al78
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Posts posted by al78
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12 hours ago, SunnyG said:
Sorry but I'm done believing the BBC. They clearly don't know any more than I do and are just making it up as they go along
It is not the BBC's fault if whoever they contracted their weather forecasts to gets it wrong.
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40 minutes ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:
Met Office explains why the weather is so miserable this May
METRO.CO.UKWhile we should be in our shorts and sunglasses, we have our anoraks out."Cold" is exaggerating, cool and wet is more accurate although I reckon the CET is close to average so far this month. The reason it has felt cool is because it has been wet, wet means rain and clouds which block the sun. That is why it is only 16C in my house at a time of year when it would normally be reaching 18-20C without the central heating on.
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27 minutes ago, damianslaw said:
The headline from Metro seems to forget the CET is above average and much of Scotland has had far less rain than usual this month, once again a southern bias. Its why I don't read any tabloids or weather stories on any media platform.
It is not a great surprise to see a southern bias in the media about the weather when it is the south that has suffered the most extreme and notable crapness this spring and a large fraction of the UK population live there.
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23 minutes ago, damianslaw said:
Ah by August the dreaded SW flow will no doubt be in full force giving low cloud humid dank skies to the west including much of Scotland. Always say May best month in the NW!
I always go to the highlands anytime from late May to mid June as that is climatologically the driest and sunniest time of year. Having said that, my holiday in Braemar last June was characterised mostly by the sort of weather SE England has experienced this April, tons of cloud and temperatures struggling up to the mid teens although not too much rain.
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I'm beginning to think this was the year I should have taken a fortnights holiday in Torridon rather than a week in Jotunheimen in August given the large bias in decent weather towards the northern half of the UK so far this year. I guess this is my hillwalking ambitions summed up, the years I don't make it to the highlands are the years we get episodes of significant northern blocking.
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1 hour ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:
Back in April people were saying "Oh you can't write-off the rest of the month yet, and definitely can't talk about May!" but lo an behold, as we predicted, the pattern of cool/wet/cloudy April has continued well into May, and looks here to stay.
Now its well into May and nothing has changed really, people are now going "You can't write-off June!"... Lol. When can we safely say that this is very clearly a locked-in pattern of weather? Yes, we may get the odd warmer day here and there but the trend this year is that we simply cannot seem to get anything consistent or settled. It'll be dross for days, then a break with 1 day or 2 days max of somewhat sunny and a tad above average temps, and then back to dross again.
At best, certain regions will get a nice day or 2, but it'll be localised, and the rest of the country still wallows in dross. Today the perfect example - pleasant in the western part of the country, awful in the east. 12c and raining in London. This is late November/ early December weather with more light and leaves on the trees. That's it.
You mean as you guessed based on pesimism and flukely was right.
The reason why people say you can't write off an entire month before it has even started is because you cannot reliably predict the weather beyond a few days, so anything beyond that, unless you can demonstrate forecast skill over many forecasts, is just wild speculation. Locked in weather patterns notwithstanding, it is still very rare to have all months of a season with weather in the same tercile in terms of rain and sunshine. Even during last year which had a very dry period starting in autumn 2021 through to the end of summer, May was around average for rainfall, so even locked in weather patterns can temporarily relent. If you want to convince me that this pattern of dross will continue through this month and through June, give me a sound meteorological reason why. Pulling out the odd locked in weather pattern in previous years doesn't count.
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As we are heading for at least a moderate if not strong El Nino this year, I decided to have a look at past years where the JJA Oceanic Nino Index was at least +1.
I have attached a composite anomaly of sea level pressure using NCEP/NCAR reanalysis for ONI years >=1 for years back to 1950. There seems to be a NS bias across the UK with the southern half of the UK under negative SLP anomalies.
Here are a couple of tables comparing mean Central England Temperature and HadUKP EW and SE England for years back to 1950 where ONI >=1 and ONI <=-1. Summers with strong El Nino years tend to be cooler and wetter in the UK with a slightly higher wetter tendency towards the south-east.
