LetItSnow!

Bye bye heatwaves.

WYorksWeather The urban heating effect was one of the lesser points but it definitely makes a difference from being in a country field to the heat of the city. Experiencing 40C in the city with no air con in a brick built load of apartments was genuinely terrible. When these apartments were constructed in 1993 the annual max wasn’t even 30C, oh how times have changed. A lot of Britain’s homes were built in times when 40C was impossible and really not likely to ever happen so it will be interesting to see how we adapt. But this isn’t the chat for that. I really would just like a normal summer without any weird extreme weather. If we could have decent anticyclonic spells but have a lack of far fetched southerly winds then that would be nice, but often with unsettled spells to keep soil moisture and gardeners happy. Probably a summer with a displaced Azores high, though that would run the risk of northerlies, and that can at worst lead to conditions like the second half of July 1987 where lows become stuck and a lot of grey gloomy weather becomes immovable over the country. Summer 2001 seems like a good one that I wouldn’t mind a repeat of. Every month had a bit of everything to keep everyone happy and I think every month reached 32C. There was also a lot of thunder at times and sometimes there were cool nights. May 2001 was also dry and fine but with some spectacular storms (It would fit to have a summer like that as we’re in a similar situation rainfall wise to that time. May 2001 finally broke the run of unprecedented rainfall but the following summer wasn’t a dry one).

WYorksWeather The rapid warming of northern Africa compared to other places in the world is meaning that our hot southerlies that once would have brought 10-15C uppers are now bringing 15-20C uppers, plus urban heating as well means that our Spanish plumes are no longer and are now African plumes in a way. You can sort of see this how when we’ve had hot spells that are more homegrown/from the east they’re not as intense for ultimate maximums, like summer 2018 and June 2023. However those types of patterns were always much harder to come by by default. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the heat and drought situation to our south. Considering that parts of Spain were seeing heatwaves as early as January it’s not a great sign. Also will be interesting to see if the wet theme continues into the spring. If it does and we retain moist soil into the summer then that may limit the maximum temperature capacity though that could easily be undercut by very hot uppers and a drought stricken continent.

East Lancs Rain Love Gavin's videos but these analogue forecasts aren't really worth the time and effort in my opinion. You can put all the closest matching previous months together in terms of rainfall and temperature but the global pattern for those analogues could be completely different. You can have, say an August that is cool and wet, but it can be cool and wet in multiple different patterns, same with hot. Then there's the added influence of CC. Even with matches to El Nino's etc you still have different types of EN's and LN's, plus no weather pattern will likely ever be the same. It reminds me of a poster on here whom I thought was excellent for making a list of all the years that had the most similar weather events globally to try and create the ultimate analogue and it still didn't end up being accurate. I think when it comes to forecasting, the less precision the better. You can make general assumptions of what weather patterns will likely be in certain areas due to things like El Nino, ENSO etc, but to try and fine point it is futile.

I wasn't alive for it but by what I've read, summer 1994 was excellent for that as there was repeated thundery episodes in all three months, particularly July. This video is excellent. I know this day was notorious for having a massive cluster of storms wallop the south-east of England and this (and the part two) video capture it. I think there was also another very thundery spell on the 3rd/4th of August but the heat dissipated into the rest of August 1994.

July 1987 really looks like a month of two halves, suggested by Heathrow stats. The first-half was by no means special for temperatures (the monthly max was only 28.3°C on the 6th but the month was rainless until the 13th. I don't have sunshine figures but I imagine it was pleasant under the anticyclone. The second-half was completely different. Despite the first-half being bone dry at Heathrow it rained almost every day from the 15th onwards and recorded 78.2mm for the month as a whole. The maxima in the second half was positively Artic at times, mostly between the 17th and the 23rd when the usually warm London saw several days failing to exceed 15°C. The interesting thing about July 1987 is that it isn't an Atlantic dominated month at all. Apart from mid-month, most of the time it was pesky cut off lows delivering days of gloom with instability giving occaisonal thunderstorms. Luton saw only 25 hours of sunshine in the second half of the month. Temperatures recovered somewhat in the closing days but remained cool and showery from the west/northwest. Interesting note about August 1987 is that most of the month's rainfall at Heathrow fell on two days (26.9mm on the 22nd and 15.5mm on the 25th) and that most of the month was quite dry outside of light, showery bits of rain. Interesting that Trevor Harley writes that August 1987 was extremely wet in East Anglia with amounts around 200% of the norm but in the southwest it was very dry, the driest since August 1981. I'm not surprised when looking at the reanalysis charts as it was a very northerly month which would disproportionately have affected these areas. I have heard about the very strong heatwave that gripped Greece during July 1987 and I wonder if this was a prototype 2007/2012 summer with anomalous heat fuelling low pressure systems to barrel our way.

