LetItSnow!

I think the drab weather will last into the summer but I don't think it will be to the extent of what we've had. I feel like we'll get a summer with shades of 1998, 1999, 2002, 2009, 2010, 2014 etc. I think there'll be one month that's decent but overall poor weather will prevail, there'll be a moderate annual maximum in the 31-34C range and it'll be duller than average with rainfall probably not far from normal. Two horrendous Julys in a row is possible but I'd probably bet against it, so perhaps a mixed to poor June and August but a dry July. Likewise, two great Junes are possible but not super likely. A stab in the dark and a pull from the "weather fan spirit realm" makes me think: bad June, decent and dry July and a mixed August.

You’d think the weather had a request form Side node for interests sake, the hail shower deposited a longer cover of white on the ground than the entire winter and since December 2022 Oddly the exact same thing occurred around this time in March ten years ago.

CryoraptorA303 I’m not quite sure it would be as extreme as your fantasy reviews, but an extremely wet summer could prove to be a worry if we were to have any long spells of torrential rain. In June 1903 there was a spell of torrential rain that lasted non stop over London for days and dropped nearly 200mm. That was terrible then but a similar event occurring now with the southeast very much running unprecedentedly wet would be very unfortunate.

Frigid Unless I've missed a year, you have to go back 121 years to 1903 to find this occurence. I think April 1903, while not the coldest April ever, had a very low monthly maximum countrywide of just 17C, then one of the worst summers on record and then the wettest month ever recorded in October 1903 with an average of 218mm. To say 1903 was anti-seasonal was an understatement... A general repeat of that for 2024 would surely drive the members of this forum to near-zero- and the country underwater!

danm That does make sense also. Increased heat domes to our south meaning the south of England sees more influence of hot and dry weather, but also the Atlantic beefing up and carrying more cloud and rain means Scotland suffering the brunt of it. August 2020 typified this pattern with very hot and dry weather in the south while the north missed out entirely and then it turned very wet everywhere; the month wasn't even warm in Scotland I think. I'd even expect more months like July 2023 except cooler (because the warm SSTs gave a higher C.E.T. than would have occured even a year or two earlier imo) when the trough becomes more dominant. It's just a thought, but I did propose the idea that perhaps the future isn't one solid shift to one or the other, and that, particularly for our summers, we will probably continue to see both conditions but with more intensity. Very hot summers mixed with very wet, cloudy summers with mild minima keeping the C.E.T. up. Just a warmer and wetter version of natural variability that this country sees. But of course, just an idea and we don't know what will happen in say 100 years time. I do feel like the picturesque English countryside of green fields and flowers isn't going anywhere anytime soon though.

Totally too early to tell so I'm not making a prediction but hints of a cooler/colder and more unsettled taste to late March makes me wonder if that 1998/2007 spring I've been talking about is playing out with April being the cool and unsettled one. Really wouldnt be surprised to see a "cold snap" of some sorts in April. Would be ironic if we see a snowier spell in April than the whole winter but it's happened many times over the years. Happened very locally in April 2006, one of the best snowfalls of my childhood. If that does happen though I do excpect something drier and warmer for May.

danm danm danm Increase in rain days and sunshine isn't neccesarily that surprising. Wet winters aren't always dull, as the winter of 2013/2014 was actually sunny overall I think. Westerly winters tend to be sunny unless they have an excess of south-westerly influences like December and February just gone. The days where we would have once seen easterly winds dominate are now just more westerlies with more rain days but also with sunshine and showers. As for the summer, unless we see the northward expansion of the Hadley Cell promote more high pressure dominated summers, I expect the summer rainfall pattern to remain relatively static/slightly increase as westerly summer patterns will just hold more moisture mixed with natural variability. It makes sense that we've seen a lot of the short dry spells in recent times occur in the spring as it's the time when high pressure is most likely to dominate as the Atlantic becomes less powered up. "Bottled up synoptics" perhaps. All makes sense with the data shown to me at least.

Metwatch A lot of notoriously bad summers had a lot of convective episodes and severe storms.

richie3846 The little variance in the percentages hides large differences as stated. If I had selected years from before then it would be relatively dryer. Variability as part of the cyclical pattern has always existed but seemed to be rather more polarised in the mid-20th century.

