Summer of 95

Grey dull and cold but not freezing. Not a trace of snow lying. Why did this stuff all miss here? Normally N'lies and NW'lies are pretty good cos of the Cheshire Gap.

I've been going through the last 3 hours' radars- it just can't seem to get west of the Wrekin! I'm sick of Shrewsbury missing out so often, please let's have a repeat of last Christmas day rather than another November 1996!

hold on-the sky's just suddenly clouded over so there might be hope yet...

Nothing at all on the ground in Shrewsbury, so frustrating reading these reports from the Birmingham and Staffs area- here the ground is wet! We haven't had a decent November snowfall here since 1988.

After all this it's drizzling here? Well it snowed in Scotland, Devon and Cornwall but if you were in between? Yah boo sucks. What a letdown.

A few light sleet/snow/hail(?) showers overnight have turned a few pavements and rooves white, but it looks like nothing more than thick frost. Less than half the ground is covered so not "snow lying". Pretty nippy though

Have had some light sleet and snow showers in Shrewsbury this evening. They have left what I think of as a "dalmatian" coating on the ground.

Massive variation around the West Midlands today. Left Shrewsbury at 8.00, it was clear and everything frozen with the thermometer reading -2. Going east I could see low cloud on the horizon, before Telford I was under it and it was misty too. Through Telford the temp fluctuated between 0 and 3C, there was still frost around but it looked much less severe than in Shrewsbury. Eastwards again visibility fell more, around the Shrops/Staffs border it went back below freezing and was getting foggy. East of Cannock on the M6 Toll there seemed to be almost no frost, the temp has gone up to 3-4C. But the visibility was getting worse still, towards Sutton Coldfield where I was headed it was down to 300m or so. Still though the temp was obviously above freezing, the ground was wet. The fog cleared in Sutton around 11.00, by the time I left at 14.30 it was clear and sunny and around 7-8C. Headed back the same way, suddenly hit the fog around the Norton Canes services. It was denser than it had been there in the morning, where the M6 Toll and M6 met it was barely 200m. It continued like that through Gailey and down the M54. The temp was reading 4C, hardly different from first thing Then just before getting to Telford it suddenly cleared. In Shrewsbury there are still patches of frost where the sun hasn't reached and it's 5C, having clearly been sunny all day. The fog didn't surprise me but the increase in temperatures this morning as I went east certainly did.

With 20 minutes or so till sunset I can report something that doesn't very often happen in Shrewsbury, namely: Unbroken sunshine all day! Maxed at around 4C, the frost having persisted in spots out of the sun. Expect temp to drop rapidly once it gets dark.

Beautiful frosty and clear morning, ground is actually frozen which hardly happened last winter. These frosts are starting to bring the leaves down, at last.

Funny, driving home today that green stuff I saw on the Long Mynd must have been snow then A nice covering of frost in Shrewsbury right now, ruler not needed Last Feb the deepest it got here was 1cm.

Yes and no. What that study showed was that the diurnal temperature range over the USA increased dramatically, in the busiest air corridors by 3C or more, in the three days without air traffic. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,52512,00.html

Some places went a month without rain in summer 1995, from late July to late August. Also I believe some places were rainless for 20+ days in Sep and early Oct 2002 (often forgotten because after this it hardly stopped raining for 2 months!)

I have my own theory about Global Dimming and how it affected the climate of 20th Century Britain. IMO aircraft pollution at the tropopause and just below is one of the main culprits: Horizon mentioned a bit about this but seemed to think it's a more recent phenomenon than it really is. After the cold winters of the 1890s (the last gasp of the LIA I think) Britain warmed fast, especially in winter. For the first 40 years of C20 not one month had a subzero CET (it's only 19 years since the last one at present) and some winter months were of the kind that would raise eyebrows even among today's GW-conscious observers with their extreme mildness (eg Feb 1903, Jan 1916, Feb 1923, Dec 1934). Car traffic and oil burning had steadily increased during this time, sowing the first seeds of dimming. However as the aircraft factor had not yet appeared, warming from greenhouse gases had the upper hand. Until World War 2 when suddenly vast numbers of polluting vehicles got into the upper air for the first time. Cue a start to dimming proper. and an immediate reversal to the warming. Cold winters in the 40s by the bucketload. From 1940-1970, coinciding with the cold period, air and road traffic increased many fold and industry continued to belch out other dimming chemicals. Then in the early 1970s suddenly we had an oil crisis. Less car and aircraft pollution for a while. And a run of incredibly mild winters followed by the hot 75/6 summers. Warming moves ahead on points again. Late 70s-late 80s: Oil crisis over. Air travel booms. New life breathed into dimming. A few more 1940-70 style winters. Then in the late 80s the catalytic converter, and possibly green petrol too, eliminated the dimming chemicals from cars while they continued to belch out the warming ones. Aircraft continued to flourish, however the increasing contrails did not eliminate the warming having lost their cohorts from the ground polluters, but instead did the job they do best more so than ever- namely lowering the daily, monthly and annual temperature range. We haven't had much cold weather since.....

