IcySpicy
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I haven't posted in a while (as I don't really like winter anyways and here where I live it is cold and dark no matter what), but came to say that we've been having an unexpectedly cold and snowy winter so far. Last night reached around -25C in my city. Even in early December we already had days where it was around -10 to -15C. Also had lots of snow. Quite unusual in recent years, where most of the time temperatures are around -3 to +3C and cold snaps don't last very long. This super cold weather is kinda cool for the novelty, but it's also a nuisance at this point, you really can't do much outside in -20C besides walk from car to door. Too cold for winter sports or longer walks/hikes.
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This high-latitude blocking is so, so unnecessary right now, bringing near freezing temperatures to my part of Europe. Would be nice setup in January, but not now.
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It was awfully cold today. Might as well just call it winter, as it's only 1-3C. I'm not too fussed about warmth at this point in the year, but I don't like the current set-up at all. Doesn't feel like autumn anymore, feels like a mild winter day. Year after year the shoulder seasons keep getting worse. This year we went from summer-like temperatures in September right into pre-winter within a few weeks. We had maybe 1 week of temperatures around 10-15C, which would be appropriate in mid-Autumn. And now we have aroun 5-6 more months of this < 5C dross to go.
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2 hours ago, cheese said:
I’ve noticed winter holidays abroad becoming more common in recent years. Lots of people I’ve spoken to are going to the Mediterranean in November/December.
Very common in Estonia as well. Those who can afford it might even take 2-3 holidays in the October-March period. Of course not everyone has the means, but many many people do take at least one winter holiday to Egypt, Turkey or the Canaries. Growing up, my family only went on summer holidays, but these days I am also thinking about going on winter holiday every year. The cold and dark season is just too long here.
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Although it's been quite cold, I've quite enjoyed the past week's weather. Had some rain and wind but also some sunshine. Foliage is beautiful too.
But starting tomorrow, we will be under a cold airmass and might get the first snow showers of the season. I don't care that much to be honest, from mid October onwards I go into winter mode until late March. No point in being upset about cold and dark weather here at this latitude. Although it's a bit of a waste having this cold setup in mid October, knowing how recent winters have been, it will flip to mild again and we'll be stuck with 4-5C temperatures from now until mid December or so.
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2 hours ago, NEVES SCREAMER said:
And me. Already counting down the days to April.
55 minutes ago, Methuselah said:And 7C in October is pure purgatory!
Me right now
. Model runs tonight were horrible, building a full on Scandi high BFTE setup...in mid October. After a slightly milder spell in the second half of this week, temperatures will be back to 5C, possibly even below. This feels like a sick joke, it's like we are going to have two Novembers this year 
. The warmth in September feels like a distant memory already and I'm not happy with these temperatures going forward...
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26 minutes ago, danm said:
Yes it was pretty bad luck to be honest. Europe sweltered. With a tweaked synoptic set up we would have tapped into that and had another scorching Summer. Alas it all fell wrong for us (from a heat perspective) in July and early Aug.
*Southern and Central Europe. Scandinavia and the Baltics also had a rather cool July - early August. Extreme heat is less common here of course, but this year also felt a bit unusual/bad luck that the cooler weather took up all of July.
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12 minutes ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:
That's a very abrupt shift. I know its typical of Baltics to have a more severe drop off to the colder temps than UK (due to the maritime climate), but that is rather sudden.
As you say, it's like not really have a proper Spring or Autumn season - just a switch from 'hot' to cold', and then from 'cold' to 'hot'.
On the flipside, winter in the UK can often jus feel like a really long extended Autumn, but with shorter days, where the temps don't feel 'wintry' at all and in the south, we get zero snow.
It is sudden. Our climate is more continental but it shouldn't be so abrubt, we should still be somewhat moderated by the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic. This feels like something more typical for interior North America.
Our winters are colder, but in recent years we've also had plenty of days in the 3-4C range in January and February, so sometimes winter also feels like a long autumn-winter hybrid that is broken up by a few cold spells.
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19 minutes ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:
I have to admin. It's honestly wild how we are getting all these patterns of settled, sunny and dry weather with temps over 20c throughout basically the whole of September and now into October too, when we struggled to even get 1 or 2 days of such weather in a row for the vast majority of high summer.