Long post coming up but I thought it's interesting. Mods can move this if they think it's better somewhere else. The "is it getting wetter?" question is interesting, so I thought I'd put the anomalies of each decade of the past 100 years, though since we're only in 2023 I'm doing it like 1914-1923, 1924-1933 etc. The anomaly I'm using is the all time UKP average from 1766 to present day so it takes into account all wetter and drier phases. Also, since these are just slices of ten years in time you could say it's rather arbitrary, but it's a crude way to see if the percentages are going up or whether they fall in line with natural variability. The all time annual rainfall average is 922mm. 1914-1923: 926.4mm (101%) 1924-1933: 962.7mm (104%) 1934-1943: 912.8mm (99%) 1944-1953: 914.6mm (99%) 1954-1963: 931.6mm (101%) 1964-1973: 910.1mm (99%) 1974-1983: 929.2mm (101%) 1984-1993: 925.6mm (100%) 1994-2003: 969.2mm (105%) 2004-2013: 956.3mm (104%) 2014-2023: 1012.1mm (110%) Interesting things to point out: The UK has always had a cyclical pattern between dry spells and wet spells, often alternating between them every 3 to 10 years. In the earlier part of the record when temperatures were a lot colder, this pattern still occured but often with the die loaded towards dryer than average conditions. In the 20th century both ends became more extreme with stark contrasts in rainfall between decades; for example, the 1910s-1920s was generally wet, but the 1930s-1940s generally dry, the 1950s and 1960s saw the polarisation increase even more, particularly the 1960s when the first half of the decade was very dry, but the second half exceptionally wet. These polarising extremes reduced into the 1970s, 1980s and into the first half of the 1990s as the wet spells and dry spells became shorter, leading to more of an "average" results. From the late 1990s onwards as temperatures have increased the results are showing the same as the earlier half of the record, but instead of the die loaded towards dry it's now loaded towards wet, which makes sense as warmer air holds more moisture and our climate is dominated by the Atlantic. However, despite the past ten years being anomalously wet, it isn't unprecedented; 1874-1883 had an average of 1017.2mm despite occuring in generally dryer times, which means despite the die being loaded in favour of one outcome, natural variability will still be at play. The moral of the story; we're getting wetter, but don't rule out an anomalously dry period that lasts 5 to 10 years, but err on the side of wet being perhaps the "norm", at least for the forseeable future (next couple of decades; the effects of a moving Hadley Cell and other unknown variables may change this outlook into the latter half of the 20th century, but if our Atlantic remains dominant then expect those storms to be juicer than ever!).

The early hours of September 1st, 2017 brought unexpected but very severe thunderstorms to the south-east of England. Not only was it the intensity that makes them memorable to me but also the fact that (as far as I remember) they were largely unforecast and occured in a cool pattern. Proof you don't need heat to get big storms. After a brief warm spell, the closing days of August 2017 were cool/very cool with a slack NW flow. As high pressure built in from the mid Atlantic, a shallow trough became embedded in the mix and brought instabillity into the 1st. You can see the trough develop and pass into the low countries on the synoptic charts. I remember vividly being at home during the evening listening to music with my headphones in minding my own business when a flash from behind distracted me, only to my surprise there be a vivid lightning show. I checked the radar and a rash of severe thunderstorms were clung onto the south-east. Over the course of a couple hours the storms remained slow moving with torrential rain practically staying in place as storms back-built, dumping copious amounts of rainfall and causing localised flooding (coming after a locally exceptionally wet summer too). Most notably however was that despite it being night I could make out that there seemed to be a tornadic element with the clouds rotating and I did see what looked like a funnel cloud/tornado develop in the sky out my bedroom window, but didn't end up coming to much. It remains one of the most intense thunderstorms I've witnessed along with June 25th, 2016 (unbeaten to this day) and October 23rd (or 24th), 2022. Do you have any memories of these storms? Were they as intense in your area or was it a New Ash Green special?

Sun Chaser My main memories of June 2017 other than the hot spell were just unsettled. The minima was the second highest on record for June behind... 2016. As mentioned, early June was extremely unsettled with gale force winds on the 6th that nearly took out our old shed! After another bog standard hot spell in early July the summer left and never really came back. At least locally, summer 2017 was exceptionally wet with frequent thundery downpours. The frequency of thunderstorms (I lived in NW Kent at the time) between late June and early September, in particularly late July, was quite remarkable. I remember the most intense of downpours on the 23rd. In our old garden we had a beautiful array of flowers and herbs including plenty of lavender and the whole garden was an absolute luscious green. August was mostly cloudy and cool bar the warm end which only got up to about 28-29C. We had torrential thundery rain on August 9th which lasted ages and was one of the wettest days in my records at the time. So my main memory of summer 2017 was often cloudy, cool and wet but with frequent violent thunderstorms, including a surprise thunderstorm on September 1st which I may make a historical thread about.

