al78
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Posts posted by al78
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This afternoon I hiked up to Beinn Eighe's Loch Coire Mhic Fhearchair which is a fantastic corrie and there are good views of the unpopulated moorland in the north of Torridon where big hills stand proud over lochan studded moorland. Sadly I never saw any of it because the cloud base was down to around 400m and it rained constantly with a northerly wind. The one positive is that the cool temperature made the walking very comfortable, although wet feet seem to be a frequent problem.
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In Absence of True Seasons Whilst I agree going for a beach holiday in the UK is a gamble and you are better off going overseas for that, the UK has plenty to offer that doesn't need perfect summer weather, so I disagree that holidaying in the UK is a waste of money. You have hit on an important point though, everything in the UK is expensive including holidays unless you are prepared to rough it or are staying with friends/family.
My luck in the highlands has now run out. Drizzle and clag with the cloud down to around 450m. Went up the Beinn Eighe mountain trail this morning with the possibility of going off-path to the nearby 887m summit. At the top of the mountain path I was buffeted by strong winds so decided against trying to climb another 300m.
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78/79 I have "wasted my money" booking a holiday + fundraiser challenge in the NW highlands of Scotland, sleeper and car hire is the most expensive way to get here from SE England; however, although the weather looks dross for the rest of the time I'm here, I have been very lucky for the first half of the trip. Even the heavy clag yesterday didn't stop me enjoying Inverewe Gardens. Getting myself up Munros over the next few days is going to be tough without any views to spur me on.
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In the face of a dire forecast that predicted a risk of thunderstorms in my current area I took a rest day from hillwalking and visited Inverewe Garden. As it turns out I would have been ok on the hills, no thunderstorms, just classic Scottish highland clag and hours of sustained drizzle. I wouldn't have got any views but I wouldn't have been at risk of being hit by lightning either. The rest has probably benefited my legs at least.
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There has been significant regional variation in the rainfall this month according to the HadUKP charts. Southern England (i.e. both SE and SW) has had above-average rainfall up to the 21st and the upcoming days are looking changeable. Everywhere north of that has seen average or below-average rainfall so it doesn't surprise me to see people claiming it has been a reasonable month for weather. For southern England, the first five months of the year are looking like a near-average January followed by four consecutive wet months, on top of the dross that inflicted most of 2023, so anyone living in southern England has justification to be complaining about the weather this month IMO. It says something that I have experienced some of the best weather conditions of the year whilst up in the NW highlands of Scotland over the last few days.
reef Is that the 1991-2020 climatology? If not then the climatology is out of date which will positive bias the anomalies.
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A spectacular day in the NW highlands yesterday, here is the view from Slioch. Looks like that is it for the good weather now and going by the MWIS, I've got several days of clag and rain to come. One thing I have noticed whilst hiking up here is how dry the landscape is. There are boggy bits but there are also areas of ground that go crunch under my feet rather than squelch. The Kinlochewe river looked very low when I was walking alongside it. I have been told the winter snowfall was poor this year and the spring has been quite dry, so there is less moisture in the hills to be released into the rivers and lochs.
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Can't complain about the weather in the NW highlands at the moment. Here is a view of the almost fjord-like coastline from the descent of Beinn Bhan in the Applecross hills. Weather so far here is doing the inverse of SE England, claggy in the morning with significant improvement during the day.
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NEVES SCREAMER There was a prolonged dry spell from late May to late June, then in the first half of September here, but other than that, southern England has stolen the climate of Scotland.
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The north/south rainfall bias continues. March to date has seen above average rainfall relative to the whole month across SE England, whereas in parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland it has been much drier than normal so far.
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LetItSnow! Not sure I agree with that statement:
2022 European drought - Wikipedia
EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG"July 2022 was the driest July in England since 1935."
"Parts of Yorkshire experienced their driest period on record and emergency pipes were laid."
"The Cornwall hosepipe ban continued to be active into 2023, and was extended to cover large parts of Devon on 25 April 2023. This was done in an attempt to replenish water levels at the Roadford Reservoir ahead of that year's summer."
