al78
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Posts posted by al78
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The one thing (aside from the daylight hours) that stops it being an extension of winter now is the strength of the sun. Even if the air temperature is well below average, if the sun is out and there is little to no breeze, it soon feels much warmer than it is, especially if you are wearing dark clothing.
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4 minutes ago, Thundery wintry showers said:
I recall that at one point during April (sometime between the 20th and 25th) Lincoln got up to 17-18C on a couple of days with sunshine, although the minima were still close to freezing. Yes, the Met Office map doesn't lie, for many parts of the UK mean maxima were close to or even just above the 1961-1990 normal, and not far below that for 1991-2020 - only in East Anglia and the SE were maxima notably low. (This does, though, bear out comments from London that the maxima were low). It was the minima that were exceptionally low nationwide.
Makes sense. I think here in the east and SE we were plagued with persistent chilly winds coming off the north sea, which is cold in mid spring. The notable thing about April here in W Sussex is pretty much a complete absence of warm, or even mild air masses, and the only time I recall it feeling like proper spring was when I was reccying a walk on the last weekend of the month and I felt warm in short sleeves, it was like walking in summer. It was comparable to the one day we got here at the end of March when it was warm and sunny, a few days before Easter.
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2 hours ago, Scorcher said:
I wouldn't agree with the whole spring being horrific around these parts. April was very sunny here and most of the month was reasonably warm in the afternoons, although ridiculously cold at night.
The last 10 days or so though could definitely be put in the 'horrific' category though. I certainly can't remember a more disastrous start to May and no sign of any major improvements- truly depressing after what we've all been through over the past year.
Horrific is an overstatement but despite the sunshine it has not felt like spring at all. One of my sisters in Salford has frequently been complaining of the cold, so Gtr Manchester has not escaped. It has been a very bad spring from a gardening perspective. When you can't grow a staple crop like potatoes in southern England in April, something is very wrong.
This morning the temperature was 14C in my house, at the end of the first week of May in SE England.
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4 hours ago, Ed Stone said:
Not sure I agree with that @B87: Up until recently, May was definitely not a tee-shirt month -- I think we've just been spoiled, by a run of gooduns!
May definitely brings T-shirt weather at least for a short spell in all but the worst years here in Sussex. This year is something else. Walking back from the supermarket in twilight I'm in a sweatshirt, jeans and a jacket and I've felt warmer on several days in December. May is climatologically the driest and sunniest month in some parts of the UK (e.g. the Scottish highlands).
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10 hours ago, B87 said:
There has been one example of a shocker start to May, with the month recovering to average temps in the 2nd half. That was May 2012. The summer after was probably the worst in living memory.
That May had a beautiful last weekend, hot and sunny, which would have been the bank holiday weekend but the Jubilee shifted it to the following weekend, which was one of the worst summer weekends possible without being destructive.
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2 hours ago, Thundershine said:
I wasn't referring to you in particular moaning about dry weather after two days. And yeah, cold AND dry is about the worst combination for a spring month. If it had been mild and dry there would have been little problem, after the very wet winter.
Most laughably sad thing about this spell of weather for me is that I can barely get my INDOOR temps above 20°C let alone the outside temperature getting anywhere near to it. Bugger me sideways.
I'm with you on the indoor temps. Normally from mid April I don't need any central heating until November. To have to use it in May in SE England is ridiculous for me. My house has frequently been dropping to 15C which is about the limit before I feel the need to put the heating on for half an hour or so.
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1 hour ago, Quicksilver1989 said:
The best scenario I can remember in my lifetime was late June 2012 when we had both and there was some nasty storms going through the East Midlands and Lincolnshire (a few other areas too) .
Thunderstorms in the British Isles.pdf 861.27 kB · 1 download
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18 hours ago, Thundershine said:
Some start moaning about dry weather before it even gets close to causing problems growing things. Water table's really full now still even though April was dry. So much rain over winter (more than 50% above average), we're not exactly crying out for it.
It has caused problems growing for me. Potato crop looks to be wiped out by frosty nights throughout last month. The lack of rain hasn't affected my allotment because I had a lot of stored rainwater from the damp autumn/winter, and there was little growing. It is less about the rain and more about the cold nights and well below average temperatures. I feel I am taking a chance starting squash and Frech beans indoors now, even though I'd normally have started those two weeks ago. The one good thing about the lack of rain is the lack of slug destruction so far, the brassicas I planted out two weeks ago still look healthy.
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3 hours ago, Thundershine said:
The amount of rain foamers on here who go mad after two dry days is a lot more funny.
If people had to produce their own food like subsistence farmers instead of paying someone else to do it for them, they would be a lot less enthusiastic about extremes, and would understand why locked in weather patterns leading to weeks of dry or weeks of wet can be a bad thing, regardless of whether or not it has scientific interest.