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1 hour ago, B87 said:
That's pretty much all we have to go on at the moment. June is safely a write off (I consider it poor with below average sun and a max below 21c).
How can you write off a month that doesn't even start until nearly three weeks time and the forecast skill at that lead is negligable?
The Met Office contingency planner suggests that the tercile probabilities for rainfall over the next three months are close to climatology, maybe a slight bias towards wetter than average but no strong signal for either a very wet or very dry summer. The only hint of a possible washout summer is from a site I recently came across which looked at UK summers during moderate and strong El Nino years, and concluded there was a large bias towards wet summers. Unfortunately it is odds on for a moderate or strong El Nino to develop and persist through this summer.
IRI ENSO multi-model ensemble
https://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/current/?enso_tab=enso-sst_table
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10 hours ago, Alderc said:
Wimps, hopefully summer will sort itself out and give plenty of that.
Come and help me cultivate my allotment with its heavy clay soil in 30+C heat for two hours straight and then try calling me a wimp.
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1 hour ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:
So when people say it's "spoilt" to get days of 21, 22c, 23c etc in May, and that we should "expect" weather like this, they're incorrect.
Unless they are trying to project the Shetland islands onto southern England.
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Met Office forecast for Horsham looks decent for the next five days. Plenty of sunny intervals and only occasional light showers, excellent weather for outdoor work. I'll take that over the days with eight hours of continuous rain.
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31 minutes ago, *Stormforce~beka* said:
I have over the past week come to accept that this is our weather here to stay. Summer will return in September as usual. I'm writing off summer this year. Not because I'm a abcde but because of after 3 months of this I'm mentally done. It's better to accept this weather is here to stay now than keep holding out hope it will change and forever be disappointed. I just can't take anymore. Not got my garden furniture out yet. Not planted any flowers. I'm done. Exhausted, drained. I've given up
Oh dear, you sound like you could do with a hug.
14 minutes ago, TwisterGirl81 said:Bless you, the nice weather will come, just a little later than usual, I'm sure we will pleasantly be compensated this summer. It's been tough going, many of us have had times of feeling fed up for different reasons and hoping for the warmth and sun to shine to make us feel better, it will come.
I saw that comment on the MAD thread, rolled my eyes, it was probably one of those that were getting all excited about a late season SWW and look what it gave us, didn't just delay spring, it ruined it lol Even I knew it was most likely bad news for spring and I am by no means at all an expect but I have common sense
Is one SSW really capable of ruining an entire season? I can't help thinking there is more to this prolonged spell of dross.
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2 hours ago, B87 said:
It can't really get much worse to be fair. Whatever replaces this pattern will be an improvement.
Yes it can theoretically. Despite the abnormal rainfall there has been very little flooding, which for suc a wet season is unusual. The south of England is primed for a major flood event and it won't need the equivalent of June 2012 to deliver it.
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13 hours ago, kold weather said:
Its very similar to how summer 2021 went, though at least there is still a chance that the summer can redeem the sins of the spring down here.
For the SE in particular we are well above average for rainfall this spring, indeed we are currently on track for the wettest spring recorded in 151 years down here, thats the sort of level of wet we are talking about. In absolute terms though it'd probably be just a standard spring for you guys in the lake district, heck maybe even a little below normal!
It very likely will be the wettest Spring on record in parts of Kent which have seen >200% of average rainfall in both March and April, and May has started off above average for rainfall. For the south-east region in general, March and April together was the second wettest such period on record, a mere 0.2mm behind 1947. Whichever way you look at the stats, spring in SE England has been poor.
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51 minutes ago, richie3846 said:
I just want to make a general point about mental health and over focus on wishing for specific types of weather. I've noticed a number of people are very disappointed when we are faced with these inevitable spells of below average weather. In simple terms, weather is going to be below average half the time, and we can approach this variability in different ways. For example making the most of what we do have, observing the weather, even when it is wet, cold, or grey. Enjoying the clouds, their beauty, watching nature from the window if wet, or outdoors even if isn't 20c and sunny.
