Atleastitwillbemild

All bets are off now. We're heading into unchartered territory. By next Christmas we might just be a group of small islands above France visited only by camera crews making documentaries about the "lost peoples of the north"

Trust me I know. I have depression and anxiety issues and winter is always difficult for me. To make matters worse I can't use SAD lamps as they give me incredibly intense insomnia, even if I limit it to ten minutes which is very odd because natural sunlight certainly doesn't and I always used it in the morning. I wish that I lived somewhere like midwestern USA or Canada where the intense cold is often accompanied by clear skies and bright sun. This winter has been a really difficult one, I find myself getting emotional and angry at the relentless, ruthless gloom that just goes on and on and on and on with no compassion or mercy. Not like the weather is really capable of showing deliberate intent but its hard not to take it all so personally. I don't care an F about snow and cold anymore I just want to see some sun. But I also know at this time of year, a cold northerly or a frosty high is the only chance we have to see it. The long dark nights intensify my anxiety and depression like very few other things do and I end up feeling powerless every winter to escape it. Limited funds. No way of emmigrating. I'm just a sitting duck for that cloak of darkness each year and I miss the days our winter had a bit of variety to it. Now the gloom sets in at early November and refuses to let up till spring. It just seems to be getting worse.

Oh I love the BBC weather app. That's my favourite. They say it automatically updates itself but I'm sure there's some little sadistic sociopath who just LOVES to promise full sun symbols (always a week away) and then enjoys downgrading them slowly to partly sunny, then a sunshine and showers symbol, to a dark cloud symbol, to then you-know-what as the day gets closer.

I do tend towards hyperbole. But still. The relentless gloom is just awful! I am taking vitamin d but the weather is so dull I think its leeching it back out of me! It obviously needs it too

I am as desperate as this. I literally look out of the window and see a sad little patch of blue sky on the horizon at the end of another day of hostile gloom and reach for it, like a mother does to the brief appearance of the ghost of her dead child.

Fingers crossed for some sunshine records being broken next year. At least that's more a realistic dream than hoping for a transluecent patch of ground frost that's visible for the first 5 minutes of dawn at - 0.5c which is out new Jackpot prize now! Lets start a summer travel plans thread and cheer ourselves up.

Right .. and those bad springs came right off the back of a SSW in Jan... hence my point. And after the year we've had, a spring of northern blocking would be a cruel and very hard kick in the balls.

Fantastic news! Im sure it will probably happen mid-late January and then we can look forward to another cold, wet, miserable spring that brings endless northern blocking and the kind of synoptics that will taunt us with their utter uselessness come April.

What seems to be missing from our climate now, is the relatively quick turnaround of weather systems. I don't know if the stats would back this up as my memory could be biased but I remember winters being marked by gales passing through quickly, then being followed by 3-4 days of sunny weather and a bit of frost and the cycle would rotate. It was always more rain to frost in terms of ratio but it would flip on a weekly or at least fortnightly basis. The same with summer. You'd have a great week then a crappy overcast weekend, or a great hot weekend followed by thunderstorms and showers days after. Now we just get stuck in weather systems that take up residence for a month or months at a time and won't budge. Dec 2022 was fantastic for having almost 3 weeks of sunny weather and then we paid for it with 6 weeks of rain. February 2023 was a stunner of a month for sun then we paid for it in blood with 3 months of unrelenting rain. June 2023 was wonderful and then guess what. It just comes in 2-3 month blocks now. Id rather have a week of sun or 5 days rather than an overly generous month or 3 weeks of good weather only to be rudely handed the bill of 3 months of hell to pay for it.

Everything else about this country used to make the weather worth it. The literature, music and comedy, the architecture and nature, the NHS and good education. Now we have an NHS that's terminally ill, ugly barrat home estates and concrete office blocks, Music made by Gen-Z tiktok morons and everyone has lost their sense of humor. The nature is hard to appreciate under a mantle of dark grey and drizzle. There is nothing to redeem this awful weather anymore. I wish I could move.

This is excatly what I am desperate for. Snow can do one, its about as realistic as winning the lottery these days anyway. But a bit of cold sunny frost should not be so impossible to come by. Esp under hight pressure as catbrainz said. Its like our winters have been possessed by some angry god with major depression. Or maybe that's just me.

This. A thousand times. It seems what ever happens we just end up with a raw deal. I've given up on chasing the cold and now just want to see some sun. Unfortunately seeing clear blue, sunny skies in winter feels like a receding memory from childhood. I'll just have to wait for the summer when we can expect the relentless northern blocking and southerly tracking lows we were desperate for all winter. I think I've got to the point where I have to make a conscious effort to focus on anything and everything but the weather and leave this as a hobby for good. We have a truly exceptionally awful climate.

This is the most insightful thing that's been said all year. Cold chasing in the UK has always been a cruel hobby, but as the climate warms it has become nothing short of self torture. It's like an addiction to something toxic and harmful but we just can't seem to quit. For me personally, it has shifted slightly to chasing the sun now which has become equally as futile. It seems the warming climate is making things wetter and gloomier too. Every sun symbol that appears on my weather app gets downgraded to a partly sunny symbol then a dark one then rain as it gets nearer. There are so many hobbies and obssessions I can think of that give something back in terms of reward for people, even bird watching leads to seeing some actual birds. We have picked the most stressful and repeatedly disappointing passtime I can think of outside of gambling and considering the projections from scientists of what is going to happen to our winters (already is clearly) Its probably time we all just let go.

