In Absence of True Seasons

Frigid Issue is too, it comes off the back of prolonged dullness and wetness as a dominant theme. Winter was incredibly dull and wet, as was last Autumn (aside from the heatwave in Sept and the few days in Oct). Before that? Virtually all of high summer bar a few days at the end of August. This Spring wouldn't have been such a downer if it was preceded by a lovely sunny, crisp, snowy winter, and a comparable Autumn prior to that. Instead, we've had 9-10 months where nearly every single day has been a variation of 10-14c, overcast and some degree of rain. Genuinely has felt like living in a different climate for much of the last 12-18 months, to me, and it shows no signs of abating. Really impressive, for all the wrong reasons.

Azazel Spring is (was) great because of the light levels, the colours, the promise of summer yet to come, and the warmer days but not yet proper summer heat. Such conditions seem to be resigned to history, now. Or perhaps just the odd day here and there during each Spring month. Just diabolical.

SunnyG I saw something on the news saying the price of things like bread is going to skyrocket next year as a result of the weather and it's prolonged impact on our agricultural industry But the odd 40c day (which may happen once in a decade) in summer is the real concern about climate change for the UK... The need to build personal Noah's Arks for the population is a more pressing concern lol.

Alderc 2.0 the ground had just started to become a bit less spongelike so we need the rain to return it to it's natural new-normal state of swampland.

Azazel yep. I mean what can they do. It sucks for them also. I bet they'd love to be able to tell everyone a week of sunny, warm and dry is coming...but we live in the Faroe Islands 2.0, so no dice.

Josh Rubio because our climate is a serial prankster

SunnyG "I've lost one leg, but it's a far cry from Bob down the road who has *no* legs!" Comparing turds.

Yeah. Tbf, Completely crystal clear skies aren't a necessity. To me, I consider a "clear day" to be simply one that has predominantly sunny weather, and not predominantly cloudy. For example the Saturday two weekends ago that got to 20c. There was some cloud here and there but I'd consider it overall a sunny/clear day.

danm I'm aware. HP. just seems to be impossible to obtain. We get it for 1-2 days max then back to the constant lows.

SunSean Agree. We basically skip Spring in such set-ups (Spring here meaning something actually different, more useable and more pleasant than the winter weather prior), and get a 2-month minimum extension of December-like dross. Exactly the same as last year. I wouldn't be surprised if most of May is cool and cloudy and then out of nowhere we get the week-long heatwave in June with zero transition or steady shift to summery weather. Sure, May *might* be better, but the start of it certainly won't be, and by that point, we've wasted away most of Spring already. May is the final third of Spring and the latter half sort of bleeds into summer anyway (or it should, at least), so the time for high Spring is well past. Getting 17c-20c days in May isn't some grand feat or sign of a major pattern shift tbh. It's very expected weather in May especially for the SE. Such days I expected here and there during April too.

Dare i watch the GFS 06Z I'm sure the polar bears will love the HP. Don't worry about us all in Northern Europe stuck under another month of cloudy, cool, wet dross lol

2 / 3 hours of sun this morning and now in comes the cloud, like clockwork. No doubt it'll all clear again this evening after dinner-tine lol. We genuinely need the starts to align in this country to get an actually sunny, or even mostly sunny day. Utterly infuriating.

James1979 Yes. Pretty sure it was 14.5c on Xmas day in my area in 2023. Struggling to get above 10c for the last few days here lol, and with the wind chill, it's been a "feels like less than 10c" situation. Just madness. Ahh, Britain - one of the only places where all that separates a day in summer from a day in winter is the daylight hours. Indeed, the max/high on the summer solstice in June 2021 was actually cooler in parts of the country than the winter solstice of the December 6 months prior. A feat that very few climates that have "seasons" can make claim to.

