Summer8906
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Posts posted by Summer8906
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LetItSnow! 1917, believe it or not, with distinctly low confidence as the only real thing I know about it is that it had a cold winter.
For some strange reason my brain was telling me "1979 or before" and I started scanning back from then and ignoring recent years. Not sure why, probably due to my own plans to go for older years.
Anyway, another from me, and this time a considerably earlier year than my first three, which means going back to the archives so I'm having to look some of this up. It's a year I've read up about as it had certain noteworthy features but I had forgotten the detail about the other parts of the year.
January was noteworthy for being both cold and wet, an unusual combination. Reading between the lines the month appeared to have a low-pressure track across the southern UK so Scotland in particular was cold while the SE was marginally above average. Even in the south there was snow early in the month but rain - and lots of it - was the main theme. It turned cold and drier at the end.
And after that, February remarkably kept up the cold and wet theme. It was even wetter than Jan with England and Wales receiving almost double the normal. Sunshine was about normal, and it was slightly cold in England and Wales but very cold in Scotland suggesting a continuation of the same synoptics as January. Like January the month turned more settled at the end with frost and fog.
It appears that this winter as a whole was a rather remarkable one for a combination of colder than average, and very wet. There are few other such examples.
And it didn't stop there. March was yet another very wet and rather cold month, this time somewhat colder relative to the norm in England and Wales, with lows passing across England and Wales again. It appears the low track was slightly further south than in Jan/Feb though.
April was again wet and rather cold, but sunnier than average due to anticyclonic interludes in the second half of the month.
May saw a shift in synoptics to a NE-ly type, but with low pressure frequently over the south, it was cool and wet yet again in this area. I don't know the stats but it wouldn't surprise me if this particular year saw the wettest first 5 months of the year on record for many areas.
Finally June provided a dry month, it was sunny as well but with temps about average. It appears that England and Wales did not reach 27C, though Scotland did.
Mostly good weather continued in July, which was dry, slightly warmer than average, and slightly sunnier than average. Best districts were the south and east. June and July must have provided a big relief after the persistently wet start to the year!
Sadly it was not to last, and August was unsettled, cool and wet. The wetness was the most marked, though it was somewhat cool and somewhat dull.
September was wet, mild and dull.
October was very dry, sunnier than normal, with a warm north but cooler south, with the wettest weather occurring at the very end of the month.
Again it could not last, and in what looked like a very wet year, November was the wettest month relative to the norm, being exceedingly wet (more than double the average in England and Wales) as well as being very mild.
December kept the mild conditions going but was dry in the south, and sunny overall.
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Scratch my original answer, I was thinking too far back.
It's obviously 1985. I don't know how I missed that!
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LetItSnow! Interesting how it weakened so much between Hampshire and London; obviously here is more exposed to southwesterlies but even still, that's a huge difference. It was prolonged and increasingly heavy here; more like a spell of rain in late summer or autumn rather than spring. I guess unseasonably high SSTs are to blame, so we're getting August-like weather (in some ways) in May.
raz.org.rain I think it's relatively cool but feels mild - even sticky - due to the high moisture content of the air.
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11 hours ago, B87 said:
June 2017 wasn't wet or dull?
Depends where you are I think, the hot sunny spell was restricted to the 12th-21st and outside of that period it was changeable. In this area I believe it was dull, though not wet - but quite conceivable that western and northern areas had a wet month.
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B87 I'm going to go with 2011, as it seems to almost exactly match except for Feb which was very mild, so I'm wondering if this was an oversight?
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Alderc 2.0 Interestingly I found this morning much more oppressive and sticky than the fine and much warmer weather we had at the weekend.
Those sort of annoying conditions which feel cool and clammy if you're standing still exposed to the wind, but humid and sticky as soon as you start walking at any speed.
A sure sign that discomfort is as much a function of DP and humidity as it is temperature.
Overseas, I've known fresher days with 29C maxima!
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Alderc 2.0 I guess in better news the wind is mostly NE-ly or E-ly, little in the way of SW-lies after today (GFS 00z).
Even still, cyclonic curvature throughout with the first spell of fine weather arriving just in time for the Bank Holiday weekend (! - won't happen).
So I'd expect mostly cloudy weather with daytime temps around average (below in rain), mild nights and occasional spells of heavy rain every few days if troughs and fronts form, but relatively dry in between. Meh, rather than terrible, but enough to put May 2024 firmly in the below-average-sunshine and above-average-rainfall category overall. Mild due to a lack of really cold days, the 6-day warm spell, and many very mild nights.