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8 hours ago, Mr Frost said:
Can’t agree with some of that.
Guess it depends on ones location but I would say it was cold and very interesting.
Cold weather and snowfall was fairly widespread/persistent throughout the Winter months - late December, most of January and first half of February. (Obviously Northern parts get the majority of the cold/snow in Winter…just as Southern parts get the majority of the warmth/heat in Summer)
Throw in the BFTE that delivered for many (rubbish for some of course) and the coldest February minimum temperature (-23C) since 1955.
January was a proper Winter month. (2.1C below average for Scotland)
I would take a Winter like that every year.
Scotland may have been colder than average over the whole winter (you emphasise January statistics which is only one of the three winter months). Some places may have got decent snow but many didn't. In Salford over Christmas there was just the light dusting on a couple of days which soon melted (i.e. the norm). I had to go up on the Forest of Bowland fells (400-500m asl) to see what I would call a good snow covering. In my home town of Horsham the best we could manage was one or two days with a partial covering, which is what we get in an average winter. From my perspective the winter just gone was nothing special, mediocre temperatures and a lack of mild spells compared to recent winters, just bog standard mediocre UK.
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9 hours ago, Arctic Hare said:
Given our latitude, we're not a particularly cold or (barring the far west) a particularly wet country. We are a particularly grey country. I do actually like the British weather, as I'm not particularly keen on living in a land of extremes. But when we get those stubborn spells with day after day of grey gloom and you have to leave the lights on all day even in midsummer... now that weather I will moan about with the best of 'em! The last two Aprils (one warm, one cold) have both been very sunny. Imagine if we had that much sun most Aprils. I suspect people would like the British weather much more then, even without any change in temperature.
BTW I reckon the best place for sunshine, warmth and high life expectancy may be Perth, Australia. That gets 3,200 hours!
If snowy winters and hot summers were the norm in the UK, I doubt people on here would get so excited when they happen. People only want it because it is extreme and doesn't happen very often, and I suspect in the case of snow, it reminds them of carefree childhood. I doubt Canadians rave about -20C winter nights and I doubt Australians rave about 35-40C.
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7 hours ago, Sunny76 said:
Yes, there’s no getting away from the fact that winter 20/21 was colder than average and the coldest overall since 2010/11, even c
The Met Office disagrees:
Winter and February climate statistics
WWW.METOFFICE.GOV.UKThe winter of 2020/21 overall has been wet and dull with near average temperature. -
18 hours ago, markyo said:
Certain folk on here seem to forget, you don't order what weather you would like down to every detail...This April has been cool i admit, record breaking but on the plus dry and with a good deal of sunshine on my travels. Surely this record breaking should be of interest? Just as record heat has been to those who crave it in summer, the last 2 summers prove it.
Just a thought....We've just had the coldest winter since 2010 i believe, now the coldest Spring, is that correct? If so this happens 12months after the world stopped moving, stopped travelling, stopped polluting by a massive scale. The figures this Summer could be very interesting to those climate sceptics!
Winter was average in temperature, so not very interesting. It just seemed cold because we have gone through several mild wet winters since the cold cluster in 2008-2010.
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13 hours ago, AderynCoch said:
1975 must have been bad.
Some people like to blabber on about how it snowed in June that year, but never follow on with mentioning the warm/hot temperatures which followed a week later.
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1 hour ago, NEVES SCREAMER said:
In my book we have had one proper summer in the last 15 years and two in 25 years. We seem to get all sorts of crap. Floods. Cold. The one thing we never get is nine or ten weeks of glorious hot and humid weather with temps up in the high 20's at least. Shorts. T shirts. B B Q 's. Air con. Sun screen What is the point in the UK. It is just endless cold miserable dross.
That is why the package holiday industry took off when flying became affordable to the masses. The UK's default climate is changeable with frequent cloud and rain. We did have nine or ten weeks of glorious summer weather in 2018 which rivalled 1976 for CET and we had two months of glorious weather last year in April and May, but summers like that are, on average, once or twice in a lifetime. The UK is not the Mediterranean. The only thing I am concerned about is the apparent increase in stagnant weather regimes which bring months like April-May 2019 or February 2019, i.e. too much of one type of weather. The stagnant weather patterns where we get stuck under a ridge or trough in the jet stream often brings us destructive weather, either from flooding rains, a barrage of windstorms (in winter), or heatwaves and drought which can badly affect agriculture and are harmful to health.