I make this point because one of the biggest causes of PTSD is where our nervous systems feel like we can't run or fight. If we already have PTSD, which some people may not know they have, then feeling high levels of powerlessness against the uncontrollable weather, is risking adding more PTSD to the existing pile. I'll also add, that people who do feel very activated, annoyed, triggered by bad weather, may already have PTSD and may not be aware they have this issue.
The last few weeks on this thread, I've become aware of how badly some members are taking this spell of weather, which IMO may be affecting life more generally, as the weather is always there, and if our nervous systems see this as a constant threat, then there is a real risk of serious health issues.
The issue is in the SE at least we have had tons of poor spring weather with very little of the better than average weather. If you want to quote averages, it is equally valid to say that half the time the weather should be warmer/sunnier/drier than average, that hasn't happened at all, and if we are going back in history, a normal spring month should have high intra-month variability, not 2+ months of a locked in weather type. The UK seems to be substituting some of its high frequency variability for low frequency variability, and this manifests itself in abnormal seasons like this and the number of records that have been threatened or broken over the last decade or so.
Anyone who lives in the SE can see it has been a poor spring, all they have to do is go outside for a walk in the countryside, just don't forget your wellies because the ground is still saturated as if it were autumn/winter.
I accept the weather as it comes because there is nothing I can do about it so I don't have any mental health risk there. What does irritate me more than weeks of poor weather is people who don't live down here trying to gaslight me by using logical fallacies such as it has been near average over the UK therefore we shouldn't be complaining because some irrelevant XYZ season 40 years ago might have just compared favourably for poorness.
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49 minutes ago, Alderc said:
Yes, I’m not sure how people are still trying to claim this is normal. This is firmly worse than average.
Regional differences again?
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1 hour ago, Alderc said:
This is the moan thread. I think everyone has full right to moan at this! Less than a week away now and barely high single digits in places!
What is it with Scotland being warmer than southern England this year?
4 hours ago, B87 said:Some other poor springs that have been mentioned include 1975, 1996, 2013 and 2018.
Avg max, rainfall and sunshine for those years, with 2023 for comparison.
March
1975: 8.4c, 69.7mm, 66.9 hrs
1996: 8.6c, 31.4mm, 75.9 hrs
2013: 6.9c, 52.8mm, 68.6 hrs
2018: 9.8c, 81.2mm, 77.2 hrs
2023: 11.5c, 92.4mm, 67.0 hrs
April
1975: 13.3c, 43.6mm, 133.4 hrs
1996: 14.3c, 25.0mm, 147.5 hrs
2013: 13.5c, 34.0mm, 177.7 hrs
2018: 15.5c, 65.2mm, 125.8 hrs
2023: 14.6c, 65.8mm, 164.7 hrs
May
1975: 15.1c, 62.9mm, 149.8 hrs
1996: 15.1c, 25.8mm, 182.6 hrs
2013: 16.4c, 41.8mm, 183.7 hrs
2018: 20.8c, 58.4mm, 271.0 hrs
2023: 17.2c, 19.8mm, 38.2 hrs (to the 8th. Extrapolation gives 76.7mm and 148.1 hrs to the end of May).
All of these years had exceptionally dull Marches, cloudy Aprils (2013 was average), and mostly cool and dull Mays (with the exception of 2018 which finally turned warm and sunny by that point). It looks like 2023 will be all of those, as well as being the wettest.
Is that for the UK as a whole? If so, it would be interesting to compare for just SE England, I suspect it will make this spring look like even more of a turd.
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One of my job tasks this week is to do a subsidence report for this year using the HadUKP monthly rainfall stats for SE England. Looking at these stats for this region shows what a huge switch there was between the end of winter and spring. In records going back to 1873, February was the 5th driest and March-April combined was the second wettest, only 0.2mm behind 1947 subject to future adjustments to this year's data. Despite being comparable with 1947, there has been little in the way of significant flooding in the SE unlike 1947 when the effects of the rainfall were exasperated by snowmelt.