The first step we need to take is to make our urban areas greener. We know that more trees cools the surrounding area by quite a considerable margin and overall has a positive effect. We need our streets lined with trees when possible, for our parks to be a bit more wild and for urban areas to have more allocated meadows and forested areas. That could be a crucial step at reducing the intensity of heatwaves in urban areas. Then we can get onto the topic of c02 removal and/or aerosols.

Caution should be taken with this pattern as I do fear that a situation like the UKMO could occur if things don't land 100%. At least for the south there probably could just be a whole lot of cold rain, as apposed to February's mild rain! All hangs on whether high pressure will get a strong foothold around the 11th or whether the Atlantic will win out. Can't say personally I'm chasing cold charts now but it would be funny if March ended on the chilly side after February - but I don't see this likely just yet.

I think this is probably a good indicator of the future to be honest. As the warming increases the air holds more moisture and for a naturally Atlantic dominated climate it means more chance at heavy rainfall. Our dry spells will become intense but probably shorter and the wet spells more intense and longer. Just my opinion of course. Multi-year droughts happen as part of natural variability and that’s not going to stop but I think the die is loaded in favour of wet by a fair margin now. I like the rain so I can’t say I personally have felt too bad in this spell, though his winter just gone is the first in some time I noticed myself rather depressed by the lack of light so gloomy conditions must have helped. The two winters previous were much drier and sunnier overall. I don’t want to swing into super dry conditions as I don’t think it would be very helpful to go from flooded out to bone dry for months. Odds increase with every wet month that the pattern will at least relax and I’d be surprised if we don’t have some level of a dryer than average month before June. The talk of flipping to La Niña is interesting with comparisons to 1998 and 2007. 1998 remained fairly wet in the second half of the year though July and August (the latter especially in the south) were fairly dry I think. 2007 actually was mostly dry after the May-June deluge and I think the autumn was very dry in parts. I also saw 2010 mentioned which apart from a wet August was dry through the second half. Edit: Also of interest is that if wet conditions do continue through the spring then it may limit the heat potential if we don’t get any super hot uppers. The latter though is a risky gamble to say in the current era.

Shocked at the fact that in some parts it was wetter than 2013-2014 in parts and exactly ten years on too. It definitely has felt like a very wet winter though not a record breaker, though I’m not sure how the record stands for London. 2013-2014 feels wetter from memory. A remarkable run of wet weather since July last year. Imagine telling people worried about drought in August 2022 that this is where we’d be now!

Addicks Fan 1981 Was 2016 all that great for summer lovers? May 2016 had some fine weather at times and I remember the warm spell around 8th/9th but after that it gets patchy. The final day of the month locally was extremely wet with a band of rain stuck rotating overhead all day and dumped copious amounts of rain, fitting for what was to come in June. June 2016 locally perhaps was the wettest June ever recorded and maybe even one of the wettest ever months. It was persistently dull but warm nights meant it was a warm month overall. I remember fine, warm day around the 6th before the really thundery spell started soon after. I think from the 8th to the 25th it was almost non-stop rain and thunderstorms with very little sun, including (which I’ve spoke about as nauseam) the most extreme thunderstorm I’ve ever witnessed on the 25th (London had flash floods as well on the 22nd/23rd but I was in NW Kent at the time). July 2016 was much more quiet and a lot dryer as well. The first half I remember being cool with a mixture of some bright days but cloudy at times too. It did turn hotter in the second half. August 2016 was fair though I don’t recall much memorable weather. It seemed to be a very dry month locally with only sparse rainfall but I don’t recall glorious sunshine. I do remember a very thundery spell on the 27th/28th but that didn’t effect us locally. September 2016 I remember better for the heatwave mid month but once again I don’t seem to remember it as a month with bucket loads of sunshine either though I think it continued the dry theme. After the unprecedented wet June the rest of 2016 was very dry here and it even made local news into early 2017 with fears of drought, though this collapsed into the summer. Certainly was a dryer period here though from 2016-2018 compared to before and since.

