Thundery wintry showers

I'm surprised, I remember getting a fair number of thunderstorms in Norwich when I studied at the University of East Anglia around 2007-2011.

I remember having that kind of pain on 27 May 2017. I was living in Exeter back then, but had gone to my parents' house in the Thirsk area and so missed a big thunderstorm over the South West. And then when the Thirsk area got hit by a big thunderstorm the next day, I was visiting grandparents in South Shields and so missed that one as well! So far it's fair to say that Lincoln has been serving me pretty well since I moved here on the 9th April.

Yes, a pretty potent cell just south of Lincoln at the moment, I haven't seen much lightning (it must be mainly cloud-to-cloud lightning) but thunder has been rumbling very frequently for the past 10-15 minutes.

May 2021 was an active month for thunder. I had 5 thunder-days in Lincoln and the Met Office lightning map showed a fair amount of the UK covered in lightning strikes. But June was indeed a poor month for thunderstorm lovers with large areas having no thunder at all. I had thunder on 1 day (the 7th) but the potential thundery breakdown at the end of the fine spell came to nothing here and after that most of the (limited) thundery activity was near the south coast. So was April, not too surprisingly given that it was very cold and very dry.

One facet of the Munich climate that I imagine could be annoying is that they sometimes get a cold dull wet day following the thundery breakdown at the end of a heatwave. Philip Eden (in his 1995 book Weatherwise) mentioned that this also happens in the Dordogne region in France, and it's probably quite common around the edge of the Alps generally. A weak low can develop over the Alps giving slow-moving areas of rain. Further north in Germany they're less prone to that, but more prone to cool cloudy stuff off the North Atlantic. Today the pressure charts indicate that both processes are in operation keeping the majority of Germany cool and cloudy. There's a weak low to the NE bringing an occluded front, and another weak low over the Alps. It does look like returning to being brighter and warmer with some showers and thunderstorms for much of Germany over the next few days though. There were marked examples of dull wet months in Germany when I was growing up, both associated with Atlantic lows getting trapped over central Europe with accompanying fronts, and an Atlantic high with northerlies over the UK - July 2000 and September 2001. Berlin had just 48% of average sunshine in both months and in September 2001 Munich had just 44% of the average. As those percentages indicate, though, over much of Germany persistently cloudy weather is comparatively rare in the summer half-year.

I find the Munich climate quite attractive. The main snag is too much dull weather in the winter, but otherwise I don't see much to complain about. Being at 400-500m asl they also don't tend to get excessive heat in the summer, I've seen it in the low to mid-30s at Munich airport a few times but not 40+. Munich - Wikipedia EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG They even have a webcam at one of the tallest hotels (which isn't always functioning, but it's live most of the time) which I use to spy on their daily weather. They've had quite a few hefty thunderstorms recently, too. https://camera.deckchair.com/the-westin-grand-munich/v/5f6a7d3f009e0100017f9998 Back home, and here in Lincoln the sun is out today, it feels quite pleasant out there. Still the possibility of some thunder on Sunday judging by the model outputs. Tuesday looks like being unseasonably wet and windy for the time of year though.

Yes, they've got 15.5C on the final monthly values. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_mean_2021 So in the end I was just 0.1C out with my punt of 15.4C, but I underdid the rainfall by rather more. I need to start entering these on a more regular basis though.

Oops... the start of the month crept up too quickly. In view of the possibility of it turning warmer later in the month, let's say 17.3C and 52.3mm. Probably another wet month in the south and dry in the NW.

Here in Lincoln I've been in the transition zone between the dull and wet SE and the sunny and dry NW, and since mid-June it's been mainly dry but overcast, with cool days and warm nights. Usable perhaps, but the lack of sunshine has got rather draining after a while. I have more than a suspicion that the upcoming unsettled spell may see rather more sunshine here, with both the GFS and ECMWF runs pointing towards an emphasis on slack low pressure, thundery showers and some sunshine, though I'm aware that in these setups weak fronts and areas of cloud and rain can turn up at short notice, meaning that it could end up dull as well as wet. Sunday in particular shows convective/thundery potential for this region: There is potential for Monday (5th July) to have a rather autumnal feel with a deep low moving across the south, as is modelled by GFS, but there's a chance that the GFS could be overdoing the depth of the low. I've been envisaging high pressure building from the south-west in the second week of July for some time now, but if it's to happen it needs to start showing in the model outputs pretty soon - the ensemble mean charts from GFS and ECMWF look very ordinary for the time of year at T+192-240, as does the 8-14 day outlook from NOAA.

Hoping that the breakdown to more unsettled weather here might come with a bit more sunshine - certainly the latest GFS and ECMWF runs are going for an emphasis on sunshine mixed with thundery showers. I appreciate that further south it will probably end up largely blending in with the unsettled spell they've been having since mid-June, while in the north-west it will be the breakdown of a warm sunny spell, though.