Yes I remember the snow in Shropshire on the 17th May actually had more frost and snow than February in 1995! Obviously I rate 1995 the best summer of my life, second and third would be 1989 and 1990; not sure which order. 1994 and 1999 both had excellent Julys, but in both cases August was disappointing (in 1994 cool and showery, in 1999 warmish but very wet). as was June in 1999. Strangely the other summer besides 1995 that I remember vividly was 1992; which had a superb May and June then a poor July and abysmal August.

If it wasn't for the poor first half of June, I'm sure 1995 would have wiped the floor with 1976 as far as temperatures are concerned. I wonder whether the astronomical summer (ie 21 June-20 Sep) in 1995 also beat the same period in 1976, I'd think it quite likely. The hot weather in 1995 (save for the warm first week of May) started bang on June 21st. Oddly, as I've said before, the period about 10 May-15 June 1995 was by far the coldest such period I can remember. It just didn't rain very much (hardly at all in fact) which is why people forget it. Looking at the MO pages I see it's 6 years since we had a June colder than 1995's, despite June 30th 1995 being the hottest June day in recent times here. September 1995 was average, never very hot but never cold either. And not particularly wet in this area, save for one thunderstorm on 4th. In fact it was notably drier than September 1994 which was a grim month here, over 1C colder than 1995 and around 20mm wetter. I tend to perceive September as "those few weeks of boring weather between the last heatwave and the first frost". In recent years this has all too often included October as well.

Very wet overnight, then dank and drizzly morning. Heavy rain started again about 12.30-still going. Vile day.

I doubt it'll last long. Steady rain here with some strong gusts. I think it's coming your way.

Clear here, and chilly but not I think cold. Apparently Shawbury is reporting 2C at 0000, but I was out half an hour ago and would have estimated about 6. Just looked on Wunderground and MO sites, I wonder if the Wunderground temp is due to the "AUTO" thing but MO are showing it as well. No sign of frost anywhere.

Well all 4 recent very warm Octobers have preceded cold Decembers: 1968 Oct 12.5 Dec 3.0 1969 Oct 13.0 Dec 3.3 1995 Oct 12.9 Dec 2.3 2001 Oct 13.3 Dec 3.6 despite the Novembers and Septembers not showing any pattern.

I emphasise "roughly": 1994. Mild, unexciting, mostly westerly January and early February. Then turned easterly for a while in mid/late Feb however here the 1994 Feb easterly was cold, this year's wasn't. (By "cold" I mean below freezing during day as well as night, with the snow that fell sticking for more than a few hours) This year's did however continue into early March. April and May very unremarkeable in both years. June was mainly warm and sunny both times, though both had cool first weeks and thunder towards the end. July 1994 hot, sunny and mostly dry, 2005 same for mid-month but mediocre at the beginning and dire at the end. August- both years rather disappointing. However 2005 was drier and sunnier than 1994 which was more dull and showery. September: here is the one month that was diffferent. 1994 cool, cloudy and wet; a very poor month: 2005 drier, sunny and often on the warm side. October: mostly similar weather except that 1994 had noticeably cooler nights. 1994-5 winter: Ludicrously mild November, cloudy too but not very wet. December: first 3 weeks as for November, then a few days of frosty weather before the heavens opened on Christmas Eve. They closed in the last week of February, although it snowed a little at New Year. Early March was cold with a decent snowfall on 2nd-3rd, and a light one on 7th. Then it turned mostly warm, sunny and dry for a month, save a 24-hour cold snap in late March.

Raining quite hard after bright and fairly warm day. Heading for the 4th frost-free October out of the last 6.

The one that I spotted a while ago, and always stands out for me (i think I've mentioned it before): December CET 1874 -0.2 then 1884 4.4 1894 5.1 1904 3.7 1914 4.6 1924 6.8 1934 8.1 1944 3.6 1954 6.8 1964 3.6 1974 8.1 1984 5.2 1994 6.4 2004 5.4 Since that time every other "end-digit" has had at least one at 3.0C or below, even into the 1990s. It's also noticeable that some of these Decembers (1894, 1954, 1984) came in what were otherwise cold winters.

Didn't begin to clear till about 1.30 here. Didn't see those forecasts- was it the TV ones and what did they say? All the Net and paper ones I've seen for today had bright sun all day and max 20-21C.

I've just done it manually from Wunderground (pre-1996 you have to do it that way, type in the date in the address, but it gives it to the nearest .1) for Shawbury for May 10-June 9 1995 I make the mean 10.71C. This is substantially higher than the month May 1996 (8.75C) but is however lower than May 2005 (11.15C). However the 10-day period May 10-19 1995 had a mean of a very chilly 7.025C.