Village

Yes, you are right in what you say. Rider on the Storm has posted the latest map above and it confirms that the whole of the northwest of the Med is below average, as is Biscay and the Atlantic where we are. I swam in the sea near Barcelona so I had inadvertently picked the coldest place!

Even more interesting is that virtually the whole of our region of the world has seen the SST's fall down to become well into the negative. Even most of the Mediteranean and I can vouch for that because I went for a swim in it yesterday and it was absolutely freezing....no more than the low teens.

The Essex and Suffolk water spokesman was interviewed on TV during the floods last week. He said that in Essex and Suffolk the reservoirs were full or almost full and as a result of the current healthy levels that it was very unlikely that our region would introduce any restrictions. He went on to add that it didnt even matter if the weather became dry for the summer because regardless the Essex and Suffolk water region had more than enough to last right through to September. I wish I could remember what channel it was....it is most likely to have been look east after the 6pm news last Wednesday or Thursday evening.

Cloud, cloud and more cloud down here in the south. Its grim down south.

I prefer thunder snow

Your most predominant wind is from the southwest. Southwest of you are many cities and towns in the UK which have expanded tremendously in the last 100 years. Do you know exactly how much your temperature has risen? Further, I will still maintain that your temperatures are lower now over the last decade compared with the final decade of the 1900's.

I am definitely getting the impression that we are being spun a yarn by the water authorities. Sure in one region they have had a number of dry winters. But its not as widespread as they maintain and the problem is partly their own making. Its been chucking it down now for six weeks and two months ago they said they needed it. Now they have had it, they say they need more. Meanwhile in the driest place in the country where I live we have no water restrictions....no plans to restrict water and all reservoirs are full up. They even say that it doesnt matter what happens between now and September because we have more than enough if it never rains again for six months.

Hi, I'm back now after three days on a hot Spanish beach and I came back to rain and cloud yesterday and more wind, rain and cloud today....havent seen the sun shine in my garden for ten days now. On the subject of our climate continually warming due to the official records saying so: IMO, the MO are underestimating the UHI effect and therefore displaying figures which demonstrtae temperature creep. The truth in this can be seen by comparing the long term trend of minimum temps from our towns and cities. Further a comparisson of temps from the southwest, furthest away from any effects of expanding ashfelt and concrete clearly demonstrates that our temps are no different now than they were 100 years ago. Finally, a variation of .5C over fifty years in any case is well within the expected natural variation even if it was occurring.

The experts said back at the end of March that we needed two months of continuous rain.......well its been six weeks now. In Essex and Suffolk our reservoirs are absolutely full up which is unusual at this time of year and most of our rivers are in flood. I think we can move on now and put the brought that never was behind us.

Well I cant take this cold dull overcast and rain, rain, rain. I am grabbing the first flight out from Southend tomorrow morning and I am going to plonk myself on the beach tomorrow afternoon, then back again on Wednesday....just a couple of days of sunshine and warmth.....great. If I get anymore of this nonsense weather I have decided to fly to Spain for the day on a beach and come back again. Damn the Carbon Cr-p. the furthest I have been for the day is Athens. Flights are getting cheaper and cheaper despite the governments robbing us of more and more taxes to save the world nonsense and as i predicted a decade ago, the numbers of people flying now are exploding as the weather here becomes worse and worse. Planes are the most efficient form of transport and the new designs are becoming really efficient now, they litterally sip fuel at 30 thou and glide in without engine power from as far away as northern France. A flight from Spain is cheaper than a train ticket to London. See you all back again on Wednesday.

Thankyou Miguel, I dont want members to get hung up with the same old global warming theories. This thread is about the awful cold, cloudy wet weather which has been ongoing for weeks and I am sick to the back teeth of it. Certainly it has been very bad down here in the south and southeast in particular. the week ahead is forecast to be equally bad. there must be many others who are fed up with the terrible winter weather we have been having too.

You are just being selective with your months and only picked the one or two warmest but you are deliberately ignoring the majority of months that have been below average. Please check again and you will see. Meanwhile, the Met Office just anounced a record breaking minus 6 Centigrade below freezing last night. They also forecast hill snow for the north of the UK for the next three days. Meanwhile, here in the southeast they have predicted cloud and heavy rain every day next week from a series of low pressure systems one after the other with more flooding.

None of that has any relationship to my experience here in Essex. I have been watching and studying the weather here for thirty five years and it is colder now than the last decades of the 1990's. Its not warmer. Its colder and we havent been breaking maximum temperatures. We have been breaking record cold temperatures regularly for the last five years. Something is wrong with your data. this is why you have had to go back six years to find one warm year. In the last two years we have had more months with below average temperatures than above. Please go and check.

