reef

We finished on 280 hours of sunshine in the end, making it comfortably the sunniest on record and only 47 hours less than July 2006. Spring as a whole finished on 104% of average despite only 74% and 79% of normal sunshine in March and April. The mean max was also the highest on record, at 17.6C, beating the previous record of 17.4C which was set last year. Rainfall-wise it was the driest May since 2010 with 31.6mm of rain, 68% of normal.

Warm with close to average rainfall. 15.7C and 65mm

Cloudy with bright spells, but struggling to burn off. Rather cool at 14.8C in the north-easterly breeze. We briefly reached 16.1C earlier.

We still haven't had a thunder day yet in 2018, never mind an actual storm! It seems to be a theme of recent years that warm spells have an easterly component to the flow, so there's no chance of any activity here. The stable air just kills off any chance.

Mostly cloudy with the very lightest of showers this morning before turning mostly clear this afternoon and evening. Cooler than further inland due to the onshore breeze but still pleasant. Max Temp: 17.6C Min Temp: 9.6C Mean Wind: 9mph NE Max Gust: 16mph Rainfall: Trace Sunshine: 5.9hrs Currently mostly clear with a temp of 11.0C.

Welcome to the forum! Absolute surface pressure is the air pressure at the height you're at above sea level (i.e the raw reading your station records) and often needs to be corrected to the mean sea level pressure as that is what is reported officially. So for example, someone at 300m above sea level will record a reading lower than those close by at lower altitudes, but a correction is applied to keep recordings constant. I think in your case its probably more a case of the reading being out from the factory (or indeed the nearby station on WU could be the incorrect one) as they aren't generally the most accurate on cheaper stations. Your best bet is to look at the pressure readings from nearby Shawbury and align your readings to that: http://www.weathercast.co.uk/world-weather/weather-stations/obsid/3414.html Hope this helps.

If anything, the last 12 months have been rather wet. From 24th May 2017 - 23rd May 2018 we've had 788.6mm, which is 120% of the 1981-2010 average. I wouldn't say we were overdue a dry period though, as 1st March 2011 - 29th February 2012 saw only 405.8mm (62%) - and 2011 was locally the driest year since 1921.

Up to 231hrs here now. The North sea muck rolled in this evening so we didn't quite get the maximum sunshine today but still managed a respectable 12.9hrs. The chances of getting anywhere near July 2006 (327hrs) look lower now as winds are forecast to be predominantly easterly until the end of the month. Hopefully the North sea cloud isn't too persistent.

Clear all night and during the day so far. Its looking like another day potentially of maximum sunshine, with near enough 10.5hrs already. Temperatures slightly warmer than average with a max of 16.8C but feeling cooler than recent days due to the northerly wind. Current temp is 15.8C and 70% humidity. No rain for 9 days now.

Strangely despite being so close to the coast we had no such issues with cloud or fog here, it was clear all night and all day so far! As a result we're now up to 227hours of sunshine this month, which is 112% of the monthly average with 9½ days to go. There's a keen northerly wind but we still reached 16.8C. It feels cooler than of late, but then the average max has been more than 3C above average so its easy to forget its only May.

We're up to 205hrs in the first 20 days of the month, which is 101% of the monthly average and identical to the combined total of March and April this year! Its a bit of a stretch, but if we could manage 11.2hrs of sunshine per day in the last 11 days then we would beat July 2006. This is very unlikely however, especially with the wind being more easterly over the next week. I suspect even beating the May 2001 total of 257hrs might be difficult if there's sea fret around.

Unfortunately not, but looking at surrounding sites I imagine it was easily 270+hours around here.

It has been very sunny so far here too. We're on 174 hours of sunshine so far - an average of 9.67hrs per day. If that was to continue until the end of the month we'd be on 300 hours and only 27 hours short of July 2006 - the sunniest month on record here. As it stands, we need just another 83 hours by the end of the month to record the sunniest May ever and second sunniest month of the 21st century behind July 2006. That would be just 6.4hrs per day, so very achievable. As for rainfall, we've only had four days with measurable rain so far and apart from on the 2nd, all of those falls have come overnight. The persistent clear skies are very evident in the mean max / mean min temperature. Figures to the 18th against the rolling 1981-2010 average: Mean Max: 18.1C (+3.7C) Mean Min: 6.6C (+0.0C) A very pleasant and unusual month so far. It reminds me of a cooler version of July 2006 so it would be fitting if it were up there in sunshine totals.

