Wildswimmer Pete

Looking at the charts from 62/63 it's been pointed out that present synoptics are very similar to those back then. Ironically the present international situation mirrors that of October 1962 so yes, history might well be repeating itself.

I'm looking at my energy meter, those figures to the right of the £ sign have already begun to rise. How I wish I could hibernate until late April.

When I lived on the top storey of our building I was getting 20-25C indoors with all windows open. Now that I'm living on the ground floor my home is always feeling chilly, only managed 21C indoors on a couple of particularly hot days this past summer. I even felt chilly in bed last night under an open window as I usually do even in winter. The block has cavity insulation and my windows are new ones with a good 1" between the panes. I'm looking at my energy monitor which indicates my living room temp is 18C. Should it go below 16C then given my age that's when I have to turn on my CH.

Last night's min was 8.7C. Maritime location (Mersey estuary), semi-rural, minor UHI

Not according to the stats. 62/63 is regarded to the most severe of the 20th Century with '47 a very close second. I wasn't around in '47 but the very cold spell in 62/63 was very long with a penetrating frost severe enough to freeze water mains buried 6ft deep. Around Merseyside we had snow flurries during December with heavy snow over the Christmas holiday that persisted all the way though Jan and Feb. It was at the end of Feb that we had our first 50F accompanied with a thaw (we used old money back then). Oops, we've gone a bit off-thread. Sorry.

I'm not claiming to speak for others - I'm stating a fact regarding that particular winter. However those who enjoy harsh winters forget that winter is a killer - look at the annual cull of the elderly by the "Great" (or in my words, Lousy) British Winter. During that most severe winter of the 20th Century we didn't have to shell out a large proportion of our incomes just in order to survive as we do now - and my home at the time was heated by coal fires, central heating was a relative rarity but my parents grumbled about the cost of coal but it wasn't a case of "eat or heat" which is the harsh and potentially fatal choice many pensioners face.

I actually did: Winter 1962-63. An experience I hope never have to repeat.

We tried all-year-round summer time from 1968-71. The reason the experiment was abandoned was because it was an unmitigated disaster. However you muck about with the clock, you still only have about eight hours of daylight around the winter solstice. I clearly recollect riding a bike to work in the dark mornings with black ice still on the roads because the sun didn't rise until after 9am. Schoolkids being knocked down on the way to school on dark mornings by drivers who hadn't wakened fully. I don't mind moving the start of summer time to 1st March, but most definitely not all year.

................And things were much better today. Just now Liverpool ATIS reported 25C with dp 18C, almost wall-to-wall cloudless skies with just a few bits of Ac every so often. This reminds me of the very warm spell in September 1963, the first summery bit of a very mediocre summer (I'd use other terms but I may end up banned )

What an anticlimax. 1pm in Liverpool a miserable 18C, chilly, cloudy and wet and with just a clap of thunder around 3pm. Wet enough to be a depressing Autumn day without any redeeming features. To add insult to injury, I assumed the forecast for a dry, sunny 25C would be accurate and left stuff out on the line to air. Big mistake.

What a disappointment - lunchtime on a temperature display in Liverpool around 1pm:18C. Where was all this heat we were promised? Cloudy and chilly with thunder during the afternoon. Hopefully we'll see something more respectable during the next couple of days.

Given we are rapidly approaching the SAD season I thought it appropriate to do a BUMP Given the increased sunshine most of us were lucky to see through August did anyone notice a heightening of spirits? (I did). I also took every opportunity to sunbathe before I eventually have to unearth my sunlamp.

Max today here was 29.7C in a sheltered W-facing garden with last night's minimum 15.1C. Looks like this could be the last hot day this year as this wretched excuse for a "summer" limps towards its grave. A day of blue skies with some cirrus, it's been over five years since we had a totally cloudless sky.

Did summer '16 actually arrive? The past three months have been basically a cloudfest, at least during conventional waking/working hours. That dratted grey lid that appears to be down to orographic lifting over the Mid Cheshire Ridge now our prevailing wind has shifted from SW to NW. Of course our now permanent Autumn will continue unabated into September.

Lynn Tegid (Bala) water temp measured at 22C which is slightly higher than usual for the time of year. I was using a snorkeller's watch to measure the temp rather than my calibrated glass thermo which I didn't pack in my kit due its fragility.

Sunny with some grey Sc clouds a little larger than "fair weather". According to my garden sensor it's 21C, Liverpool ATIS is reporting 20C. Still quite a breeze.

As you get older your body's ability to accurately "measure" its core temperature becomes increasingly impaired. Thermoregulation is the job of the hypothalamus. Now I'm aging I find it cool outdoors topless at ambient temps around 20C, ten years ago I was comfortable at 15-16C. My ability to withstand extreme cold still works as it should, but that's a different mechanism.

I initially wrote off today as yet another grey, cold and damp Autumn day yet when I left the swimming pool it was sunny and warm, although still windy.

It's raining steadily here.

Hopefully it will happen shortly as soon as the Sun starts behaving itself again (and hopefully not the beginning of a Grand Minimum )

I mostly remember 50's and 60's summers because of my schooldays' 6-week summer holidays. When I left school in '67 and started working I'd started riding motorcycles which means I had to take notice of the weather, especially during the winter which added the extra risk of icy roads.

The summers during the '50s differed from those of the '60s just as the summers during the '70s differed from the '60s. For certain reasons my long-term memory is exceptionally keen, but basically I don't especially recollect much from 1979 onwards.

You weren't there, I was. My comments are actual observations, not secondhand from reading books.

Sorry but I disagree. I experienced the summers of the 1950s and '60s so my observations were actual, not secondhand from dry figures. Both decades saw mixed summers with 1959 almost rivaling '76. In contrast winter 62/63 was the coldest of the 20th Century with the summers of '62 and '63 being shockers despite what the dry figures suggest. Summer sunshine figures sometimes give a wrong impression because any sunshine was recorded during the small hours when most of us are asleep, with the waking hours plagued by Cu infill as with the past few years. As Stainesbloke remarks, in my day we had four distinct seasons in the right places, not the "Forever Autumn" we endure nowadays.

Yes, the Anomalous Northwesterly strikes again. That affects me because a NWesterly results in orthographic lifting over the Mid-Cheshire Ridge leaving my locality sitting under a "grey lid".