Village

Winter has already started in Scotland. Earlier this week it was snowing on the mountains in Scotland and over the next 24 hours it is set to fall below freezing for ten of these hours in inland areas like Tulloch Bridge for instance. Temps will drop as low as minus 3 celcius.

My view is that we are still stuck in a Meridional synoptic set. Therefore north western Europe will again be at more risk of bouts of very cold weather at times as blocking takes place disrupting the jet.

I sympathise with you. I have the same problem at work here where half the women are on perma-diets because they are too lazy to ever do any exercise. As a result the aircon is turned off at every opportunity because they wont eat or get dressed properly for work in the morning. The heating is off at my house until November. I need a daytime temperature of below 12 centigrade outside sustained for a few days before the temperature indoors falls below 16C which is my thermostat setting.. The aircon at home is set to kick in when temperature indoors rises above 18C but only at night and during the daytime only at weekends if I am indoors.

Dont get me wrong, its always 20c to 25C down here in London in summer and it has been no different for weeks, but only 20C down here is Autumn. And todays 19C is October. Hopefully this week back to approaching 25C + where it should be for this time of year when the sun is out.

Yet more torrential thunderstorms in Essex yesterday afternoon....hoping that we may have a break from it now.....I have now had 16 thunderstorms since April. Its quite ridiculous at the copious amounts of rain this summer. My grass is a beautiful green which is unusual for this time of year in Essex. Hardly a day has gone by when the evening sky has not been filled with towering thunderclouds silhouetted against the setting sun. If they are not home grown they are popping up from France in the small hours.

If its snow cover you are talking about, its quite reliable.....its like clockwork......one month after the equinox ....same as northern Canada.....so 21st October onwards for six months. So in ten weeks they loose every degree above freezing point (thats about 2 C drop every week from now on) and dont get positive again until the third week of April. On the other hand....we here have already lost all our heat so that today we already have temperatures we can expect for the middle of October.

Still in Autumn down here. Todays temps are end on October temperatures.

So much rain last night from heavy showers in the early hours. Really torrential stuff thundering on the roof.....no lightning though overnight here in Essex.

Actually....last winter we had a 30C drop in temps in 48 hours in the UK. Max of +14C one day and a -16C low 48 hours later if I remember rightly.

Actually,, sounds like about fifteen days at home in Essex this summer!! seriously many thunderstorms popping up in the evenings this year from nothing to full grown in minutes. Last Sunday I had five, one after the other just developing and letting wrip nearbye and overhead before decaying away again to the northeast.

Yes, this can and does happen when the air is very dry. Sounds like you have really exciting weather at times out there CM. I wish I could live in Canada for a while to experience what you do....must be great. Me v. jealous.

Didnt you know Rio doesnt have winters, its in the tropics.....so whats wrong with the Daily Mail statement

On the subject of temperatures, yesterday morning was the coldest July morning that I have ever experienced....cant remember feeling so cold in the warmest time of the year. Usually one has to wait until mid September to have single digits on the way to work in the far south of England.

Autumn 2012? It is Autumn already, so we just need to look out of the window to see what we have!

thats cold ....14C !!! and the July sun is shining in a virtually blue sky! wow....winter temperatures. Down here in London its much cooler today and currently totally overcast after earlier light rain with a temperature of 23C

I predicted ten years ago that we would be seeing posts just like the one above. Its such a shame that the so called experts in the Exeter climate center and the University of East Anglia just couldnt see further than their own continuous drivel about forever warmer....mediteranean type summers here in the UK. I did predict that we would all be looking out across a windswept, damp and cold summer beach ten years forth asking the question: What ever happened to global warming?

