richie3846

LetItSnow! also depends on the dominant varieties in any given area. Horse chestnuts about to flower, and coming into full leaf now, while ash is only just starting to come out. Local varieties can skew perception of the advancement of spring I reckon.

I've got a late blossoming tree in my back garden, and I started keeping track of when it approximately comes into full blossom. Last year it was well blossomed by the 19th April: Compare with today, so 2 weeks before the pictures last year: I think it's a couple days off the same openness as last year, but it's nearly there, and is quite a bit earlier than last year. In 2022 it was around the 17th to reach the full blossom stage.

raz.org.rain We still get a fair share of drier winters, around half have been dry and half wet over the last 10 to 12 years. Some of the wet ones have of course been very wet, though it seems we are still quite a way away from a more definite shift into wet winters in general. When I had a quick flick through the met office climate summaries, ahead of this reply, I was surprised at the number of drier winters that I'd somehow forgotten. I have strong memories of the wet 'orrible ones, because I spend my working life navigating floods and getting soaked. Can't remember the nice dry ones, and I must admit, I had some bias thinking we'd had a lot more wet ones than dry ones, until I had a closer look at the climate data.

Spring is advanced in this area also. Looking at SunSean's sunshine tally, we've not done that badly for sunshine locally, and of course it's been mild. Horse chestnut coming into full leaf, hazel already in full leaf, and many other trees are now turning green. With the warm spell coming up, I'd expect most trees to be in full leaf by mid April. I'm no botanist but I'm not convinced that the initial coming into leaf is affected by sunshine. The buds form from energy stored in the previous season. It's warmth in the soil that's most important to get things going.

WYorksWeather yes summer floods can happen of course, and these are made worse with dry ground and torrential storms. We've not got dry ground and are unlikely to get torrential storms in April, on the scale required to cause major floods. The flood risk should be a lot lower as we head into April, even if it does continue generally unsettled.

The risk of flooding begins to diminish, with the strengthening sun and trees coming into leaf.

We've got a power flush on our gas combi boiler today. Our boiler is prone to scaling up with metal corrosion more often than a typical boiler, annoyingly. I suggested to the gas man that we could look at an air source heat pump next time, and replace the system. He said categorically, that it simply won't be suitable with our current technology, even though our house is only 25 years old. So despite my intentions, i can't realistically get off gas. My work firm is trialling electric vans in a few areas which are ultra urban, but the idea seems to be completely at odds with the reality of rural parts of the firm, such as ours, where we need 3.5 tonne (4.25 with batteries) vehicles to travel at least 300 miles, in cold winter weather, per day. The vehicles being trialled only do 130 miles on a 7 hour charge. Despite the good intentions of my firm, they can't realistically get off diesel. This is the reality I see in my daily life, and I can't see a way forward, despite a genuine interest in humans cleaning up our act, unless some workable solutions are presented on a massive scale. In terms of attitude, this reality definitely affects my attitude towards climate change, because there's nothing I can do with the 'big hitters' of heating and transport. I can't even use an electric car because our parking area is very far from the house.

Buzz Also, the South East water region, and the Cotswolds area, have fast responding aquifers, which increases the risk of shorter term droughts. These areas are the first to dry up, but also the first to refill after rain.

B87 It looks like there could be a lot of rain for the South East later on Sunday. 100mm is more than possible imo, though it's probably not as awful as last March overall, because that was stormy if memory serves me, wet, and even duller than this one. I'm not sure how this affects farmers, but I can't imagine it's easy to get onto the land in a tractor when the ground is still bogged up.

What bothers me, is not the fact the climate is changing, but the assumption it's a bad thing. The earth has been a lot warmer before, and the living planet adapted with the changes. It's a great thing to reduce consumption and clean our act up, most definitely, but to turn climate change into some sort of doomsday ideology, is what really bothers me. Because it is this way, I've had no choice but to dip out of all news and information about climate change, because it's overloaded with this thinking pattern.

I've been drying outside during winter for years. It's not always possible of course, but the basic rule of thumb I use, is if the humidity is 80 or less for a few hours, with temperatures above freezing, then it's worth the effort, especially if there is some sort of breeze. Even in wet winters there are some dry days and where possible, I do my laundry on those days. This winter has been the worst I've known for drying outside, but still managed to get at least half our laundry out on the line and dry or mostly dry. My mum is even more on the case than me down in Swansea. She takes advantage of the stronger wind all year round, and dries most of her washing outside in winter, even in the most awful wet ones like this year.

BlueSkies_do_I_see BlueSkies_do_I_see I'm not sure where good records can be found, but on the met office climate summaries, they state that March last year was the dullest for some counties, with many areas coming in under 50 hours, especially in southern England. We're around 50 hours already at Brize Norton and Lyneham this March, though I have no idea if other areas have been duller than this. I doubt we'll threaten any records given how dull it was last March, and even then I don't think that was a record, other than locally in several counties.