Heating?? Its still 22C in here! Interesting for May so far, with a very warm average max and normal average min. That combined with 152hrs of sunshine so far, is very indicative of plenty of clear skies. Running figures to the 16th: Mean Max: 18.5C (+3.5C) Mean Min: 7.1C (+0.0C) Sunshine: 152hrs (149%) Rainfall: 19.6mm (82%)

Is this with the stock software? It might be that it doesn't work correctly with Wunderground. I'd give cumulus a go and see if that resolves it. Mind you, Wunderground is pretty buggy these days even on my Davis. Often it shows the station offline even when it's updating fine, reverts to fahrenheit for no reason and refuses to update for ages.

We're on 136hrs of sunshine now just 14 days into May. An average of 6.6hrs of sunshine per day for the remainder of the month will make this the sunniest month since July 2006 and second sunniest month of the last 17 years.

We're at 13.0C to the 12th, which is 2.8C above the running 1981-2010 average. The mean max is particularly notable at 19.0C, 4.9C above average. The warmest May here since 1980 was last year at 13.2C, so if we manage another warm spell in the second half we should beat that comfortably.

Hadley haven't updated since the 8th.

Up to 106 hours of sunshine here already this May, meaning we've averaged 10.6 hours per day so far. If we can average 6.9 hours for the remaining 21 days (the norm is around 6.5hrs) then it would be the sunniest month since July 2006.

A max of 25.6C so far today, meaning the previous earliest 25C in the year (14th May 1992) has now been beaten twice in the same year: today and 26.1C on the 19th April.

It most certainly wasn't cold. It had a mean of 9.8C, making it the 24th warmest in the CET series. There have only been 6 warmer Aprils since 1949!

Indeed, there's definitely something fishy about those Heathrow numbers. Looking at the figures compared to mine locally, there's no way that 9 out of the last 11 summers would be sunnier here than down there. Its just not possible when you consider how Heathrow is further south and benefits from arguably more setups when it comes to sunshine. Summer 2010 for example was generally a NW/SE split, yet Heathrow apparently had 492hrs compared to 573hrs here and 602hrs in the general south-east region. I don't buy that for a second. I suspect the Metoffice are adjusting in some way for the instrument changes on their anomaly maps pages, as this suggests closer to 560hrs for Heathrow that summer: For summer 2017 it has closer to 620hrs, as opposed to 557hrs on the raw figures: That's more than here and much more in line with what you would expect.

That's not the case, we're in the east and it has been as sunny as the already high 1981-2010 mean. So much so that the 1991-2020 mean will likely be higher still. Last 11 summers here compared to the 1981-2010 average of 567hrs: 2007: 550hrs (97%) 2008: 517hrs (91%) 2009: 602hrs (106%) 2010: 573hrs (101%) 2011: 552hrs (97%) 2012: 444hrs (78%) 2013: 640hrs (113%) 2014: 619hrs (109%) 2015: 589hrs (104%) 2016: 556hrs (98%) 2017: 599hrs (106%) All pretty close to average apart from the dire 2012. They average out at 100.1% of normal over the 11 years exactly. Only 5 of those summers were wetter than average and 3 were cooler than average (and even then by no more than 0.3C below average). We really haven't done too badly at all, locally at least.

Slightly drier and warmer than average: 12.0C and 58mm

The decline in thunderstorms here has gone hand in hand with most warm spells in recent years tending to have an easterly component to the wind. Quite often storms approach from the south or south-west but are promptly killed off by the onshore breeze. The same onshore breeze also keeps maxima down, which is probably why we havent reached 30C for 17 years now. We have seen occasional storms as you get every summer, but the last direct hit was in August 2012. I'll have to check my stats to see if there has been a notable decline, but it certainly feels that way.