al78

Yay, at least one person has got it.

I have still got allotment beds to clear but I will do that after my evening meal today when it has cooled below 20C. Yesterday I did an hours work in the afternoon sun and could feel myself overheating.

Found this article (with a massively exaggerated title) on Yahoo news. Within it there is the claim that if it doesn't reach 25C by the end of this month, it will be the ninth time since 1961 that 25C was not reached in the first five months of the year. UK weather: Met forecasters reveal how long hot conditions will last UK.YAHOO.COM Met forecasters’ predictions come as the UK is set for a bright Sunday That works out at roughly a 1 in 7 year return period so not particularly noteworthy, although given the climate has warmed over the last 60 years, it is reasonable to think it should be rarer now than in the 1960's.

Go to the Queen Elizabeth country park and run up Butser hill a few times as fast as you can. You will not feel cold after that.

I'm not that far from you and when I went out to the nearby coop a little after 9pm in short sleeves I didn't find it cold. It wasn't warm like it would be in a heatwave but it certainly wasn't cold.

This is Britain, not the Mediterranean. It is only T-shirt weather that late in the evening in May when we are under the influence of a warm air mass and anticyclonic conditions, which doesn't happen very often, and has been notable by its absence this spring.

Looks like the UK has temporarily swapped climates with the Mediterranean. Looking dry as a Martini for the next week at least, so plenty of exercise in the form of watering my recently planted out allotment crops and smashing the heavy clods of soil off the weed roots as I continue to clear beds I didn't get the chance to clear earlier in Spring because the weather was awful. We seem to be doing this one extreme or the other again. Soaking wet for over two months then suddenly not a drop of rain in two, possibly three weeks. Whatever happened to the UK having a changeable climate, have we modified it to some hybrid temperate wet and dry version?

I don't think cold water therapy is generally advised for people who are susceptible to symptoms from cold exposure: ttps://theconversation.com/cold-water-therapy-what-are-the-benefits-and-dangers-of-ice-baths-wild-swimming-and-freezing-showers-203452 https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/lifestyle/health/study-suggests-cold-water-swimming-28060941 https://www.bupa.co.uk/newsroom/ourviews/cold-water-therapy At my former workplace there was an outdoor pool and a group of us had a go at cold water swimming through one winter, to the point where we had to carve a lane through the ice in order to swim. Not sure if it had any health benefits but there was a feeling of invigoration afterwards.

That was probably more significant in the SE. March to April 2012 was another big swing, but not as big as February to March this year.

The south to north gradient in water deficit (which is small now even in Scotland) is evident on this Uk Centre for Ecology and Hydrology pdf produced at the beginning of May: https://hydoutuk.net/sites/default/files/2023-05/2023_05_HO_RF_current_conditions.pdf It is the far north and west of Scotland which currently have the low river levels and moderate to high dryness. That is a great photo of Ben Slioch.

If you generally believe the weather will spoil your trip, the logical thing to do if you still want to take a trip is to relocate to a part of the country with much better weather. The £100 you've spent is a sunk cost, whether you go or not you are not getting that back, and spending more on a better weekend away means you have an enjoyable experience instead of a miserable one.

I agree, that is very poor for SE England at the end of May. It is pretty much identical to the majority of the weather I experienced in Braemar last June.

I noticed that as well, the current high influencing the UK drifting north with changeable weather coming into the south (again!). It looks a strange setup across the whole of Europe, the Mediterranean/Southern Europe looks very unsettled given we are knocking on the door of summer, looks more like a negative NAO winter setup. It is typical the one year I don't go for a hiking/hillwalking holiday in the highlands is the one year I would have the best chance of getting fantastic views from the Munro summits with northerly blocking bringing superb weather to northern Scotland.

The same reason people can't zip merge on motorways, or fail to appreciate a sliproad exists to enable you to accelerate up to the speed of the traffic on the road you are joining, not half the speed of the five HGV's barrelling up in lane one, or why dog walkers find it essential to stop and have a conversation in the optium position to cause maximum obstruction of footpaths. Because Britain.

May being better than March is like being slapped in the face is better than being repeatedly stabbed and killed, it doesn't mean we should be grateful we only got slapped in the face. The first half of May in the SE was poor. Dull and wet which had been the theme for most of the prior two months. I expect the occasional spell of poor weather here but when it is week after week after week after week after week with not a single short respite of anticyclonic conditions with a warm air mass to provide a bit of compensation, it makes the days feel like a slog. I can only recall the first half of the Easter weekend as having good Spring weather in the form of plenty of sunshine and warmth. The second half of May is a vast improvement on what we've endured in the SE this season and I am grateful for the dry conditions which have finally allowed me to catch up on gardening jobs. The daytime temperatures are mediocre for the time of year and it has been cloudier than expected this last week but I don't mind if it means we have a break from unsettled conditions. I don't really want >25C at the moment as all that means is I will have to make extra trips to the allotment to pour 100+ litres of water on newly planted out seedlings to keep them alive.

3) The CET completely masks spatial variation in temperature, as has been pointed out umpteen times on here.

I wear a light jacket over a T-shirt which is good for keeping a cool breeze off me whilst not sweating through being overdressed. The jacket also has vents in the arms which helps with ventilation when cycling. Everyone has their own optimal temperature range for comfort. There is at least one person at my bridge club who once complained it was cold whilst sat under a thermometer displaying 25C. On the other hand, one of my former bridge partners once had to go to hospital after being forced to play in temperatures of 30C and a woman kept closing the window when he opened it for some fresh air. Temperatures this week have been ideal for working outdoors. Cleared another couple of weedy beds on the allotment and hardly broke a sweat.

I remember that final week of May 2012 well. If it weren't for the Jubilee the bank holiday weekend would have seen sunshine with temperatures in the high 20's. As it happened the bank holiday was shifted to one of the worst weekends of weather you can get in the SE in early June. On the last Sunday in that May I was on a group walk in the Surrey hills and at the pub lunch, I started to feel unwell because we were sat outside in full sun and it was just blazing down on me. I had to go indoors to the loo and cool down, at one point I thought I was going to be sick.

Currently 18C downstairs at least, I don't have a thermometer upstairs.

On the one hand I am glad of the dry settled spell. Conditions have been perfect for clearing allotment beds, erecting a bean frame and planting out more crops. On the other hand, the frequent cloudiness is disappointing given sunshine forecasts for the weekend just gone were much more optimistic than what happened. Today is even worse, a continuous layer of cloud suppressing the daytime temperatures again. It is very unusual for me to be periodically feeling a bit chilly indoors in long sleeves at the end of May, normally it would be over 20C in my lounge but is still struggling to get past 18C currently with 10 days to go before the meteorological summer.

When was the last time we saw a big anticyclone slapped over the UK like that?

I'd go with this, although I wouldn't say there was a fair chance of a wetter than average summer, more like a small bias towards wetter being more likely than drier based on the developing El Nino and the Met Office 3 month contingency planner.

It doesn't look good if you take the most pessimistic interpretation possible. A 2021 repeat is about the most extreme example of that outlook, and the chances are it will not be that bad in the south. After the spring we've had in the SE I'll take that outlook as an improvement. It even says in the outlook there is a level of uncertainty.

How do you know?

There has been a lot of closure of regional Met offices in the interests of cost cutting and austerity, so that's what happens. Snip snip cost cut dump the consequences on others is straight out of the neo-liberal handbook.