So the mild, dull and wet combination that we're so familiar with once again - though at least it's not looking southwesterly, which is something, and perhaps the number of rain days will not be too high.
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As expected, the rain (which was very persistent, and later heavy, here, not clearing until sometime after 1am) has been followed by dull, gloomy, damp and humid weather with much low-level cloud.
The hope is that as the low shifts from west of us to south of us and the wind backs easterly, it will allow drier, lower-humidity air in as the week progresses and thus it will become less unpleasant.
Even still, I suspect by the end of the week the overall impression so far will be of a slightly cloudier, and wetter month than normal.
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@LetItSnow! wasn't so keen on the end of July and August but I did find Oct and Nov 2017 interesting (as well as Jan and April).
Onto my last "recent" year (as in, since 1978) before I go into the archives. Again, there might be some obfuscation at times and certain key events may be missed, but I will again emphasise some obscure but interesting events.
January started with three days of cold and frosty weather but quickly became mild, zonal and stormy. Mild and unsettled weather persisted for much of the month but the final third was relatively dry, and less mild.
February was a dry anticyclonic month in the main. It was somewhat mild but not remarkably so, and had cold weather at times particularly towards the end.
March started cold but quickly became mild, indeed warm at times with prolonged sunshine following a cloudier start. Such conditions persisted through much of the rest of the month but unsettled weather got in right at the end.
April was changeable but also rather mild. Wettest weather was at the start of the month with a particularly wet first Saturday. Unseasonable coastal fog occurred around the end of the first week and then it remained changeable but drier with slack low pressure. Warm sunny weather developed for a time while the second half was mild or warm with wetter spells mixed with drier ones and rather complex pressure patterns. There was some thundery rain late in the month with low pressure over France but warm, sunny weather too.
May started warm and quickly became cooler with a few days of sunny weather, cool nights and average days. A westward-moving warm front introduced warmer but thundery weather. Much of the rest of the month was changeable but rather blocked with weather systems moving in from just about every point of the compass producing some spells of thundery rain mixed with warm, sunny weather. On the warm side overall.
June started with the same type of weather as May but a more definite hot spell quickly developed, followed by thundery breakdown and wet Atlantic spell. It then became settled.
July started with a good few days of settled, sunny and warm weather. However it turned wetter, duller and cooler.
August was cool, and changeable during the first half but mostly settled and often sunny in the second half. Hot weather was rare but so were washout days.
September strangely did share some elements with 1981 and 1999 in that it started with a sunny spell, though much less warm than either 1981 or 1999. On the 7th it became warm and humid ahead of a thundery cold front moving in from the SW producing a wet night. A filling low then produced several days of showery weather but a fine day on the 11th in a ridge. On the 12th a very active low produced a wet and cold day and the next few days were wet and cold. The following weekend produced some pleasant warm, sunny Indian summer weather before a rather showery following week, and the final few days were very dull and very wet.
October kept up late September's wet theme in the first half but turned drier in the second. The second half was cold, sunny at first becoming dull.
November started dull and rather mild, it then became wet for a short time before cold and dry weather became the dominant theme.
December quickly reverted to wet and was mild and wet throughout, very wet at times, but there were a few short-lived cold northerly snaps, the longest of these including Christmas Day.
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LetItSnow! 2017?
With historic years I remember the general theme of many of the summers and winters in particular since around 1950 but much more vague about the springs and autumns, so anything before about 1974 I'd probably have to do a little bit of reading up on. My earliest real memories are 1978 but I have pretty much memorised the vast majority of 1974-77 due to looking them up so often.
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LetItSnow! From May to December anti-1954 sounds very good indeed in the main... a sign of how awful the final two-thirds of the real 1954 were!
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LetItSnow! Correct! Note how I tried to make the April cold spell and the December as understated as possible.
I have one more year from my own memory that I'll probably do - aside from that I may need to do a bit of reading up on Monthly Weather Reports to get the detail on some historic ones!
@Dancerwithwings that was 1981 also?
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OK here's another one. This one is another from my own memory but I've obfuscated and de-emphasised some key events and emphasised more obscure ones so as not to give the game away.