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19 minutes ago, danm said:
Here are the maximum daytime temperatures at Heathrow for the last 50 days. Can you get more "meh" than this? Sunday was the only day so far where we broke the 20c barrier.
April certainly looks poor and lacking in variability but it matches my perception that the daytime temperatures increased as we went into May.
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18 minutes ago, Nick L said:
I'm far from a warm enthusiast and don't cope well with anything above the high 20s, but this has been the most depressing spring I can remember. It honestly hasn't even felt as if the clocks have gone forwards yet.
Like a semi-permanent October-November with the (very) occasional warm sunny day.
Looks like I will have to tackle my weedy allotment by getting up there any evening or weekend it is not raining. I got another bed cleared this weekend in between periods of rain but it will take the rest of this month at this rate to get it completely cultivated. Planted out brassicas on Sunday and they were starting to get wrecked by slugs on Monday, so am resigning myself to yet another poor harvest this year.
Digging the soil is surprisingly not very demanding (years of applying manure has lightened the soil), it is the digging up of clumps of couch grass and creeping buttercup and trying to smash the claggy boulder of soil off the roots that is very tedious.
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2 hours ago, TwisterGirl81 said:
If May carries on in this style I would be shocked if temps come out as average, you must be joking surely?
Temps have been well below average daily, sunshine amounts well below and rain well above…a very poor spring, certainly not average for us in the south
I wouldn't say temperatures have been well below average, even in the dull and wet south daytime maxes have been no more than 1.5C below average, and many places have been near average. Sunshine has been notably low across the south and rainfall has been very spatially variable in April, with parts of Kent > 200% of average but much of the SE wasn't nearly as wet as that although still above average. A local region in the north western part of Kent, if the Met Office monthly anomaly maps are to be believed, must be on course for their wettest spring on record at this rate with both March and April seeing more than double the average rainfall.
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47 minutes ago, Alderc said:
Some people think it’s normal.
I'm wondering if so far this month the weather has again been better further north. There is a danger of projecting your own experiences onto everyone else so someone up north who has been blessed with 21C claims it has been a normal or even reasonable spring which antagonises the southerners, and someone in the south under rain and clag for much of the season claims it has been a poor spring, which people living in the northern half of the UK object to because they personally have experienced much better weather. We should accept that there have been significant regional differences this season across the UK, particularly from south to north, one's perception of the quality of the weather based on their own experience is not going to be shared by everyone, and trying to imply the spring has been near average by throwing out country wide stats and climatologies which completely ignore regional differences is horribly misleading, coming close to gaslighting.
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50 minutes ago, chris888 said:
yeah well scotland's nicer months tend to be april and may your time will come during the summer
"Nicer" here is relative to the local climatology. May is the driest month on average in Scotland but the average monthly precipitation for northern Scotland is 89.3mm compared to 54.1mm in SE England, so an average May up there would be the equivalent of around 165% of average in the SE which I doubt anyone living there would class as a nice month.
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27 minutes ago, B87 said:
Every time it looks like we might get some seasonal conditions, it all gets pushed back with another 1-2 weeks of below average rubbish. I expect that to continue for the forseeable future.
The first week of May by my perception has been at least average if not above average in the SE for temperature and sunshine and below average for rain. It was only yesterday that was poor. Having said that the ground across my region is still near saturated which is unusual for this time of year and is indicative of a cloudy and very wet spring so far. I was leading a walk this morning which was one repeated from two weeks ago when the weather and ground conditions were awful (and most people cancelled) and it is still very muddy in many places, more characteristic of November to February than May.
Spring 2023 - Moans, Ramps & Chat
in Spring Weather Discussion
Posted
Given that anyone who forecasts the weather as a profession is going to get it badly wrong on occasion, especially in the age of regional weather offices closed and much moved over to automation in place of local human experience, I still say they cannot be blamed. The Met Office are not exactly unknown for incorect nowcasting.