Regardless of one's preferences, odds suggest that a break in anomalously high rainfall will probably end soon, whether that means a return to average conditions or very dry, who knows. I'm starting to wonder if the old relied on "a couple wet years then a couple dry ones" cycle is not a thing anymore since the only real dry spell we've had didn't even last a whole year. Atleastitwillbemild I do seem to agree on a very wet future, though an anxious voice inside me says that we may pay for this very wet 10 year spell with a similar length spell of very dry, arid weather. More warmth equates to more moisture though and unless blocking patterns become more established then expect more rain to be dumped from those same ole lows that have ravaged England since the dawn of time. Lol.

Metwatch Yes! I watched him too. I would urge people who still are followers of his and the like why the supposed global freeze keeps getting delayed. LOL.

I love the idea of this and I hope that people can behave! I'll have to get my thinking cap on for some questions as I certainly am no scientist!

I will also add that I myself fell victim (victim of my own ignorance) to those saviour/doom prophets of a mini ice age back in the mid 2010s when I was a teenager while searching at anything I could find that was contrary to mainstream opinion and while I would never have admitted to myself then it was totally because I didn't want to accept the truth, and many people don't, for many different reasons. People don't want to mourn the loss of snow days, think about crop failiures and cost increases, think about the fact that maybe 40C here won't be all that rare one day, think about the toll on human, plant and animal life - it is a thoroughly horrible thing to think about when you as one person have little power over the outcome, and it's why people desperately search for an answer to invalidate it. I pray God they come up with something that's actually true! Unfortunately, it is a problem created by the big guys and it's a problem we're going to have to figure out a way to solve. And maybe something unforeseen will happen or be found that saves the day, I hope it does, but ultimately I believe it is a bigger priority to deal with the facts we have now so that we don't have to suffer more in the future. And also, not to age shame at all, but a large amount of that denialist claptrap comes from an older generation who knows they don't have to deal with the impacts, regardless whether they think we're gonna burn, freeze, drown or dry up. It's an uncertain future for my generation, my little brother's generation and so forth.

A great example of how these conversations instantly become inflammatory. I would argue in favour of Methuselah's view point to be fair. At this point, any contrary opinions are not considered scientific truth, either because they're false or haven't been discovered yet, so apart from some interesting chatter about "Hey, I found this cool paper. How does this hold up to science?", I dont really see a point arguing against scientific facts, in fact I see it as a waste of time since we're already burning up. And I criticise the opinion of AGW being a money making scam as I have noticed many denialist scams that intentionally misread facts to an audience who aren't checking for the real thing and automatically believe the authoritive voice that's telling them that. I think if we don't step in and really work toward a solution and get creative we'll soon see that a wrecked Earth isn't quite the money maker some people think it will be. I have to wonder to our leaders even have a clue what they're talking about at all. But back to the point, theories and new papers are exciting and the quest for knowledge is never-ending, but certain things are known facts. Why bother contesting the mechanics of the earth? And if recent history isn't enough to convince people that there's a problem then the next 10-20 years probably will.

Wold Topper The only problem here is that a lot of the time the contrary opinions tends to be a bunch of denialist claptrap. Our understanding of the world changes every day and science is a beautiful ever-growing expanse of knowledge, yes, but there are also certain things that are fundamentally true. I wouldn't argue the existence of gravity for example. There are no doubt mechanisms we have yet to understand fully but I find it far more use to stick to the scientists rather than some 58 year old guy called Billy from Huddersfield claiming he's cracked it. If there is a 58 year old from Huddersfield called Billy reading my comment, no offence is meant.

