SunSean

April 2024 🌧

(Posted in wrong thread previously) Now that April 2024 has finished, I have the stats to show just how BAD this month was, in terms of sunshine... Shoeburyness- Average number of sunny days (50%+ sunshine) is 13 and this gets achieved almost every year- April 2016 (13) April 2017 (12) April 2018 (13) April 2019 (14) April 2020 (19) April 2021 (17) April 2022 (14) April 2023 managed the lowest ever total of just 8 and I didn't expect to see a number this low again but April 2024 came along and shouted, "hold my beer!" April 2024 managed just 5 days. 5!!!!!!! Absolute bottom of the barrel stuff!! The average number of 50%+ days for December & January is 8 for crying out loud... Added to this that February 2024 managed only 4 days out of 29 with 50%+ and March 2024 managed also a pathetic 4 out of 31 and we stand at 13 days of 50%+ sunshine out of the last 91 days. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. This is the lowest number of sunny days from the Feb to Apr period on record for Shoeburyness. The next lowest is 2023 funnily enough, with a rubbish 22 days. 2024 is THAT much worse than 2023 already! But wait...there's more... April 2024 was in fact, so bad here, that it is now the new worst month ever in the April to September period in terms of proportional sunshine! Yay!! What a time to be alive! It used to be July 2023, 2nd to last with 32.2% of available sunshine achieved & bottom was the dreadful June 2016 with 29.9% of available sunshine achieved but April 2024? 29.7% of available sunshine achieved- A new absolute low, dethroning June 2016. 124 hours of sunshine in April is basically a bang average, nothing to note March but to get this figure when the days are supposedly getting brighter & the evenings longer, is a massive blow. April is normally one of my favourite months but it has been getting worse & worse every year now unfortunately, culminating in the new "dullest month ever!" in 2024! One thing I worry about as I wake up to yet another dreary gloom filled "October" morning, thinking it can't get any duller... Will May 2024 once again shout "Hold my beer!!!"? Looking at the forecasts & horrific model outputs...I think my fears will be confirmed. All that's left is hope, that the weather gods will finally shine their light on us after one of the dullest era's in living memory.

Now that April 2024 has finished, I have the stats to show just how BAD this month was, in terms of sunshine... Shoeburyness- Average number of sunny days (50%+ sunshine) is 13 and this gets achieved almost every year- April 2016 (13) April 2017 (12) April 2018 (13) April 2019 (14) April 2020 (19) April 2021 (17) April 2022 (14) April 2023 managed the lowest ever total of just 8 and I didn't expect to see a number this low again but April 2024 came along and shouted, "hold my beer!" April 2024 managed just 5 days. 5!!!!!!! Absolute bottom of the barrel stuff!! The average number of 50%+ days for December & January is 8 for crying out loud... Added to this that February 2024 managed only 4 days out of 29 with 50%+ and March 2024 managed also a pathetic 4 out of 31 and we stand at 13 days of 50%+ sunshine out of the last 91 days. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. This is the lowest number of sunny days from the Feb to Apr period on record for Shoeburyness. The next lowest is 2023 funnily enough, with a rubbish 22 days. 2024 is THAT much worse than 2023 already! But wait...there's more... April 2024 was in fact, so bad here, that it is now the new worst month ever in the April to September period in terms of proportional sunshine! Yay!! What a time to be alive! It used to be July 2023, 2nd to last with 32.2% of available sunshine achieved & bottom was the dreadful June 2016 with 29.9% of available sunshine achieved but April 2024? 29.7% of available sunshine achieved- A new absolute low, dethroning June 2016. 124 hours of sunshine in April is basically a bang average, nothing to note March but to get this figure when the days are supposedly getting brighter & the evenings longer, is a massive blow. April is normally one of my favourite months but it has been getting worse & worse every year now unfortunately, culminating in the new "dullest month ever!" in 2024! One thing I worry about as I wake up to yet another dreary gloom filled "October" morning, thinking it can't get any duller... Will May 2024 once again shout "Hold my beer!!!"? Looking at the forecasts & horrific model outputs...I think my fears will be confirmed. All that's left is hope, that the weather gods will finally shine their light on us after one of the dullest era's in living memory.

Spring 2024 so far!

Looks like one of the stations I've been using for my England county sunshine tables have stopped recording data! Wittering- No data since April 22nd... I wonder why? Is it a glitch & they are working on a fix or do I have to look elsewhere for a new station in that region?

In Absence of True Seasons Always wondered, what does BAU stand for? Nothing good I imagine lol. Duke enjoying the sun while it was out! He's a poser lol.