WYorksWeather The thing is with "redeeming" the year, there's no "making up for lost time" so to speak. It'll be well into May before anything shifts properly, and there's no guarantee it even will, tbh. Regardless of what pans out over summer and autumn this year, it won't change the fact that the first third of the entire year was woefully dull, wet and uninspiring. It's a bit like summer 2023, which was near-universally perceived as a very poor summer season despite the very sunny and dry June, because the proceeding 6-7 weeks were absolutely rotten. So, for me, it's less a case of "writing the year off", but moreso recognising the reality that even a 'perfect' rest of the year will not erase how poor this winter and spring have been, and as such, the year will only ever be able to come out as, say, a 6/10 overall at best.

*Stormforce~beka* hope you feel better! I know first hand how much it can suck (although my issues aren't precisely the same)

SunSean Stellar work, sir.

TwisterGirl81 Since the cold snap in January lol. That's been the only spell of properly non-dull weather this year. Prior to that...it was September 2023. It all comes back to the temps vs sunshine levels discussion. Yes, this April hasn't overall been notably cold, but there's nothing warm or even pleasant about 14/15c when it's thick, dark cloud and intermittent drizzle. At this time of year, cloud cover makes all the difference as to how 'warm' it actually feels.

Metwatch Yes. I think sunshine is also playing a big part. It's been really, really dull for April, especially recently (outside of some sun over the weekend, but with no warmth though). Bird and insect life seems properly subdued for nearly May, also.

AWD Yes, but you (should) also get some days around 18c and even above it, too. in my area, this is even more true. In London, I expect mid to high teens pretty regularly by the end of April. As it stands, we are heading into May struggling to even get into double digits, and with constantly dark, overcast and drizzly skies to boot. Truly grim. This would be well-suited to mid February, or late November, not nearly halfway through the year. This Spring is honestly probably going to be worse than last year's at this rate, and that's honestly an impressive feat considering how dire Spring 2023 was (especially in the East as we fully missed out on the good 2+ weeks of sunny, warm weather folk elsewhere got in May, as we were stuck under continual N.Sea cloud and cold breeze).

TwisterGirl81 Enjoy it...9c and drizzle here in Essex. Actually quite interesting that exactly the same pattern seems to be manifesting as in Spring 2023. Cool, cloudy, wet Spring, but the South-West fares better than us in the East. West overall is generally better in these set-ups. parts of Ireland recently have been 15-18c and sunny, whilst we've barely scraped double digits for nigh-on a week over here.

SunnyG Yes, many such references can be found throughout historical writings haha. The oldest one I've read was in Tacitus' (the roman historian) Agricola & Germania. I quote: "The climate is foul. The sky is overcast with continual rain and cloud, but the cold is not severe. The duration of daylight is beyond the measure of our zone. The nights are clear and, in the distant parts of Britannia, short, so that there is but a brief space separating the evening and the morning twilight. If there are no clouds, the sun’s brilliance, they maintain, is visible throughout the night. It neither sets nor rises, but simply passes over. That is to say, the flat extremities of earth with their low shadows do not permit the darkness to mount high, and nightfall never reaches the sky or the stars". Highlighted the most interesting part lol, especially seeing as it mentions that the cold is not severe, and this was nearly 2000 years ago (I thought we had tonnes of proper cold, regular snow, etc "back in the day". ). This is coming from a Roman perspective too, so pretty much anything fairly chilly would've been 'cold' to him, so indeed, Britain must've always been largely pretty mild, but often wet and overcast...aka, what we have now.

SunSean True true! Although, IMO, that's just because of the propensity (well, near-guarantee) of our climate to deliver garbage grey/wet sewage the vast majority of the time lol, not some sort of special accuracy of British meteorologists in forecasting cloudy/wet weather. The forecasts for 2 weeks away that show overcast with potential rain have a far likelihood of manifesting, than the forecasts that show fully sunny, dry weather, purely from a probability standpoint. I mean, we could sit here right now and make a prediction that, on the 21st of April 2025, or the 9th of October 2026, it will be "15c and overcast, with a 40% chance of rain", and I imagine there'll be a decent enough chance of it being pretty accurate.

Another good one. Got to laugh because otherwise we will cry.