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17 minutes ago, Snowy L said:
A lot of cold lovers seem desperate to play down how disgraceful the last month has been for some reason. Apparently this is all normal and we are spoilt when we ask for some sunshine and 15C at the end of April, even though as posted above the April minimum has been the coldest in 100 years. People who love disgusting weather that stops you doing anything outside get to "enjoy" that 300 days of the year most years anyway, so let us have the other 65 if it isn't too much to ask please.
Doesn't matter how much anyone tries to play it down, the data says it all. The lowest April mean minimum temperature for 100 years cannot be classed as normal. A frost count comparable to a full winter season cannot be classed as normal. This is the UK, not Svalbard. It seems as though a minority of people are so obsessed with cold and snow, or obsessed with trying to play down global warming, that they relish any cold and try to claim it is normal, even if it at the wrong time of year and it clearly isn't the norm. You can't argue with real data.
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12 hours ago, hillbilly said:
You would cry living here then as 1947 was the only August to have over 250 hours [254]
With 1995 on 239 hrs no other August has given over 200 hrs since 1976 and only two over 180 hrs!
Doesn't the surrounding topography reduce the theoretical maximum sunshine hours?
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Another statistic to show how extreme April has been. The lowest average minimum temperature for nearly 100 years.
April's lowest average minimum temperatures since 1922
WWW.METOFFICE.GOV.UKApril 2021 had the lowest average minimum temperatures for April in the UK since 1922, as air frost and clear conditions combined for a frost-laden, chilly month, despite long hours of sunshine.-
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9 minutes ago, Thundershine said:
Last summer was also the dullest on record at Weston Park weather station, Sheffield in over 140 years of records. The last 10 months here has basically been drivel.
Summer here in SE England seemed worse than it was because it followed such a spectacular spring, but it was noticable how much the weather regressed going into July and August. My family live in Gtr Manchester and I am aware they have had much worse weather than me in recent years. I was camping in Capel Curig over the August bank holiday last year and woke up to a frost one morning.
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A few comments here about the quality of August as a summer month. I have pulled off a handful of the Met Office timeseries for August max temperature, sunshine and rainfall.
It is noticable that since the year 2000, August has got a bit wetter and there have been several very dull Augusts since then (2008 really stands out), eight have been sunnier than the 1981-2020 climatology and 13 have been duller. Rainfall and its annual variability is comparable to the 1940-1960 period, but with far less of the extremely wet Augusts. It looks like the year-to-year variability in August rainfall has been lower over the last 15 or so years, we haven't had any absolute soakers but most Augusts since 2000 have been wetter than the 1981-2010 climatology (although this climatology is probably heavily weighted by the dry Augusts in the 1990's). In terms of mean max temperature, there is a long term trend towards warmer Augusts consistent with climate change but the trend has plateaued since 2000, with the mean max temperature oscillating around the 1981-2010 climatology.
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3 hours ago, Thundershine said:
I know the majority of netweather members are obviously enjoying it but this weather is complete and utter scum IMO. The kind of crap that gives this country its horrid reputation as being a cold, bleak, grim place with no sun and endless rain (even if it doesn't accumulate much). No blasted wonder EasyJet and Ryanair are such popular booming airlines, based in the British Isles no less.
After a dull and wet autumn and dull damp winter (Heathrow had its third dullest January on record), we really don't need a spring that is little more than a three month continuation of winter. The only good thing about April is it has been a sunny month which has moderated how chilly it feels when outside. It is quite remarkable to have a very sunny mid-spring with well below average temperatures. Once we get to the time of year when the sun is getting strong, it normally requires a dull wet month to bring below average temperatures.
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19 minutes ago, Evening thunder said:
Could be worse, though arguably more interesting:
Could be worse, like getting murdered is worse than being repeatedly punched in the face, having your car stolen and your house burned down, but that doesn't make the latter any better.
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4 hours ago, virtualsphere said:
The problem with May 2012 is the last 2 weeks were the only decent dry sunny spell of the entire 'summer'! Though I don't feel like this is a 2012 style year, for me more like 2013 but running a little later. If that holds then we could have a cold start to summer but a decent spell later on, perhaps end of July into August, a bit later than the nice July weather in 2013. Of course it could all surprise us as it often does!
This is nothing like 2012. April that year was very wet, completely the opposite of this year. April-June that year was one (if not the) wettest on record.
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15 hours ago, 38.7°C said:
This is what happened in 2012, a hot spell in the final 10 days of May that got everyone on the edge of their seats thinking the next 1976 had arrived! Oh how wrong they were.
Yes the hot spell coincided with what was originally the bank holiday, but the bank holiday got shifted back a week which was a washout weekend. P**s-take UK.
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Spring 2021: Moans, Groans, Ramps and Banter.
in Spring Weather Discussion
Posted
Looks like we are losing the cold frosty nights for a week at least.