It looked like a nice sunny day west of me so took the dog up to London for a few hours of sunshine. Pretty much completely clouded over by noon unfortunately and now on way back home lol. Surprised people are raving over today, yesterday was far better with sun most of the day. Back home (Southend area) is even worse with 100% cloud cover since 8am lol.

Yesterday was the first day since September 14th that my area recorded over 10 hours of sunshine! Will probably be the last time until mid July now too lol. Massive shame I was working... off today but meant to cloud over by about 10am unfortunately

This year is reminding me very much like a worse version of 2023 with all the settled sunny weather modelled 7-10 days away constantly downgrading!

midlandsun Agreed. Before today, my area Shoeburyness has had only 4 days with 50%+ sunshine this month and not a single day over 10 hours. Maybe we will get our first 10 hour day today but theres still been cloud so will be touch and go! id go as far as saying that the East/South East have been way under par sunshine wise since after August 2022. Theres always been at least one random region sunnier since, apart from the average sunshine months where we finish ahead of other regions by like 10 hours lol.

B87 "Can't be worse than this April"- May 2024- Hold my beer! Let's hope not anyway, praying for that 1959 May to October still!

Alderc 2.0 About as surprising as finding water in the Pacific ocean. Maybe the next settled spell showing up 10 days away in the models will be the one right guys??! LOL.

SHOEBURYNESS- Top 5 worst dates in astronomical Spring & Summer! (March 20th to September 22nd) 5th worst- April 27th (3.98hrs) 4th worst- July 27th (3.38hrs) 3rd worst- March 28th (2.9hrs) 2nd worst- April 28th (2.93hrs- but will fall even lower after today so it will be worse than March 28th) Worst- March 20th (2.57hrs- Spring equinox is always horrific for some reason!) In contrast, the best 5! 5. June 15th (10.59hrs) 4. June 14th (10.78hrs) 3. June 16th (10.79hrs) 2. May 27th (10.84hrs) 1. June 22nd (11.28hrs) I'm sure those top 5 will fall massively once this never ending grey grot pollutes those dates too lol.

B87 Where do you find live stats for Heathrow? As usual, 28th April is a day of zero sunshine once again, colour me shocked! One of the worst dates of the entire year, always reliably overcast.

Another point regarding big volcanic eruptions & effects on the UK- The Pinatubo eruption in April 1991, if we consider a lag effect again of around 6 months (beginning around October/November 1991), 1992 & 1993 were exceptionally dull with only May 1992 (similar to June 2023) standing out as a very sunny month. There were many absolute stinker months during this period- Feb (50hrs) Mar (62hrs) Apr (130hrs) 1992, as dull as the Feb to Apr period this year, July (159hrs) & August (149hrs) even September (128hrs) all utterly terrible and then into 1993 that managed to be even worse with only June & August standing out by only reaching around average sunshine. April (127hrs), May (177hrs), July (175hrs) & September (105hrs) 1993 exceptionally dull or below average sunshine. It picked up again in 1994, around 2 years after the effects took hold! There was another VEI6 eruption before this, back in 1912 interestingly, although a lag effect of around 6 months wouldn't have explained the worst August (1912) on record, unless of course, lags happen anywhere from 2-7 months, which is possible I'm sure! It's just something I find interesting & could well explain long effects (2 years or so) of persistent patterns. I'm not a meteorologist or volcanologist though but I think the idea has merit & data to back it up. Definitely an interesting idea IMO.

Shunter No idea, probably have the technology though! I just think we've been unbelievably unlucky with 2 late season SSW's in a row which gives constant Northern blocking, completely ruining Spring, plus the Hunga Tonga eruption (January 2022), which doesn't get talked about enough in regards to this unrelenting wet spell- All the billions of tonnes of water vapour shot into the atmosphere HAS to go somewhere & considering the lag of when it would take affect (6 months or so), it lines up more or less right and supposedly the effects would last a couple of years. Make no mistake, that eruption was no small shake, VEI6...we do NOT get many of those (last one I believe was Mount Pinatubo in 1991) so it's bound to have had an effect & people can laugh at me or whatever but I couldn't care less- In my opinion, Hunga Tonga eruption is the reason for this unrelenting never-ending wet spell. From August 2022, for Heathrow, our average precipitation has been 70mm per month and a total of around 1470mm since then. I place mid August 2022, about 6/7 months after the eruption, as the beginning of this saturating never-ending wet period. Going by a roughly 2 year effect, you could make a guess that this wet spell may come to a close anywhere between June 2024 & October 2024, but then we have winter which is notoriously wet by nature, if the spell is on the longer side, so may have to wait til around February 2025 & potentially a great Spring onwards (Unless yet another SSW arrives lol). That's just my 2 cents anyway, going by what I've observed, effects over time, data, thinking critically etc- I could well be wrong but I think it's definitely an avenue of exploring as to why this wet period is dragging on so long.