It's truly classic, British climate meme-tier stuff.
I remember calling it too, back in those 16/17c dark, deluge days during July and August (alongside many others on here) - "I bet we'll have 23c and sunny in October! Well, here we bloody well are...
Why can't we just have this weather when it's actually the right season for it!?
I mean, I'm glad the sun is out as opposed to it being grey for days on end, but our seasonality is just a joke by this point. October bringing higher temps and better sunshine hours than mid-July. What a joke.
I'd like to be able to wear my Autumn jackets at some point soon! Considering I was wearing a proper coat at numerous points in July....lol....
Long sleeve jumper AND a vest? Come on, you're almost acting as if it's Autumn! Oh wait....
As much as I would enjoy 20+ C instead of our current 5C, I see your point and agree. Estonia is more seasonal than the UK, but in recent years I feel like spring and autumn here are either too cold or too warm and the temperature changes are too abrubt. Like this year we went from 23C in late September to literally only 4C within a week. 4C is more of a pre-winter (aka November) temperature than peak autumn. Same thing has happened in recent springs (2023 luckily was a bit better, but 2020 and 2021 were a big offenders), where we had 7-10C temperatures into mid May and then 2 weeks later in June it's 25-30C. It is like temperatures between 12 and 18C are completely missing when it's seasonal ( mid September-October and April-early May), instead its either 5C or 25C. And then of course the 15-17C days happen in mid July.
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6 minutes ago, razorgrain said:
In theory if the Baltics get a SSW, Western Europe will be on the inverse and warmer side. I wouldn't argue against that, but it would suck for Eastern Europe.
I guess in some years like Feb/March 2018 there are cold blasts that affect all of Northern Europe, including the UK. But the point still stands that temperatures in the UK / Western Europe will recover much faster. Eastern Europe can be stuck with the cold until mid-April.
Interestingly, the early spring cold of 2013 and 2018 were followed by good summers, so it's not all bad. I think the current cold snap is getting to me, the idea of being stuck with temperatures below 5C temps for the next 6 months is dreadful.
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Started raining again. Very unusual how much moisture there in this cold airmass. We have -5 uppers currently. Usually in autumn and winter, we get rain with warm fronts/mild air, and colder air masses bring crisp and sunny weather. I can only imagine that the warm SST's are to blame.
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Yeah, today models seem to have picked up hints for something cooler in late October. This will probably bring the first snowfall of the season here in Estonia if it comes off. But in my opinion it isn't really helpful for winter. Most likely there will be another pattern change to something milder for November/December.
This is just a gut feeling, but I am getting a little worried about this winter being a sandwich season, aka cold in October/November, then mild in the core winter months, only to end with a late SSW and turn cold again in March/April. This might not be so much of an issue in the UK, since it's sheltered from the worst of the cold, but here in Estonia this would be awful. I like cold snowy weather in January and February, but I don't want to be stuck with unseasonably cold 5C in October and April and then unseasonably mild 0C-2C in Dec-Feb.
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Another very cold day here, around 4-5C. At least no drizzle today. And funnily enough, it also feels like a spring day, obviously not a late April/ May day, but like a March day. The sky is hazy/milky with just a bit of sun coming through. The sun is not strong enough to make you feel warm, but enough to get the temperature above freezing and make the snow melt. Only its October...and there is no snow...and most trees still have lots of green leaves and it feels kind of surreal.
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Absolutely terrible weather here. 5C with wind and drizzle. Feels like November (or even January in recent years). Everyone is different with their temperature tolerance, but to me anything below 8-10C is unpleasant. I can accept the cold in the winter months and sometimes even enjoy a walk in crisp -10 C weather with the right clothing but in general it is a nuisance.
Due to the cold wind our house has also cooled down, despite it being warm all September and having the heating on.
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Honestly, can't really blame people for wanting warm weather. I would enjoy 24C (or even 14C) a lot more than our current 4C here. I know it's selfish to think this way, but for Estonia global warming has made our climate better (well so far, who knowss what will happen when it gets too out of hand). Our historical averages are horribly cold. Older people do talk about years when there was snow on the ground from October to April and then followed by a rainy cool summer. Some might find it nostalgic, but no thanks, I wouldn't want to live in a climate like that. Sure, the milder winters are dull and wet, but it's an ok trade-off for having more warmth in other months.