I forgot to mention that even in the case of New Zealand there are exceptions. I could imagine the climate of Christchurch (near the east coast of the South Island) getting quite samey at times from what I've seen and heard, which might well more than offset the advantage of getting around 2000 hours of sunshine per year. It's hard to gauge how I would think of the climate of Auckland or Wellington, as they are wetter and somewhat sunnier than most of the UK, indicating less periods of non-descript grey drizzly weather, and certainly look like being strongly to my taste in the summer, but I might well miss the lack of frost and snow in the winter, as their winters are very mild. Somewhere like Nelson might be pretty hard for anywhere in the UK to beat, though, as there they get plenty of temperature variation, over 2400 hours of sunshine and yet still get over 900mm of rain per year. Nelson, New Zealand - Wikipedia EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG

Yes, on balance I'd probably find the climate of many parts of New Zealand more interesting than anywhere in the UK. However, I'd also say that from my POV, the parts of the world that have more interesting climates are probably somewhat outnumbered by the parts that don't. In particular, there are many parts of the world that aren't capable of getting anywhere near the range of weather types and regimes that we get. After moving to Lincoln I found plenty of interest in the weather from early April through to mid-June. It's just the second half of June that has dragged, having a lot of cloud and just the odd bit of sun and the odd bit of rain. I did find Exeter's climate comparatively boring relative to eastern England (although it did have its moments), indicating that there is also regional variation in the UK.

Getting quite depressing in Lincoln now, there's been the odd bit of sun over recent days but since 24 June there's been very little. Indeed, since around 17 June there have only been two particularly sunny days (22nd and 23rd, though at least my birthday, 22nd, fell on one of them). I haven't seen the sun at all today. It's a consequence of that slow moving low over the south bringing in a lot of cloud off the North Sea as well as having cloud wrapped around it. Certainly a June of very contrasting halves here, as the first half was warm and sunny. Roger Brugge's site has RAF Waddington on 169.8 hours of sunshine, suggesting that sunshine here will come out near to slightly below average.

I guess my main criticism of the British climate isn't the climatic range but the high frequency of grey non-descript weather and the low sunshine hours. But having said that, if you took the east of England climate, tweaked the relative frequencies of some of our synoptic setups, and reversed climate change back to where it was at during the mid-1990s, you'd be pretty close to my idea of an ideal climate. Generally speaking I've considered the climates of a large part of continental Europe more interesting/favourable than ours, but with climate change this is increasingly offset by a growing frequency of dangerous heatwaves. Certainly parts of New Zealand come into consideration as potentially having more interesting/favourable climates than ours from a personal POV. But yes, I might well find many parts of the USA too extreme, and again with climate change this is becoming more of a problem in the summer. Apparently this country gets the highest number of tornadoes per unit area on average, but rarely are they severe enough to cause much damage. I saw a funnel cloud as recently as 24 May.

Yes, growing up in Tyneside I thought of 1994-96 as three good summers in a row. Admittedly June 1994 had a west-east split due to a high frequency of westerlies, so some western areas had a rather cool cloudy month, but it was dry, sunny and quite warm in most eastern areas. I've always thought of the addition of 1997 to make "four in a row" marginal because of the last two-thirds of June 1997 (in particular the last week was a washout with maxima of 10-13C), and the hot August of 1997 had more emphasis on warm sticky nights. But I certainly remember early June 1997 and parts of July having plenty of warm sunshine, and August was of course exceptionally hot. Interestingly August 1997 was a very sunny month in parts of the north-west, less so in the south, which isn't that common in notably hot months. There's known to be a perception among some that "summers were better in my childhood". In my case, growing up in the 1990s, perhaps there's a strong case for arguing that.

The UK hasn't lacked record high temperatures in recent years to be fair. Three months set records in 2019: February (21.2C), July (38.7C) and December (18.7C). Also in February 2021 Braemar recorded the lowest February minimum since 1955 (-23.0C). August 2020 had a very notable heatwave. My main criticism of this climate is the high frequency of setups with lots of cloud, the odd bit of sun and the odd bit of rain, and not much going on, but the lack of temperatures well into the 40s Celsius is not something I'd criticise our climate for.

Yes, I was seeing parallels with June 2006 even before the weather broke, thinking "this spell of warm sunny weather reminds me a lot of the first 12 days of June 2006". I was in Leeds in June 2006 and the weather became somewhat cloudier but still mainly dry from the 13th onwards. This June has gone a similar way here in Lincoln too. Stats from RAF Waddington suggest that it was also a similar story here in June 2006. There's still plenty of hope of it turning much brighter for my birthday tomorrow though. I saw the clearer weather move into the north of England late today with some clearer skies to the far north/north-west of here at sunset. Looks like the grey skies will return from 23-26 June though. If the parallels with 2006 continue, though, remember that July...

Looks like being grey here today and tomorrow, but it's looking good for it brightening up on my birthday (Tuesday 22nd) in this area of the UK, as the ridge of high pressure moves in and the cloud sheet moves away eastwards. The brighter weather might not make it into East Anglia and the south-east until Wednesday.

