Kentish Man

Picking up on a couple of points here no-one of couse is saying forecasting, especially in potentially showery situations, is easy but yesterday the Beeb morning TV presentation (and the previous evenings) of the day's likely events in our region was way off the mark. Emphasis was on a lot of dry weather and sunshine with just a few unlucky people seeing a shower. Istead we had a cool, largely cloudy and rather wet day. Carol Kirkwood I notice this morning was far more circumspect with her choice of words, emphasising the risk is still there of showers, so I'm guessing they are well aware of their error. The Wimbledon scheduling committee have been criticised but I'm kind of betting the Met Offoce had given them a far better forecast than the reality we saw yesterday. My hunch fwiw is that today won't be like yesterday and we will have a fine pleasant day!

It has been a rather poor here today mainly cloudy with pesky litlle bits of showery light rain. Wimbledon has been a bit on and off too with heavier showers.. Have to say the Beeb especially the overly cheery Carol Kirkwood were far too optimistic this morning and once again the fine detail for this region has been inaccurate.

11.2C please

Not sure if the Met Office have since changed it but it's now showing 7.4C to the 29th

Thanks for that explanation and I concur with your last sentence. Apparently the date BST starts is determined by Europe and we can't change it unilaterally. This March has seen some good weather at times and imo it is a shame we don't help our tourist industry after the awful winter by bringing forward the start of BST by two or three weeks.

7.6C please

I'd say to the two shiftworkers above - glad you're being paid well for the unsocial hours but frankly you can't expect the 95% of the population who aren't shift workers not to arrange the clock in a way that suits them best. If you had GMT all year round London in June would have first light just before 3am but curtailed summer evenings which is ridiculous. Equally with BST all year the December sun wouldn't rise until after 9am and 10am in northern Scotland. Virtually all mid latitude countries have some form of daylight saving and being marginally inconvenienced twice a year is a small price to pay.

The only change I'd make is to move the start of BST to the first weekend rather than the last weekend of March. We waste a lot of usable daylight next month especially by the time we reach the Spring equinox.

Not quite sure what happened with the TV forecast - "wet early then dry". Well it's well past Midday and it's still peeing down here. These little inaccuracies are very annoying to those trying to get stuff done outside.

I have at least a childhood memory of most winters since about 1967 and there's no doubt that 2013/14 is not only the worst but the worst by a large margin. The lack of snow and frosts is a factor but obviously it is the incessant wind, rain and flooding that marks this one out as having no redeeming features. There's doesn't even seem to be a late winter/early spring belated cold snap to look forward to in the next couple of weeks. 1975 was very mild but had a cold March/early April that partially redeemed the season.

6.5C please

NEB - I'm not sure people in my part of Kent will regard Dec 2013 as a "very bland, uneventful month" heralding as did the worst floods since September 1968. Temperature wise though the points you make are fair enough.

5.3C please

It looks as if many of us will be in the same boat. In fact here in the far south east we are still having cold nights so our monthly average is currently lower than places to the north and west of us. I expected HP to be more anchored over the top of us than to our south east and also with a chilly November CET of 6.2C I certainly wasn't expecting a December warmer than this which, based on current model output, could well happen.

4.6C please

7.6C please

10.9C cheers

I suppose we in the south east shouldn't whinge too much as overall we get a relatively good deal with the British weather and the Midlands North etc had a lovely sunny day today. However this September has been disappointing so far after a lovely July and August (Philip Eden shows national temps as 1.5C below the running mean and a little on the dull side to boot) but hopes were raised after a poor spell of weather for something better especially today. Unfortunately cloud is notoriously difficult to forecast and a national UK forecast such as this mornings on the Beeb doesn't always get the local detail right - today they mentioned the South Coast would stay cloudy which by implication would suggest those slightly further north in London etc would do better. However their cloud forecast maps showed something rather less optimistic though so maybe Helen was just being economical with the truth!

Bit of a disappointing weekend down here really with the persistent cloud. No doubt we'll have clear skies tomorrow when I'm back at work!

14.7C cheers

In fairness I think it is today which was the massive cock-up. They had been cagey about Sat for some time. In Playing and watching cricket I take a close interest in forecasts at the time of year. I had been thinking of buying tickets for the Oval today at an inflated price above face value and I'm very glad I didn't because under the bad weather guarantee you only get the face value back. Wed - Fri had always been promised dry and warm/hot weather in the south-east and the models were showing this until very recently. My gripe is that although Tamara refers to an example of a winter cock-up it is in fact summer with the much higher temps and complex upper pattterns that the Met Office and others all too regularly don't get a handle on. Obviously the exact detail is difficult to predict a few days ahead but some equivocation or hint a few days ago the dry weather might not happen could have been useful.

Nice downpour here - not sure our short to medium term forecasters can cover themselves in much glory this week. Once again complex summer situations evade them.

Puzzled by sudden talk of showers and showery rain later tonight and tomorrow - where's that popped up from after all the talk of a glorious week at least up to Friday night?