January was dry and, in parts of the south unusually sunny. It was largely snowless and on the mild side though there were occasional short-lived cold periods. The month ended intensely anticyclonic with sunshine but also fog lingering in some parts.
February was a rather cold and frosty month with decent amounts of sunshine, and the winter's only lying snow in the south occurred around the 21st. It turned milder and wetter at the end. March was a mild, dull and wet month.
April was often dull except for sunnier weather in the middle of the month, and largely dry though turned cold and unsettled towards the end. Unsettled weather continued into May which was very dull and wet though not especially cold with cyclonic SW-lies dominating - a month that would fit in quite nicely into late 2023/early 2024. It was often thundery.
June 1 was the first properly summery warm, sunny day of the year but was followed by notable overnight thunderstorms. The rest of June was cool, and sometimes rather wet but also dry at times; in the south it was drier than average and rather non-descript. Much of July continued the cool theme though again not overly wet, but things improved significantly later in the summer, from late July onwards. In the warmer phase, there was a notable thundery event.
September was not unlike 1999 (see above) with a warm sunny start, becoming very unsettled, wet and cyclonic. Unlike 1999, however, October was wet and cold, though November was dryish and mild. Temps dropped significantly for the last month of the year but in some parts of the country, precipitation totals were above average.
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LetItSnow! True. The exceptionally wet May was the initial clue, and that plus the relatively dry and fine summer (for the 60s) and the December snowstorm clinched it. Have to admit I was unaware of the autumn deluge.
Finding it hard now to select many other years from my own memory which don't feature "give away" events. Maybe I'll obfuscate the next one a little bit by de-emphasising some of the most significant events while still alluding to them.
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LetItSnow! Here I think we're certain to be in the wet category. Whether we progress to very wet depends on whether any of the slack lows or troughs produce further prolonged spells of heavy rain in this area.
Sadly we tend to miss out on the diurnal heating type of convective activity here, so doubt that will contribute much to the eventual total.
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LetItSnow! Correct!
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Alderc 2.0 Certainly ironic that there was nothing yesterday, despite a big temperature gradient. Often seems to be that the most active fronts, even in the summer, are those with little temp contrast.
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danm Here most of that period was sunny dawn to dusk - though we got about three days at the very end of May and start of June where it was cloudy until around 1100 or so.
Mostly early spring and summer yes, though that is mostly, I think, because we just don't get NE-lies in July and August much anymore. I do remember some instances of the same phenomenon in September.
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I guess when we get anticyclonic NE-lies in the summer we often get something a bit coastal California-like, as the North Sea is relatively cold.
Alderc 2.0 Most of my time in the area was in spring, so temps were moderate anyway (absolute max perhaps 20 or 21) though I did also visit the LA area once (in 2004) for a short visit in early August and even then, temps were moderate (would guess around 23-25) due to the maritime influence. This was Long Beach area so even more maritime than downtown LA.
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In Absence of True Seasons Not so sure, cloud build up during the day leading to showers and thunderstorms and an evening clearance is quite common in many climates, including, IMX, parts of continental Europe.
The "grey mornings" pattern is typical of Mediterranean-latitude climates with a relatively cold sea - coastal California being a particularly good example including LA and its well known "June gloom". When I went there in March/April 2002 (not June admittedly) the weather was very like that, cloudy mornings with sunny afternoons and cloud rolling in again after dark.
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raz.org.rain Mind you, I suspect high May CETs require sunny weather more than high CETs for the autumn, winter and early spring.
With rather changeable weather being progged on the models I'd be very surprised if we challenge such years as 1989, 1992 or 2018. First 6 days of the month here were mostly cool by day, too (aside from the 4th) - as has been today.
So at this location, 6 out of 13 days have probably failed to reach the mean max for the season, so far. True, we had 6 consecutive warm and sunny days but plenty of other years have had that, and 27C maxes in the first half of the month. It doesn't seem exceptional here for temp - "mild" rather than "warm" is the overall impression.
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In Absence of True Seasons Surprised the sun is appearing with you, it's only got worse here!
Reminiscent now of a bad day in August, too much light for it to be October-ish this time of day.
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Moans, ramps and banter
in Spring Weather Discussion
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Fen Wolf I've felt chilly at 24C, and really cold at 20C, in certain Mediterranean locations in summer after becoming habituated to 30-32C days and 25-27C evenings!
cheeky_monkey Welcome to normal 2024 UK weather!