Isn't our climate mostly unchanged since 20 years ago though? The biggest difference is we didn't have heat spikes then, but many 2000s summers were indifferent to poor with a couple good ones in the mix and the winters were still mostly mild with infrequent snow until a brief window of snowier weather from 2008 to 2013. Even the annual C.E.T. interestingly remained quite static until 2022 and 2023 which we're still waiting to see if it's the new normal or whether it will drop to the 10.2-10.7C window for the next 5-10 years. To me it feels like it's just a slightly warmer and quite wetter version of what we had. I think the 1990s was just a decade in which was natural variation enhanced by climate change for its unusual frequency of better summers which balanced the unusual frequency of poor summers in the 1980s. It will be interesting to see natural variability play out albeit with the elephant in the room a constant driver.

January 2024 really did the heavy lifting for sunshine this past winter. Away from eastern Scotland, unexceptional totals in the other two months lifted it into the above average region for the east but many parts of the country had extensively dull weather even by the 1961-1990 average interestingly.

matty40s Until for most the snow turns to sleet then turns to rain and then the rain will be even heavier and last for even longer of the year! UK seems to be a good example of this.

We think it's bad now but I just read a Met Office Monthly Weather Report for June 1964 that claimed it was the fifteenth successive month that was duller than normal!

WYorksWeather I agree. Hot summers suck. I love any negative anomaly I can get, I don't care what month it comes. I like to know it can still happen. Every year the blue anomalies on maps shrink more and more... There are plenty of summers in the past that people can brush off as bad because of a lower C.E.T. but they were probably pleasant, like 1969. August 1981 was sunny, very dry and often warm but didn't get above 28C all month, but I'd take that over August 1995 any day. Cool doesn't equate bad and warm doesn't equate good, just look at summer 2020 or summer 2004 for example.

I genuinely ignore the CFS and every LRF since I started getting into weather properly since I was 12, it's served me well. If I had to guess for 2024... Going against the grain and going to say we'll have a cool summer, at least for modern times, we'll have an annual maximum around 32C and it'll be considered poor but not horrific, sort of slotting in with the kinds of summers like 2015, 2009, 2002, 1998, 1993, 1981 etc. It probably won't be massively wet though wouldn't rule it out. But I think at least one month will be dry and decently sunny. Overall a mixed bag, rather cool, forgettable.

The winter of 1962/1963 gets deserved praise for its extreme cold but the the following winter set a record in its own right. The winter of 1963/1964 is the driest winter on record going back to 1766 with a seasonal total of a paltry 88.9mm. December 1963 had a C.E.T. of 2.6C and an average of 30.1mm, the driest for 30 years. The month began with low pressure close to the south-west but high pressure quickly built. This period was generally very grey and misty and became gradually colder with freezing fog, though western areas saw some sunshine. Colder mid-month with easterly winds. It remained mostly dry but sleet and snow showers peppered the south-east. A more substantial push of cold air on the 19th brought widespread snow with up to 3 inches of snow from "Aberdeen to Durham". The run-up to Christmas was cold and frosty with lots of winter sunshine and harsh frosts, but the wintry theme wasn't to last for Christmas as winds returned to the west and it remained foggy, particularly in the south-east, with only light falls of rain and mild temperatures and anticyclonic gloom non stop from the 23rd to the 28th. "Rainfall was less than 25 per cent of the average over some east coast areas of Scotland, south-west Scotland, North and West Wales, the Midlands and over parts of Sussex and Kent; many places in these areas had between two and three weeks without measurable rain from the 1st. It was the driest December at Edinburgh since 1908." January 1964 was somewhat milder with a slightly cooler than average C.E.T. of 3.4C; the driest since 1880 with an average of 26.4mm. There wouldn't be a drier one until 1997. The month began with rain restricted to the far north-west. The first ten days of January 1964 were generally very dull with lots of foggy anticyclonic gloom. A slight change as a weak trough moving westwards with cold air aloft gave some snow and sleet in the south and though most places saw feeble amounts, the south coast did surprisingly well. Parts of the south coast saw up to 12 inches of snow with 6 inches covering the South Downs, but amounts were small further north. This quickly thawed but high pressure remained in control with cold but sunny weather. Bright conditions were shortlived as anticyclonic gloom prevailed with the 19th to the 23rd being particularly foggy with unbroken fog for four days in the Yorkshire region. It eventually turned somewhat more unsettled at months end with the 29th and the 31st being the only days with widespread rain. Northern and eastern Scotland as well as parts of northern England were sunny but elsewhere it was very dull. It was the dullest January since 1912 at Worthing. February 1964 was the mildest month of the winter with a slightly mild C.E.T. of 4.5C and an average of 32.4mm. The month began with something out of character; unsettled weather! It began changeable and unsettled with even the south having some heavy rain on the 3rd, but high pressure quickly built it turning it sunny and frosty, though cloud filled in eventually with a return to foggy conditions. It remained generally dry until the 14th when a week of cold weather from the east followed bringing moderate snowfalls to the north of England from the 16th to the 19th. 10 inches lay at Forest in Teesdale and low-ground in the Midlands and north-east generally saw a 1-2 inches and 3-4 inches respectively. As milder air encroached from the south-west on the 22nd parts of south-west England saw about an inch of snow as did eastern Scotland on the 23rd. The month ended mild with outbreaks of rain, fog and even some thunderstorms. Temperatures got up to 15C on the 24th and 27th. Says a lot about our current climate that the driest winter on record had more snowfall than most winters since 1988!