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10 minutes ago, razorgrain said:
The US is probably falls more under the influence of polar masses in the winter months, due to the continent being large and continuous well beyond the Arctic cycle. Europe has the opposite, most of its continuous continental mass sits within the mid latitudes with a huge desert to the south. I think continental Europe's colder air masses usually push in from the east whereas in the US/Canada it pushes down from the north.
To be fair, Scandinavia and the Baltics do get quite a lot of cold weather from northwesterlies/ straight northerlies. Our current cold snap is from a northwesterly too. Happens when there is an Atlantic ridge combining with a high over Svalbard. Straight northerly.
The real winter cold is over Siberia though, but imo "Beast from the east" situations have become less frequent here. Oldies tell stories of -35 or -40C temperatures here in Estonia and how that came from Siberian cold. But nowadays I don't see the synoptics for this. December and January tend to be westerly dominated nowadays. Easterlies seem more common in March/April, but at that point it's not going to be that cold anymore, just ruined spring weather/
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5 minutes ago, Catbrainz said:
Ive had the same thought as you regarding June/July if they were swapped with a poor June followed by a outstanding July then a average August it'd be seen as a fair bit better. Say something like June 2012 or 2016 (Both very poor for the UK) followed by a July 2013/2018/2022 then this years August it'd be seen as a good summer overall. I would say overall it was a meh summer not terrible but not good 4.5/10 overall counting May and Sept both of which were good months here this year but 3/10 counting only Jun-Aug. Better than say 2007 or 2012
Yeah, poor June - good July - average August is probably the best combination for a mixed summer. Here in Estonia 2014 was like that and most remember that year as a good summer. That year we had nice spring, which culminated with a short heatwave in May. Then in June we had 3 weeks of horrible weather. It truly was rank, some days only reaching mid-teens with strong northerly winds. I think some places even recorded a sleet shower. But in July the weather did a 180 (exactly the opposite of this year...) and all of July was dry and hot. The heat continued into the first half of August. Everyone had forgotten about the horrible June by then.
Here I'd rate Summer 2023 a 6.5/10 counting May-Sept ( I'm generous here because the last few years (2020-2022) we had horribly cold springs and having to endure 10C temperatures in May is torture after our long winters, so this May felt great by comparison). Only counting Jun-Aug I'd rate it around 4.5-5 /10 (mostly thanks to June and a pretty nice mid-August period). July on its own deserves a 2/10 though.
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15 minutes ago, NEVES SCREAMER said:
I think warmth in Autumn is just as much a part of it as cold. Just depends which way the wind blows.
I mean this is Northern European weather in a nutshell. We are at the latitude where the jetstream is, so the weather really does depend on which side of the polar front you are. You guys are on the warm side currently, I am on the cold side lol. Both situations are "normal" in the broad sense but I guess due to climate change the jet gets stuck for longer periods and thus heat waves and cold snaps last longer.
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1 hour ago, cheese said:
The following European capitals will record their first sub-10C highs of the season tomorrow:
Helsinki
Stockholm
Oslo
Tallinn
Riga
Moscow
Vilnius
Minsk
Nothing surprising there.
Stockholm is so far the only European capital to have recorded their first air frost (-1.1C on the 6th).
Yeah, this part of Europe tends to be pretty cold. Interestingly, North America has a similar thing going on, with many cities in the Great Lakes region only reaching 11-12C in the coming days. Not quite single digit, but still quite chilly considering they are at a much lower latitude.
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Here in Estonia it's going to be tomorrow. Pretty normal time for it, I'd say. Some years we get the odd sub 10C day in September, but thats definitely a cold snap. By mid October single figure maximas are normal, although thanks to climate change it's more and more common for highs to be around 10-13C until the end of the month or even the first week of November. (although cold snaps like the one coming tomorrow still happen)
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Now that the extended summer period (May-Sept) is over, I'll also give my thoughts on the season.
Here in Estonia we had many of the same weather patterns as in the UK (very dry and sunny June, followed by a dull July and then a pretty average August). For all 3 months together, I think we ended up with slightly above average mean temperature and around average rain and sunshine (although the latter two were definitely held up by the sunny June...). May was also very sunny (although had some very cold nights) and September was very warm.