I dont know about you, but I am absolutely sick to the back teeth of grey, overcast, cold and rain. I live in southeast Essex and its been raining this morning, it rained over night, it rained on and off yesterday, it rained heavily on Friday, it rained heavilly all day thursday, it was torrential rain and thunder on wednesday night, it was overcast and rained on wednesday, it rained Tuesday, it rained continually all of last weekend....I havent seen the sun for more than a week. This last month of April it has rained every day...the temperature here at the moment is colder than a January or December day...its 7C and almost midday in May. All our reservoirs here are full up, the rivers are in flood. Roads are flooded. But the persistent cold, cold and more cold is really boring now. We have had four cold to cool summers with rain and very little sunshine. I have never known such a long run of cold cloudy years in all my life. I never want to hear the BBC or the Met Office repeat the nonsense about global warming ever again. Its not warm, its not getting warmer, this last decade has become colder, colder and more and more cloudy. I have just booked a flight from Southend airport to get me the hell out of here for the next three days just to get some sunshine and warmth. Am I the only one to feel that its actually become colder in this country since the 1990's? Who else is fed up with this and needs a break?

That Environment agency data is three months out of date by the way. Its no good looking at data which ended last February to make arguments for the situation now as it is in May three months afterwards. In between times we have had the wettest April on record and so the rainfall totals for the last nine months are normal to above normal in my region of Essex. Again, backed up with the fact that I have no water restrictions where i am.

Coldest May For 100 Years Is On It's Way! There is some merrit to this. We have been in a Meridional synoptic set due to solar cycles for five years now. Therefore, This scenario of a very cold month of May is a possibility with strengthening H/P in the North Atlantic.

Yeah, sorry, dont know how my post became such small scale....here it is again for you. Jimmy, My sources are good, they come from the official sites, like this one: http://www.karcher.c...osepipe_Ban.htm This clearly shows that where I live in Essex (which includes Maldon) where you state that they are extremely short is not the case....you can see that Essex and Suffolk water is not included in the drought restrictions because our water supplies are not extremely low. We have no hosepipe ban. Take a look at the map.

I personally remain convinced that one can project models beyond T+168 before they become pretty useless. It is great fun to use this information to try and project beyond a week or two, but to take it out to three months I feel has no basis.

Jimmy, My sources are good, they come from the official sites, like this one: http://www.karcher.co.uk/uk/about_karcher/Karcher_UK_news/Hosepipe_Ban.htm This clearly shows that where I live in Essex (which includes Maldon) where you state that they are extremely short is not the case....you can see that Essex and Suffolk water is not included in the drought restrictions because our water supplies are not extremely low. We have no hosepipe ban. Take a look at the map.

I say that they have to continue to collect data from the same site regardless. However, the Met Office IMO is not discounting the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect to the correct degree. It is for this reason amoungst others that we are seeing a small and apparent rise in temperatures. Basically, if one wants to demonstrate warming then simply reduce the discount within the official stats. If they correctly demonstrated UHI in the adjustment then there would be a clear trend to cooler temperatures in this country to a much greater degree than are officially being admitted. Anyway, I digress....yes they should keep the sites in the same place but more must be done to adjust for known temperature creep due to ever increasing change in land usage.

This is true of course, but the relative humidity plays a huge part. For instance, 21C with a 25% relative humidity would feel fresh and cool in that bathroom and you would not have a sweatfest. But, 21C heating in the middle of winter in the bathroom with a typical relative humidity of 90% and you would be v> smelly and ready for another bath again in no time and you would never be able to get dry.

It depends on whether they get their water from underground. If its reservoirs and rivers, they will be fine. None of this is unusual over the long term. Its happened before and it will happen again. Its simply that the demand on fresh water these days is much greater and therefore the borehole supplies which reflect long term rainfall trends are now more pertinent. The mistake is to believe that underground water supplies are simply reflecting the weather above with latency. That is only part of the story. There is a long term growuing trend on extracting more and more ground water as demand continues to grow. It is clearly not sustainable over the long term and there needs to be more investment. Meanwhile, here in the driest place in the country we have had normal rainfall and all our rivers and reservoirs are healthy with no water restrictions planned. In a few years from now the climate here will again flip back to a zonal synoptic set. When it does we will see all the levels back to normal again underground. It was more than a decade ago when this last happened and as a result an ancient undrground river started to flow again in Brighton....this was the first time the subteranean river was flowing for hundreds of years. You see....and that all happened in the last decade or so. The river has again stopped flowing as it was for the past three hundred years. Expect there to always be a high variation in water levels, its nothing new, its only because the media have got the bone between their teeth on this one and nobody is investing in the water infrastructure to meet increased demand.... I say to those that are getting wrapped up in the hysteria about changing climate and weather: underground water levels can and do very tremendously...they are not door numbers.

No way Jose! Its absolutely freezing, its colder in Essex today than last December. only 11C max. It must be that global warming again!

Hi Sprites. Its a shame that you didnt see these last night, but it would have been difficult for you because you would have been looking southand southwest into the Moon light and so any lightning from the cloud tops to the south in Essex would have been difficult to see. Also if it was cloudy where you were with low cloud then again the lightning would have not been possible to see.

I have done. Have you looked beyond two years? If so you will note that a dryer than normal period of a year or so under a Meridional decade is absolutely normal. By the way, they say the drought is in the south, I am in the south. I live in officially the driest place in the UK with only a third of the rainfall you get and where I always get six weeks or two months of drought between April and September at some stage every year. There is no hosepipe ban here, there is no drought here, and there are no plans for water restictions here. So who is right? Is there a drought in the south? Is it in the north as you are saying? just what are the facts? This is now officially the wettest drought on record.