole house was shaking as if the roof was about to blow off for several minutes right before the whole town's power went out; thankfully now back on this morning, and I barely slept due to the wind noise. Some of the worst wind I can remember ever hitting this area. It seems bizarre that under Isha we were under an Amber warning, yet last night which seemed quite dangerous we were only under a Yellow warning? Seems like plenty of other posters report similar awful conditions in their parts of the Midlands overnight; was the forecast wrong? Did conditions change meaning the Midlands bore the brunt of the wind? Or did the storm strengthen more than expected everywhere?

Looks like the typical kind of set-up that gives this high-up Midlands area the kind of heavy snowfalls that my friends in other parts of the country are always so jealous of. Let's hope that low doesn't track any further north though

Here in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire we have black skies, couple of seconds spurts of heavy rain but nothing substantial, and one round of thunder and lightening. Looks like the following cell due in around an hour will be a more direct hit

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