LetItSnow! It surprised me how little variance there is between the 10 year periods you selected. Taking into account the 7% more rain per celcius formula, that is often cited these days, the rainfall patterns appear to be virtually static, even over the last 3 decades you provided. I noticed the same pattern on the rainfall chart someone kindly posted a few days ago in this thread. While there is a slight upward trend overall, the cyclic pattern is very clear. Our rainfall patterns are pretty well defined over a period of time.

In Absence of True Seasons seeing as you mentioned vitamin D, I started taking a D3 supplement around 12 years ago. I took a blood test at the end of February just before I started taking the supplement - a time when our reserves will be at the lowest, and repeated the test exactly a year later, after supplementing daily from September onwards. Whilst I no longer have the exact numbers, I do remember that the blood count on the second test was substantially higher than the previous year. Now over a decade later, I rarely come down with a heavy cold, my last notable one so long ago I think it was at least 5 years ago. I think I do catch the same colds as everyone else, by now it's like a vague sense of possibly having a virus, with no symptoms that make me feel ill. Prior to supplementing I used to catch regular colds and feel rotten, like many people do. I do believe that D3 has been the main factor for my lack of winter illnesses, which of course helps me get through the winter a little easier.

Summer8906 Maybe parts of the UK will warrant a new classification in its own right

I guess the difficulty with trying to assess if parts of the UK are worthy of a different classification, is we need a few decades of data to look back on. We can only make this sort of climate assessment in hindsight, so it may be quite a while before we know if we are at the beginning of a new classification.

I suspect that Humberside site may not be an official met office station, hence the discrepancy in my earlier report.

I sniff a new record for Xmas Eve, 15.8c Humberside, which would beat the old UK record of 15.6c.

I still disagree with the word confirmed in this context. Confirm usually indicates fact, not projection.

I disagree with the way this professor chooses his words. The word 'confirmed' in the same sentence as 'climate model' is not what I expect from a professor. A single climate model doesn't confirm anything, it gives us more information to make assessments, and his poor choice of words here suggests this is some sort of fact now. I suggest he may be doing this for his ego, because frankly, professors don't need to feed this sort of soundbite through a twitter account, for likes.

In some respects the news feeds should be impartial and not directly connected to the BBC's own forecasts. As a supposedly unbiased outlet, they should be sourcing their news appropriately, even if that involves taking the superior knowledge from the met office, even if that conflicts with their second rate weather data. In this day of live feeds, and constant coverage (and hype), it's much more difficult to keep everything clean and tidy, like it was back in the day of the news at 1, 6 and 9. I believe the issues you raise are part of a bigger challenge for the BBC. They are trusted by many, but not by all. I've seen too many times how the BBC use their power to create bias, and then claim there is no bias. I personally cannot trust them to sensibly take the data available and produce relevant forecasts and coverage of a storm event like this. With constant live feeds, people could quite reasonably think half the country has been blown and washed away. I can imagine they have a mindset in the newsroom, that forces the hand of the editor, to keep pushing the live feed as much as possible, to ensure plenty of ongoing storyline for Joe Public. There isn't much of an option in that one sided world, for the editor to suddenly say, NO, it's time to cancel this feed. The other websites with feeds also, will be stuck in this same thinking pattern, therefore perpetuating the non-news, as there is no feasible or easy way to decide when to change course. I notice these love feeds tend to start ahead of the event - in some ways that reflects the age old story of the media's impact on the Mods and Rockers scenario, where the media whipped up a frenzy ahead of anything actually happening. I do think returning to the MO would be a step in the right direction for the BBC. I don't think it will solve many of the problems that this 24 hour live coverage creates. It's like the news outlets, especially the BBC with all their power, are bent on creating titillating narratives for consumers to relish like a novel. It seems wrong to me, and whilst it'll never happen, I think the days of limited news coverage did a better job of things. As you pointed out, in the past we did receive emergency news flashes where appropriate, and if for example a storm turned bad quickly, news bulletins would interrupt regular viewing to inform the public.

Met Office verdict on Storm Debi as weather maps show new storm | Weather | News | Express.co.uk WWW.EXPRESS.CO.UK EXCLUSIVE: Weather forecasters have argued that incoming soggy bluster following Storm Ciaran won't be the next named storm. Probably for the first time in living memory, the Express actually state clearly the truth, and make it clear that the Met Office will probably not be naming this storm.

They are spot on including the rain, which is problematic for many. We've some localised flooding for the 4th time since September, in Swindon and surrounding rural areas. A yellow warning was well deserved. We haven't lost the trains through Swindon this time thankfully. There has even been a landslide in Liddington near Swindon, but I don't have any more details yet.

We survived the bubonic plague, modern outbreaks are much less lethal with modern medicines etc, and also allows us the joy of not having most of our friends and family killed by disease. These disease controls are probably similar to weather warnings in a way. A more pleasant way to enjoy life, with all those we love still with us, living and breathing, instead of squashed.

On a recent broadcast by the met office, they said it won't be as wet and windy, so less of a concern.