While no scientist, I personally do think geoengineering is probably the only option we will have in mitigating the short term (relatively speaking) effects. It really aggrivates me when people talk about it in a future-sense when the problem is right now. While I'm not sure how true this is, I heard a general estimate of the cost of GE is affordable, but it's the unknown side effects of rainfall patterns and as mentioned above, ocean acidification. There's also the upkeep which even if affordable is subject to being used as warfare. Depriving an area of aerosols intentionally could create catastrophic spells of weather. If only it were as simple as being able to pick up and plop the earth a little further away from the sun. People who talk about exploration of other planets while we continually desecrate the one we're on make me laugh. What makes anyone think we wouldn't wreck another one. It's like we all know but don't realise how precious life is and how the tiniest change changes everything.

Indeed, though it has a one up on the winter of 2021/2022 which saw no snow at all. I saw some miserable snow grains on 8/1/2024 that didn't even settle. IIRC parts of the southeast like Kent and such fared better than here in London though.

CryoraptorA303 Well entirely dependant on what one defines as cool as one persons 20C may feel positively Artic to them but I would argue that there have been spells of cool weather around the 20C mark with quite a lot of rain and wind, July 2023, August 2021, July 2020, June 2019, August 2017, July 2016, large swathes of the summer of 2015, August 2014, June 2013, most of summer 2012 and summer 2011, August 2010 and so forth, from memory. I'm not arguing about cooler/warmer than average, I just mean that the stereotypical British unsettled summer hasn't changed much in itself other than the temperature increase which leads to a propensity to hot spells that would once have been like 25-35C now be 30-40C. It feels (I'm not exactly sure how much) rare to get summer days in London below 21C nowadays, but Midlands north it probably still happens.

Tim Bland Very 19th century esque looking chart, after a very mild February then get walloped with cold charts in March

CryoraptorA303 Before my ramble I do vote that this be moved to the general summer chat, but I will say: I think he just meant that the overall default British summer theme of a few hot days interspersed amongst generally mixed, mild weather most of the time hasn't changed that much even though the temperature has climbed. Many summers have had this since 2007, the only difference being that the unsettled spells that would have once brought long spells of changeable summer weather between 15-21C with the hot spells between 27-33C and spikes of 34-36C is now instead: changeable spells between 18-24C with hot spells of 30-36C and spikes of 37C-40C. The change is indeed more noticable in the south, London for example due to its proximity to the continent and heavy urbanisation added onto a warming globe, but if you took away the added heat, the patterns, while perhaps more erratic and prone to extremes, are not a million miles from the normal. It goes to show how little added warmth in the atmosphere it takes to warm uppers by a couple degrees on average.. But I don't think he in any way is trying to deny the changes that have occured, more say that the changes are blending with the natural cycles that exist. For example, many people in the 1990s may have thought that northern European summers were hot and dry as the new norm due to a propensity for these conditions but it was a cycle that coincided with rising global temperatures, probably similar (albeit in the opposite way) to the winters of the late 2000s and early 2010s that still happened but were not as intense as they would have been 30-50 years prior. Talking about the situation at hand is frustrating but remember to be patient and nice with people who are simply sharing their experience. I certainly can recall many a grotty summer period in my lifetime in just the past ten years.

Well so far these composite anomalie charts have been as useful as a chocolate teapot

damianslaw Part of the reason (unscientific and just a hunch) why I have a hunch that we may see a mixed spring and poor summer akin to 1998 or 2007 (The latter year I don't believe was El Nino but had a similar pattern)

I will say that records starting in 1990 start at the beginning of the new era of the British climate so it would make sense you’d set some cold records since 2007, a lot of them I’d hazard were set between 2007 and 2013. Now if your records had begun fifty years earlier those current records probably wouldn’t be records. The dip that occurred in that time people forget every year from 2008 to 2013 was above the 1961-1990 average bar 2010. It’s what makes December 2010 so incredibly magical.