Man With Beard

Can I just mention in here mods - following my post yesterday, I have had a lengthy discussion with Tamara through PMs. As a result, I would like to retract any implication that I was criticising her methods. My issue is with the difference between operational and ensemble D10-D15 forecasts and what I'm seeing at ground level (and just to add, probably from a localised perspective, not of those in Northern Ireland!). I re-read Tamara's post carefully after posting and realise I had not appreciated that she had given a lengthy explanation of why July has transpired as it has done, and also that her thoughts are not primarily based upon GFS/ECM runs anyway. I hope we can all encourage Tamara to keep posting in here as, whether we take the same view or not, posters like her mak this forum the rich fountain of knowledge that it is.

Is ARGEPE on the mushrooms again? Big differences between some runs for northern Scotland even at T12 - a few short range models have it pretty hot around Inverness edit - Lakenheath already at 28C so will be interesting to see how high it goes ...

Yes pretty much agree with everything above - a mixed bag for the next seven days or so - perhaps a little less positive on the op runs this morning with troughing a little more dominant for next Monday/Tuesday, but the flip side being that the better periods of weather simply return afterwards. The further NW you are, the less encouraging it becomes. A quick flip through the GEFS ensembles - what strikes me is the increasing mobility in the pattern after D10 - most ensemble members zip low pressures through the pattern a lot faster than they have done recently. That doesn't necessarily mean worse for the UK - looking closely at D10-D15, the effect of this increased mobility on many runs is to simply exacerbate the tendencies of the pattern - lows headed for the UK are stormier, lows stalled by a nose of the Azores High cause a rush of heights northwards (so possibility of plume no 2 in there), lows guided north by the Azores High seem to encourage a stronger Azores High and attempts at a mid-Atlantic high cause a stronger pull of northerlies over the UK. No sense whatsoever over which possibility will win out. So although it is often said that all options are open in FI, it really does apply to this run!

All records seem to have been missed then, as no stations stayed above 23.3C that I can see ... London already back up to 25C though!!!

No all-time record tonight but possibly the July one - Benson still 23.7C at 5am

Crosby was still above 30C at 9pm

The 6pm readings will be interesting. It's just as hot now as it was between 3 and 4pm!! Still 31C.

Yes indeed- I did acknowledge that in my post

Maybe 35C has gone now. I expect a few stations will show 34C when all the readings come in.

Tamara, love your posts, love your methods (though struggle to grasp them due to my low IQ), reasonable assumptions ... but something is just not quite right this summer. I haven't seen anything but doom and gloom forecasts for the summer since May (aside from the Met Office). D10-D15 anomaly forecasts have usually looked pretty iffy so far. Yet here we are with a well above average June, and, by the middle of next week, July may also be comfortably above average. Models keep showing improvements between D5 and D10 in my subjective opinion - the only period that didn't was the first half of July (where the forecasts were so bad there was no room for them to get any better!!). My feeling - far less scientific than yours and mainly just as a consequence of seeing tens of thousands of charts through the years - is that this summer has been forecast to be terrible, but is ending up not so terrible and in fact is improving rapidly. Why have the doom and gloom forecasts gone wrong? Why was no one able to predict this heatwave, or indeed, make room even for its possibility, not 14 days ago?? In my opinion, if we are to learn on this thread, we need to spend as much time looking back than forward (I accept you've done this in part, but others haven't)

Well worth a look at this site right now - gives you the general gist of how hot it is nationwide - over 30C almost everywhere in England midlands south http://wow.metoffice.gov.uk/

Might be maxed out now in the west. Warmest upper air just approaching central/eastern parts, could we see temp rises further east until 5pm I wonder?

Looks like we maxed out at 30.6C. Pretty good for a coastal location.

Touch and go whether the max will be 34 or 35C. Certainly no let up from the source - 30C and still rising here, just a few miles from the coast

Just joined the 30C club here too

Now hit 24c - one degree less than at same time on 1 July 2015.

Already 21C here in my location. 23C in Jersey. Many inland locations starting at 18C.

This is the most bizarre chart I've seen yet - maximum temperatures between midnight and 6am for Wednesday morning - 27C in London. Crazy!!

Well at least ECM and GFS are now on speaking terms with regards the weekend! Average or just above - I can see Friday to Sunday maxing out between 24C and 27C in places (which is what just above average is for late July). And troughing makes far less impact on the UK on this ECM run. Hard to base everything on individual runs, but it seems the general tide has turned ever so slightly towards something summery. On the GFS temps ... of course it hasn't happened yet...but hard to see how they will be correct.

Funnily enough, not as hot here today. Made 27C yesterday with plenty of cloud cover, only 25C today. Wind change, must be.

Sorry to stray off topic just once more AJP, but just to respond as I started it ... fair enough, comparisons to 1976 perhaps were not the most sensible, I can definitely agree this not in that league!! - but in terms of intensity of heat, I would guess there have been less than 10 instances of the 20C 850hpa line crossing the UK in the last 100 years. And of course this could end up being a record breaking spell. The current all-time record high minimum for the UK is 23.9C I believe. Here is EURO4's latest prediction for minima on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning: 22-24C as a minimum widely across London and central England - pretty horrific really. Once again the EURO4 has it hotter than the GFS for 850s tomorrow (remember the EURO4 nailed it last July)

If we consider this to be bog standard, we'd have to say 1976, 1990 and 2006 were all bog-standard too: compared with forecast for tomorrow only last year and the incredible 2003 (multiple days above 20C at 850hpa) are in a different league

Thanks CC and of course you are absolutely right about the tone of debate - I know I have had disagreements with people such as Knocker in the past but they're all in good humour from my part, and I actually defended him many times during the winter months when aggro was going his way. The disagreements are part of the fun of it for me - let's continue to have them without getting personal! On to the models - Yes I can't disagree too much with your assessment of where things are going longer term - the ECM ens in particular looks quite mixed by T240. But I would point out that whilst heights are strong in the Azores, and main troughing stays to our north, there's always going to be the chance of another "breakaway" from the Azores High in our direction, even next week. In addition to most of the op runs yesterday, a few GEFS members entertain this on the 00Zs: Another variant on that idea is for the Azores High to nudge in just enough to give a SW / NE split: So I still feel the same way as I did a few days ago - the rest of July is unlikely to be wall to wall sunshine, but a mixture of short "very good" and "not so good" spells.

PM - notice that 30C in Devon too - I wonder if the north Devon/Somerset coast might be the dark horse here - the latest EURO4 has uppers of 21C in that area as early as lunchtime on Tuesday! Add a Fohn effect as winds come down from Exmoor...

Well it's all about "how hot" now. Brings back memories from last year!! Blue army - I recall our little debate last year (fondly because I was lucky enough to call it right!) - well for this plume I've kind of been on your page, the extreme charts would be wrong and we'd be looking at the 90F mark rather than 98F ... Until now. This is the Euro4 for Tuesday morning. Now I recall the Euro4 ending up spot on last year - and that included upping the 850s by a couple of degrees compared to the GFS. So compare with GFS for Tuesday morning: On average, the uppers are between 1 and 2C higher in the English Channel. This is a big assumption - but assuming the 850s remain higher to that degree during Tuesday and Wednesday, then we may well be looking at 33-35C as the national max, rather than 32C/33C. It would take temps into the "exceptional" zone, rather than the very impressive zone. Not a forecast from me, but a growing sense that this may be even hotter than we thought