Europe's drought on course to be worst for 500 years, European Union agency warns
NEWS.SKY.COM
This year is set to be even worse than in 2018, when unusually favourable conditions in some parts of the bloc protected it from drought elsewhere, and the worst since the sixteenth...And then there were the wildfires at the peak of the heat:
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kold weather SE England has remained wet through March, not as bad as February but to be good enough it is not sufficient to be better than the worst.
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Buzzard Meanwhile on trains in SE England it is common to hear people coughing their guts up and sounding like they should have stayed in bed, showing that nothing has been learnt from the pandemic and ensuring the next pandemic will be even worse.
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ANYWEATHER Although those stuck-in-a-rut periods seem to have become more common over the last decade or so.
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stainesbloke Massive exaggeration does your argument no favours. The fact is that whenever there are months of well below average rainfall water supplies become stressed. Whether it eventually balances out is irrelevant. The UK has poor resilience to deviations from normal because resources are overstretched and consumption is often wasteful because people take things for granted. Try growing your own food instead of paying someone else to do it for you and then lets see you trivialise three months of drought and periodic heatwaves in the growing season, or months of anomalous wet weather like last year.
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sundog Anyone who thinks 0.04% of anything isn't significant just because it looks like a small number should try 0.04% of arsenic in their coffee.
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baddieI remember March 2012 being a month of large contrasts between the start and end of the month. The first weekend I was playing bridge and it was sleeting outside. After the equinox I was sitting outside in warm sunshine in short sleeves during my afternoon tea break.
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East Lancs Rain "The weather always makes up for itself."
aka gamblers fallacy:
The Gambler’s Fallacy: What It Is and How to Avoid It – Effectiviology
EFFECTIVIOLOGY.COM-
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MP-R High pressure for a few hours would be a start.
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MP-R It has been better than February but has kind-of carried on regardless. According to HadUKP the EWP is at 20% of the monthly average after the first two days which so far represents a continuation of wetter than average conditions, following on from the third wettest consecutive 12 month period on record. It is no surprise people have had enough, being better than the worst does not make something good or even adequate.
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Alderc 2.0 March is a transition month, the first half is pretty much the end of winter and what we think of as spring weather rarely arrives before the equinox. After a year with a jet stream displaced further south than normal over the southern half of the UK, I'm hoping the increasing temperatures from now will encourage it to start migrating northward. Attached is the 250mb zonal wind anomaly over Europe from March 2023 to February 2024. It shows how ridiculously persistent the jet stream has been stuck over much of northern Europe over that time.
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Scorching sun. I find it energy sapping and therefore as useless as 24 hours of continuous rain for doing outdoor activities. It is also inevitably followed by warm nights which make sleeping very difficult and trying to do a days work feeling like I have semi-permanent jet-lag is unpleasant.
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Just been on a walk from Lewes to Hassocks and it was a beautiful day. Sunny intervals, calm, dry and a good temperature for hiking uphill without getting sweaty. There was a very good clarity in the air, the North Downs easily visible on the horizon from the South Downs Way. Clarity like this is very rare when I go walking during the summer months.
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cheeky_monkey The teleconnection between ENSO and UK winters is really a intra-seasonal link. El Nino has a modest link to more likely outbreaks of colder weather in the second half of the season but obviously that hasn't happened. The ENSO link is weak and will be dominated by other factors so it is not something to hedge your bets on in isolation.
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stainesbloke My perception living in Sussex is that southern England has had some pretty awful weather since the spectacular spring of 2020. The period seems to have featured a lot of locked in weather patterns, from persistent wet periods to bone dry and hot periods. There doesn't seem to have been very much happy medium weather.
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Moans, ramps and banter
in Spring Weather Discussion
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dryfie I haven't gone to the summer isles and am not intending too. I have been trying to reach a target of 100km hiked and 10,000m climbed in the ten days I am up here. The former is easy, the latter looks unlikely now given the large flip in the weather. I hired an electric car and have issues finding places to charge it so am reluctant to drive too far in a day, that cost me half a day earlier this week finding somewhere to recharge, and there aren't any fast chargers around here.
SummerShower I have not really been keeping up with the synoptic situation but if there has been no Atlantic influence, where has all this damp crud over the last two days come from?