Cloud amounts can be hard to pin down in this kind of mid-Atlantic/Azores ridging setup, it really depends on the specifics. I've known plenty of such spells that were predominantly dry and cloudy with the odd bit of sun and the odd bit of rain, a good example being in late July 2010: On the other hand, some of the charts that are being shown for the back end of June remind me of the historic charts for the second week of July 1989. Sunshine amounts were generally high during that ridge-dominated spell, even in the north and east, with fairly warm days and chilly nights, before the high drifted east and brought a hotter, sunny spell starting midmonth. Comparing charts like these, it appears that a lot depends on how dominant/close the ridging is. With this in mind, the latest GFS (06Z) looks mostly dry but fairly cloudy out to T+240, but the latter stages of the ECMWF 00Z run would probably be sunny and quite warm for the majority of the country. In the near term, a window of dry sunny weather looks set to push south-eastwards across the country on Tuesday and Wednesday, establishing over most central, northern and western areas on Tuesday and spreading into the south-east on Wednesday, but with grey weather moving into the north-west with some drizzle near western coasts. Then after another cloudy day on 24th with some light rain spreading from the north, we get a chilly northerly on the 25th, and then perhaps another dry sunny slot moving across the country on the 26th/27th. I've been watching the possibility for some thundery showers to develop in places from the northerly on the 25th, but this is not certain, and relies on there not being fronts embedded in the air stream. After that, the positioning of the ridge of high pressure is uncertain, but there's a fair chance of it generally moving closer to the British Isles.

My reading of the last third of June is "mainly dry but fairly cloudy", with Britain on the north-western flank of the Azores High. It does depend on the extent of the low pressure system moving in from the north-west around day 6 (25 June), which has been blown up over the British Isles on the ECMWF 12Z run, but it doesn't have much support from the ensembles. It looks like being near average to fairly cool until around 26-27 June, but with potential for warmer, humid air to head in from the west-north-west during the last few days of June. The NOAA 8-14 day outlook hints at a continuation of this pattern through week 2 with a strong Atlantic ridge: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/500mb.php Thus, the current outlook looks "usable" but nothing spectacular. The wet May that we've just had, and the recent rain, may prove useful, as there's no guarantee of much rain during the rest of June. I believe that there's a fair chance of the high pressure establishing over the UK towards the second week of July, promising something warmer/hotter and sunnier, but that's a long way off.

It's possible that the rain many of us have had recently may be useful because the models have increasingly toned down the rainfall for the rest of June. Away from the south, it looks pretty dry from Monday onwards (even the fronts around the North Sea low have been toned down) and although the ECMWF operational run has a low passing over the country at day 6-7, it doesn't have a lot of support from the ensembles. I can foresee the upcoming spell of weather having a lot of "usable" weather, not particularly warm or sunny, but generally dry.

Aye, it's looking fairly ordinary from Wednesday onwards for much of the country, perhaps Tuesday away from the south-east (it looks like the brighter weather associated with a ridge of high pressure might just make it to my area of the country for my birthday on Tuesday, though it's on a knife edge). I posted about disappointment with the outlook last Thursday and I think my post was justified then, as this is the third day in a row of grey overcast weather here and there's at least another two days of it to come. The longer-term outlook, lying on the north-eastern flank of the Azores High, doesn't particularly excite me, it has to be said, but it's different to what many of us have now: temperatures should be about average, sunshine and rainfall should be variable.

I checked the stats for RAF Waddington and here it was more similar to Manchester: June and July were dry and sunny with warm days, near average temperatures by night, whereas August was warm by day and night but with closer to average sunshine and rainfall. August was a good month for the storm lovers around here, with 7 days with thunder. I got some surprises when I looked through the Waddington records going back to 1949. The only sunnier summers were in 1959, 1975, 1976, 1989, 1995 and 2018, and the only drier summers were in 1959, 1975, 1976, 1991 and 1995 - and there haven't been any drier summers since. This is despite me having used a Kipp-Zonen to Campbell-Stokes conversion for the summers of recent years when a Kipp-Zonen sunshine sensor was used. So in this part of the country it seems that 1996 definitely goes down as a forgotten and underrated summer.

I had thunderstorms on your birthday in 2009 (they were very widespread that day) and in 2016.

I remember I enjoyed this summer a lot in Tyneside, it had some of almost everything and all three months had above average sunshine, especially June. All three of the main summer months had a sunny anticyclonic spell around midmonth, and in July and August, it ended with a thundery breakdown. I remember some lightning displays shortly after sunset on 22 July 1996, and some thunder on the 23rd, and more thunder and lightning on 23 August. There was also the memorable Spanish plume on 6-7 June. I remember July being a bit disappointing late in the month, but had no complaints about June or August. 18 August 1996 also hit 30C at Sunderland, somewhat unusual for coastal north-east England. It also got to around 27C near the end of the July anticyclonic spell. I remember though that my family didn't think that much of summer 1996, probably because it suffered by comparison with the summer of 1995 and a large part of summer 1994, and because it was preceded by a cold May and followed by a grey drizzly start to September. It was also followed by the hot August of 1997. All of this probably contributes to it being forgotten, but from the Scottish Lowlands southwards, there haven't been many sunnier summers since.