I wonder if anyone would be able to help with finding out information about the current health of the Po river? It has been astonishingly hard to find out anything online. Any search terms connected with Po river levels only return articles and graphs related to the drought and its low levels during last year and the beginning of this year. Does anyone have any graphs or information about how it has recovered, and/or the drough status of other parts of Europe? Apologies if this has been covered already in multiple parts of the site.

I don't know why I have never thought to take photos for comparrison year to year! Although judging by the way our climate is going I should probably start looking for spontaneous growth of palm trees. Thanks for sharing those. A glorious display! That looks like a row of London Planes by the canal which are usually incredibly dull when they turn so a good autumn show indeed!

I take particular notice each year, of when trees begin to change and what species turn first before the others, etc. Last year was the latest I have ever seen them change in my 40 years of life and they were still green in some parts in December, until that cold spell finally froze them off. 2010 was the most spectacular colour show I've ever seen this country display. At least in my part of the world (North Wiltshire). I'm really not sure why. September was quite ordinary that year but we had a very cold week in October towards the end and it just seemed to set the countyside on fire in a way I've never seen before or since. Interestingly it was followed by THAT December. 2017 was a year the trees turned very early and put on a good show. Every single explanation I read about why the colours change claim its dictated purely by reducing sunlight levels and this only. But I know from my own lifetime of observations that this isn't true. Cold weather really does produce more red colours and makes them turn quicker. I usually get a fairly good idea which was its going to go by the first week of September. Horse Chestnut doesn't count as it always reliably turns the last week of August no matter what the weather, but among our natives: Birch, Hornbeam, Hawthorn, Lime (or Linden), and Rowan are the first to turn. If they don't show any signs of colour in that first week of September then I know it will be another crap, semi-tropical autumn. Ash never puts on a show. Oak and Beech are glorious but turn very late (except in 2010 when they were on fire by the end of October) This year I have definitely seem some early tunring. Was it the chilly nights we had a week ago? The Limes are already yellow and the Hornbeam is going that way. Birch and Rowan are still green.

I was a kid during the early 90's when we had a run of unusually cold autumns with frost so I just assumed they were normal when in fact they weren't. When I hit my teenage years I was quite surprised by the very wam ones that occurred and even more bemused by the tropical ones of the 00's. I still keep comparing any autumn we have now to the ones I remember from the early 90's. Even though statistically they were anomalous. I remember scraping thick frost off the walls and seeing trees almost bare by late October and have been disappointed by anything less ever since.

Frost ? In Autumn?! We're lucky to get one of those in January!

Do you think climate change means that we will never experience synotpics that give us cooler weather? Do you not find it significant that what is considered "cooler weather" now is still 1-2 degrees warmer on average than what would have been the case 30 years ago? We reached 40 degrees celcius last year which has never happened in 400 years of weather records. I am 40 years old and temperatures in the high 30s would have been unthinkable 30 years ago let alone 40 degrees. Places in Europe reaches 47 degrees this summer which are temperatures that would never have occurred outside of the deserts of the middle east or North Africa 30 years ago. What will it take to convince you? When we reach 50 degrees in London?

Funny you did that with Seattle. I looked up the weather for a few places in Washington state recently hoping to feel some solidarity with our climate brothers in the Pacific North West, only to find they've done equivalent of lost weight, packed up smoking and got a new partner while you're still at the pub in stained joggers. Maybe Iceland can share our woes? No come to think of it, with all the northern blocking going on their sunshine totals must be breaking records! We stand alone

I understand what everyone is saying about getting bad weather out of the way before summer and stocking up on water but its the relentless, sunless gloom here in the Marlborough downs that is begining to become insufferable. At least we could have somme sun in between our showers but the cloud cover is just solid. Even in the up coming - very few - forecasted dry days, the cloud cover is predicted to be nearly 100% for every day. This is just a joke. How dull can a month get? Could we break a record? I have severe SAD and getting through January was tough but at least that was only around 3 weeks maximum of bad weather. Even with the increased daylight hours this month has felt even worse. Not least because there is so much strong sunlight behind all those vile, hostile clouds that just can't come through. How long must this go on for? Every promise of high pressure influence just gets pushed back further each time and every weather forecast app keeps teasing with sunny days at the end of the period only for that to change back to oppressive darkness and gloom with yet even more rain. It just seems to go on and on. I keep thinking back to 2012 and how there isn't any reason why this necessarily needs to improve. The weather took a nose dive around April IIRC and just stayed abysmal until September! If I wasn't having the mental health issues I am having right now I guess it would just be a disapointing annoyance but as it stands, every day of relentless gloom that passes feels like more and more of a hostile attack on my brain chemistry. Time to think about getting the light box out again. Can't believe this is late March.

This is so true. Who the hell wants to see snow burying the daffs and frost freezing all the early blossom in March? All the SSW did was send the jet stream on a med holiday and leave us in the path of miserable gloomy lows. I've had almost 3 weeks of near daily sunless gloom and it feels as bad as January. February felt more like spring. SSW's can effing do one. If they don't occur in Dec or early Jan then they are just not worth it.

This is so true. Who the hell wants to see snow burying the daffs and frost freezing all the early blossom in March? All the SSW did was send the jet stream on a med holiday and leave us in the path of miserable gloomy lows. I've had almost 3 weeks of near daily sunless gloom and it feels as bad as January. February felt more like spring. SSW's can effing do one. If they don't occur in Dec or early Jan then they are just not worth it.

You're absolutely right! That's an A not a J ! I need my eyes tested...... Thank you!

Can I ask what the JTR stands for on this chart? Its an acronym that I've only ever seen on this chart. Thanks!