But here the problem was also the timing of the worst weather. It turned unsettled exactly on the 1st of July and that spell lasted until the second week of August. We had better luck than the UK with weekend weather, but still almost every single day in July it rained at some point. We also didn't reach 30C that moonth. Here all of July and the first 15-20 days of August are peak holiday season.... and most of it was a write-off apart from the 15-16th of July, 5-6th of August and the week from the 12th to 19th of August. The only positive was that even the cooler days weren't that cold, it was mostly 18 - 22C and not like 15-16C. But often it was very cloudy and dull, so not really great weather for summer activities like swimming, camping, BBQs.
I think if June and July were reversed it wouldn't have felt like a bad summer, as the first half of June often still has a spring-like feel to it and cooler temperatures are more tolerable. Another factor is the major fail from the long term forecasts, all were going for a warm and dry month right until the pattern change. Blindly trusting those forecasts is not a great idea but June was going well up to that point and the blocked pattern seemed locked in, so I think we simply weren't expecting such a 180 turn and for those conditions to last as long as they did.
But looking back on it and taking May and September into account, I think it was overall a pretty decent summer season/warm half of the year. Not a classic by any means, but we've had worse stinkers like 2012, 2015 and 2017. And even 2021 and 2022 weren't perfect here. 2021 for example had a record breakingly hot June and July, but May, August and September were all colder than average. 2022 had all three summer months above average, but again, May and September were very cold. I think I still prefer a hot July over a very warm May or September, but it still sucks if those months are very cold and thus make the summer season feel very short
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First autumn storm of the season here in Estonia. It's not too bad in my town, but pretty bad along the coast and in the countryside. Most trees still have their leaves, so that increases breakage. Tomorrow is gonna be a bogeyman day though, high of only 4-5C with potential sleet showers lol.
This is a petty moan, but I hate Euro high setups like the current one
, keeps all the warmth in Western Europe and barrels storms towards us.... it could at least slowly move eastward, but instead the models just flatten it out and none of the warmth will reach us. But oh well, we had our treat in September, and here late July/early August wasn't as bad as in the UK.
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There have been many flops from long range models in recent years (July 2023 for one, also for Estonia every spring from 2020-2022 was forecasted to be above average, only for April and May to end up cold/barely average 3 years in a row), so I don't trust them a lot, especially when they flip around like that, need to see November or even December updates for consistency.
With climate change the odds are in favor of a mild winter, although I do think a SSW is likely to happen at some point in the season and that can bring weeks of cold weather to N Europe. I'd rather have it happen in January rather than late February/March. I don't want to see any Greenland blocking + Scandi trough setups in March or April.
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50 minutes ago, cheese said:
Yeah, at this time of year Western Europe can still get very warm or even hot, while the Nordics and Baltics pretty much never exceed 20C in October. Record highs in October: London 29.5C, Paris 28.9C, Brussels 27.8C, Berlin 27.7C..... vs Tallinn 21.8C, Oslo 21.0C, Stockholm 20.2C, Helsinki 17.6C. Seems like the Nordics and Baltics are just a bit too far north to experience heat in October. The far northern parts of the UK are the same - Inverness only has a record high of 20.3C in October.
The record high in October for Leeds is 28.9C, equal to Paris which is very surprising. I expected Paris to have a much higher record temperature than that.
Yeah, you guys are a lot closer to the heat source (Spain and North Africa) and the hot air coming from there can cause high temperatures despite the low sun angle. But until it makes it way over here it gets mixed with cooler Arctic air and getting heat is pretty difficult. Although just a week ago we had the right synoptics for it and it reached 23-24C, the uppers weren't even that crazy, maybe 11 to 13C, I think with 15-16C uppers we could have managed to reach 25-26C.
Winter 2023/24 Chat and Discussion
in Spring Weather Discussion
Posted
Yeah, it seems like Europe has lots of extreme East-West spilts in recent times. Not only in winter, I remember spring 2020 was like that, very sunny and nice in Western Europe, but super chilly here in the NE. Or summer 2021, quite gloomy for most of the UK, but very hot and dry here in Estonia. Seems quite rare to get seasons where all of Europe is having hotter or colder than average conditions.