ManiaMuse

I don't mind heavy rain overnight if it is going to leave us with a sunny day again.

Lots of hail showers today. Some sunny spells but also breezy so feels chilly.

Feels lovely outside today even with the grey skies and a bit of a breeze. Think the daffodils in my garden will flower within the next week or so.

Sunset past 5pm now. Making progress, even on the cloudy days.

More than an hour gained in the evenings here now. 5pm feeling lighter with the clear skies despite it being after sunset. Makes a huge difference from a few days ago when it was very gloomy. Sky had a very pink tinge to it this evening.

Very dark today but not as wet as I was expecting for Manchester apart from a bit of a heavy pulse after lunch. Looks like the main band of the heavy rain went slightly further North than forecast?

Night and day difference between the gloom of yesterday evening and the clear skies today. About 2 weeks left untill the first 5pm sunset.

Not quite sure why they would do that. Planes are still getting into Manchester ok (in fact a Qatar plane that was meant for Heathrow just diverted to Manchester).

Supposed to be 50mph gusts by now here but doesn't seem anywhere near that. House is a lot quieter than it was during some of the storms last year. Might just be the more typical Southwesterly direction which my house is a bit more sheltered from than from Northwesterlies. Is it just my perception or did we have a lot of windy spells from the Northwest last year?

I did that last time we had windy weather at night and it made a huge difference. Managed to get a good night's sleep despite the creaks, rattles and whistles from the loft and windows whereas usually I would be tossing and turning and getting really anxious that something was falling off the roof.

Still a bit of blue in the sky clocking off at 5pm. Cloud cover still makes a big difference to perceived light levels at this time of year though. Will probably fell gloomier again on Sunday.

That made me laugh. They were probably laughing at you in their sleep wondering why you were outside shouting in the woods.

When was the last time that we had a solid 3/3 summer months that were pleasantly warm/hot and not too wet? Not necessarily scorchingly hot or none dry, but just consistently summer-like weather? It seems like we often hit one decent month like June 2023 or August 2022 but get punished for it with rain and cold temperatures in the other months. Last year was such a disappointment after a perfect June.

Seems like one of those rare days where we get the sunshine whilst the South gets another drenching.

The speed at which we gain daylight does start to ramp up pretty quickly from this point. Where I am we go from gaining 90 seconds per day now to gaining 2+ minutes per day just within the next 5 days. Hopefully we do get some sunnier days with the high pressure to come.

They tried that a few years ago with a 'hunting cold' thread and a 'serious' model thread. It didn't really work because the hunting cold thread ended up getting used as the main model discussion thread and the few users who were doing more detailed analysis of the models in the serious thread rather than one liners in the hunting cold thread ended up just talking too themselves with very few posts per day. Not very rewarding for users to regularly take time to deep dive into the models if most of the other users are not even seeing their posts because they are reading another thread. Can someone remind me where I find the ignore button? Very tedious in the model discussion thread this morning.

4pm sunset tomorrow here (although probably won't notice any difference and will probably feel dark by 1pm as it looks like being yet another grim rainfest).

Greater Manchester rain shadow seems a bit more effective today now that we have got rid of that horrible Northwesterly stuff.

Pretty much at the bottom now with the dark mornings now. Only 1 more minute, if that to lose. Not sure what my next milestone to look forward to is after that. January is always a bit of a slog. 5pm sunset is not until 6th February so that is still quite a while to go.

Why is it still so bloody windy? Had a few scares riding my bike to/from work with a few sudden strong guests.

I called my mum earlier today and she said that she thought it was getting lighter already in the evenings. I told her that we had only gained 2 minutes of evening light since the darkest evening... I guess it is more the fact that it isn't getting any darker in the evenings, it is basically just the status quo but it isn't getting any worse. Anyway, happy solstice for later tonight/tomorrow.

Been watching Manchester airport on the streams all day. Bit of pot luck really whether the pilots got the planes down or not. There was a streak of 4 planes in a row that went around at one point followed by a good run of landings. Think there was one Ryanair flight which diverted to Luton after a couple of landing attempts in the early morning, took off from Luton later in the day and had another three attempts at landing at Manchester before going back to Luton again! Must be a nightmare for scheduling with planes and crews in the wrong place. Probably a similar story at some of the other airports as well. The wind really has been relentless today, still heavy gusts coming through. When is it supposed to die down? I'm getting fed up of the house creaking.

I imagine some delays will build up through this morning with inbound flights arriving late. Lots of planes in stacks and not many attempting to come in. That Ryanair looks like it has diverted to Birmingham or somewhere further South already.

Manchester airport looks like it is going to be fun today. Morning arrivals have barely started and already seen a Gulf Air 787 take two attempts to get on the ground, a Ryanair 737 has gone around twice and is still in the air and an Emirates A380 just bailed on its first attempt.

Yeah makes no sense. It is going to be high winds all day including morning rush hour and the daytime when people are out and about. There will be impacts in some built-up places.