Yes, it sounds like fun, but it isnt. You will be holed up in doors for five months of the year, unable even to go out for a stroll into town for half an hour or in the park. You will be dead if you tried it on a windy day and its soo, so boring wrapping yourself up with three layers and mits so big you cant use your hands and head gear so thick you cant hear anything. Takes ten minutes to get dressed for a ten minute stint outside....so you just wont bother. Summer sounds great too, only when its really hot you will run from an airconed room to the car's aircon and it will be too hot to walk anywhere or exert yourself doing much. so you will simply walk the mall in a controlled climate most of the year. Oh ....and then theres hundreds and hundreds of square miles of nothing. No ocean, no forrests.....just farmland and grassland. Great.

As I said back in March, I live in the driest place in the country. I lived through the same couple of dry winters as everyone else did. There was no drought in my region the driest region in the UK. Essex and Suffolk water had normal levels in reservoirs, they never introduced any restrictions whatsoever. So you have to ask the question as I did and many others at that time: Why in a few regions is there a drought? Is it that bad? or are some water companies not investing enough and managing the commodity? I doubted their claptrap...others bought it hook line and sinker. They told us that ancient aquifiers were so low that it had never ever been seen before! They told us that to get back to normal levels would take years or six months of continuous rain!! They told us that we would be in drought for the rest of the year! They told us that any rain that falls during this time of the year just gets soaked up by the plants! They told us that the water falling onto the dry land just runs away into rivers and wasnt going to soak in! They told us to prepair for hose pipe bans and restrictions right through the summer! They even made the flower show change all its plants to plants that wouldnt need watering because they wouldnt have the water!! I thought it was a joke! I never saw any restrictions, I didnt buy the nonsense, I expected the rain and the floods. And guess what! The ancient aquifiers are full up again despite all the exagerated scaremonger claims about underground supplies remaining dangerously low! Experts these people were.... that was the expert view and people lapped it up because it sold newspapers and BBC air time. The clever ones sniggered at the stuppidity of it all. I mean....come on...this Island of ours...short of water? do me a favour please! What did you do?

LOL Now they are blaming everything on us.

It didnt cause any problems because it never was....it was overhyped for the chimps and the media circus. You can take your head out of the sand now, unless you can tell us about another drought, another hosepipe ban that was never needed because it didnt stop raining.

Poor temperatures and poor sunshine down here in the south. Temps are down now for a good few months .... its dreadful....we are looking at September weather here.

This isnt a thread about the summer. Its a thread about the so called drought earlier this year.

I have been looking to sell rainfall forward eight weeks....but no expert will quote me!

Absolutely bang on!! It was my exact thinking at the time. The truth is that after a long period of reduced rainfall that the chance of rain increases....the Met Office and so called experts bang on and on about averages etc, etc only when it suits them to do so....but clearly they dodnt understand what the word average really means. They didnt predict more rain ....they just predicted more dry....what the hell were they thinking when they are furnished with realms of average data right under their very noses? Why cant these so called experts see the reality of a situation?

Village, on 26 April 2012 - 10:30 , said: There was talk of this year being as bad as 1976. I did predict that we would be looking at floods by May. I think that the water companies are mis-managing the water supplies and not investing enough to keep up with increasing demand. IMO this country is not in a drought situation. Its nothing like one. Well here we are and the final hosepipe ban is now removed. The so called experts told us, the situation was the worst ever recorded, they told us to prepare for a summer like 1976, they said that even if it rained that at this time of year all the water is used up by the plants, they told us that at this time of year all the water just runs off the surface, they told us that we cannot rely on summer rainfall to replenish ground water stocks, they told us that we would be in drought until at least this winter. Experts!! Who the hell were these people? I am not an expert and I clearly understood that they were talking rubbish and I wasnt being fooled as some clearly were. I predicted to prepair for floods and lots of rain. The experts at the Met Office said the opposite. Lesson learned.....to all those who were sucked in by the hype and nonsense, my message is; dont simply believe all you hear and see just because a so called expert told you a story on the BBC. Use your own inteligence and experience to make your own mind up. We are an island in the middle of the North Atlantic surrounded by low pressure and lots of water and moisture. We are not a desert, nothing like it.