All the more notable for coming after an extremely dry winter, the driest ever recorded in fact. An extremely dry year, though oddly it seems March 1964 was a wet one and was the sole very wet month of the entire year.

WYorksWeather Could be pleasant in the south but that chart while mild doesn't exactly scream walk in the park conditions as those flabby westerlies look like they'd bring a fair bit of cloud and even outbreaks of rain further north.

Summer8906 I've also got the hunch that winter 2024/2025 may be the lucky one for coldies. If we do see a slight reduction of temperatures due to the Hunga vapour dissipating + when we go back to La Nina we may have a bit more luck for winter cold spells in Europe in the 2025-2028 window I feel. Back to spring at hand and this wet spell we're in, if you look back in history at all the wettest years, they are usually followed by a cluster of dry/dryer years. It can happen you can get stuck in a rut of wet weather. I just looked through the data and 1875-1883 was extremely wet with 5 of these years having over 1,000mm and two of them over 1,100mm! The driest of the lot was 1881 which was still wetter than normal at 966mm. Generally though I think we can expect a drier couple of years, perhaps even very dry, but climate change may affect that and I'd expect more average with one dry year than a flip to extreme dryness. Once again back to 2024 and I said for a while that I felt a 1998/2007 spring was on its way and it's somewhat come true so far. If this March ends up warm and wet that'll be somewhat like March 1998 and then I am convinced we'll April and May be contrasting months, one relatively cool (or maybe even below the 1961-1990 average) and one be warm, sunny and dry. I think April 2024 will be the cool and wet one and then we'll see our first properly dry month in May 2024. Similar to how May 2001 broke the deluge.

Summer8906 I actually agree. The law of averages does suggest a spell of cooler/blocked years even if they may not be as potent as they once were. Cards have to fall in place but it can happen. At least those summers didn’t have oppressive heat spikes and they mostly had a real semblance of winter. Our big coldwave like NA had in January 2024 or February 2021 will come eventually.

Of course it is possible rainfall projections may not end up changing an excessive amount at all but just perhaps hiding a larger gap. As long as the Atlantic remains at play I see winters remaining wet and getting wetter with more moisture in the atmosphere, more instability and therefor more rain. Summers are trickier. If the Hadley cell continues to grow then you’d expect the summers to become drier, but this is assuming the summers of the future are high pressure dominated. Again, if not, with the Atlantic at play, more warmth and more instability will probably produce a higher likely of severe thunderstorms and torrential rain. It’s interesting to see the graph of our summers becoming drier in the second half of the 20th century when there were quite a lot of cool summers. A cooler planet will probably be dryer. Again, the summer rainfall of the future is the most uncertain part but I think we will probably continue to see an increase/steadying of the excessive rainfall we’ve seen in our winters and autumns, probably spring being the driest season as the “bottled up” synoptics have the best chance of blocking highs, then the summers will either become more high pressure dominated or our usual changeable summers will have more of a tendency for extreme rainfall. Overall I’m not convinced on us getting drier as we’ve seen no proof of that IMO for the past 11 years. It’s also interesting to read historic accounts of colder periods in history and the droughts that came along with them.

al78 I’m not saying it wasn’t intense, but it was no match against the aforementioned years in my opinion sheerly down to length. The drought effectively ended by September and (bar the second half of January 2023 and February 2023) well above normal rainfall has persisted since. Also 2021 was mostly very wet up until the autumn, particularly in the southeast where it was a wet summer. I’d say the most intense of the dry period was condensed from November 2021 to August 2022 and even then February 2022 was wet overall (average in the south). Im not saying it wasn’t dry, but it shows that the fact that it’s our only noteworthy dry spell bar perhaps spring 2020 and late 2016-early 2017 compared to almost every year having above normal rainfall since 2012 shows that our climate is getting wetter and our dry spells are intense but seemingly very short. This may change of course. As always time will tell.