Alderc 2.0 GFS will no doubt be bang on the money. Low pressure dominance is the prime Mike Tyson of UK weather, no ones gonna be beating it out. Another 50mm+ month for rainfall. Utterly pathetic. That is now the 11th month in a row that can be classed as wet and also the 19th out of the last 21 months to be plus 50mm. You can bet your bottom dollar that if this had been 11 months in a row of below 20mm and 19 out of 21 below, there would be absolute uproar, doom mongering of a Mediterranean climate, how the human race is about to be eliminated etc etc, hell, even 3 months of below 20mm and people are talking about the next apocalypse or how "worryingly dry" it is. I don't ever wanna hear talk about us being "too dry" ever again now because we're having the most unrelenting, never-ending wettest (and dullest) period ever imaginable!

baddie Yeah true, March 25th is on average, a really sunny day! Not in 2024 though of course, in fact almost every dates average has been brought down by this stinker of a year so far lol.

Brace yourself guys, 28th April tomorrow- One of the worst ever days statistically for sunshine! For Shoeburyness, the average sunshine for this date is a pitiful 2.93 hours. Sticks out like a sore thumb comparing to the 29th which is 5.61 hours on average. It's so bad that every day from 17th to 22nd January are all higher than 28th April on average! For Heathrow, the average since 2006 is 3.6 hours for 28th April & 27th isn't much better at 3.83 hours. There are many days from 26th February onwards that are higher than these 2 terrible dates. Both averages for Shoeburyness & Heathrow will go down even further with tomorrows overcast/wet forecast! I wonder why 28th April in particular is so dull. What a strange anomaly.

richie3846 Good analogy, comparing it to online dating, actually makes a good similarity haha.

Don't really know why people still look at the weather models anymore, it's basically like fortune telling. Every model run is just another guess at what MIGHT happen but at the end of the day, going by the law of probability, cloudy & wet dross will always win out. I'd say, going by experience, 75% chance the usual grey/wet crap, 20% a couple of nicer days/half days in the coming week, 5% a pattern change to settled (LOL). Just funny how any nice periods of weather are always 10 days away, just like an addict chasing his next high- He imagines how good it will be but it never arrives! Weather technology, in all honesty, is the most pathetic & outdated tech known to man. Everything else has made leaps & bounds but weather tech is still stuck in the stone age. Completely unreliable & inaccurate. Yeah I know weather systems are chaotic but this is mankind we're talking about. We invented rocket ships, hadron collider, multi storey skyscrapers, ISS, internet but accurately predicting the weather, even 4 days out? IMPOSSIBLE, unless you use the law of averages & determine it will be grey & wet then you'll most likely be correct!

danm More chance of surviving a fall off the empire state building than that coming off but hey, we live in hope! Lol.

Rare nice & sunny morning which reminds you of what April used to be like! But...our gorgeous friend, Stratocumulus is shrouding the sky back to a more November feel. We have reached our sun quota for the week now. I wonder what morning next week may have a couple of hours of sun?

Judging fairly, all months since March 2023 in my area- March 2023- Satanic. Worst March I've ever lived through. April 2023- Nice few days in the first third then utterly forgettable & boring. May 2023- Shockingly bad 1st half, very nice 2nd half. June 2023- Superb! Little did I know this would be as good as it gets. July 2023- Laughable. Worst July I've ever lived through. August 2023- Middle was actually quite nice but bookended by guff either side. September 2023- Stunningly brilliant 1st half, arguably the best weather since August 2022 but the 2nd half was boring. October 2023- Actually a lovely 1st half with sun & warm temperatures but the 2nd half collapsed into a rainfest. November 2023- Can't really bash this one in my area as we managed a sunny day every 3 to 5 days so no endless gloom. Fine! December 2023- One of the dullest months imaginable & one of the worst I've ever lived through. January 2024- Crisp & sunny, no complaints here! February 2024- Worst February I've ever lived through. Mild temps couldn't save this absolute greyfest. March 2024- One of the worst March's I've ever lived through but still a touch better than March 2023. April 2024- Satanic again. Worst April I've ever lived through. SSW- A gloomy-wet lovers bed buddy. So there you have it & the reason for my pessimism lately is this is the 3rd month in a row & 4 out of the last 5 that are contenders for "worst month I've ever lived through" Utterly depressing run of grey-outs & rainfests! In hindsight, the August to November period weren't that bad, just a bit on the wet side but December to April (and counting)... good grief....

This will be the first April in Shoeburyness history to not record a single day with 10+ hours sunshine. Satanic.