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Thundery wintry showers

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  1. Thundery wintry showers
    After a couple of what were, by North East standards, feeble cold snaps in January and February, something with rather more substance happened over the last few days.
    Monday had sunshine and wintry showers throughout the afternoon, although it did feel more like a potent early to mid-April cold snap, or a half-hearted late March snap. I recorded a max of 7.8C, but it frequently fell to 2-3C during wintry showers, and there were impressive Cb cells around.
    Tuesday: I only got up to 3.8C, which is a notably low maximum for a day in the second half of March that brought with it a fair amount of sunshine. I had 3cm lying snow in the morning, and some of it survived the daytime thaw, though by 1pm there was less than half-cover. There were some impressive near-'blizzard' conditions at times, with horizontal blowing snow, it looked almost like puffs of white smoke moving from north to south. Snow cover returned last night but not to the same extent; it's now thawing in the sun.
    So possibly a bit warmer by night due to the high SSTs, but overall a fairly potent northerly once those -10s at 850hPa came down on Tuesday.
    Looking further ahead, it's quite possible that the cold could be followed by a very warm spell, if those easterly winds subside; the GFS 00Z then has a white Easter in the offing (though the GFS should not be trusted at T+360!) Maybe this year we might end up with a variable spring.
  2. Thundery wintry showers
    Going off to Norwich in two days, and the apprehension increases; it's very much delving into the unknown. I don't know how much different doing a PhD will be to doing the research part of my MRes; hopefully the two will be quite similar, because if they are, it should be a very rewarding three years ahead.
    Some will remember that I had some friendship issues some years ago. Most people seem to follow an unwritten rule that all conflicts involving friendships are the friend's fault and that you need to "move on" by "cutting the friend out of your life". Although I didn't have many issues at Leeds University, one of the people on my course fell foul of this one, she had an unfortunate clash with someone else, and everyone assumed she was stringing the person along and cut her out. She was effectively a scapegoat.
    I believe that principle stems from the general idea "family matters, friendship is unimportant", as in family conflicts this principle never seems to apply. However, if a person follows it, it doesn't mean the person sees friendship as unimportant- as it's widely accepted without question, most people tend to follow it regardless of their other related beliefs. Whatever, it causes many innocent friends to become scapegoats.
    In recent weeks, I've got back in touch with quite a number of people I never thought I'd get back in touch with again. And, if I'd followed the above unwritten rule, chances are I'd have "cut most of them out of my life", rendering myself worse off in the long run. Yes, I know it's seen as "moving on" in the sense of moving from old friends to new friends, but I've never been keen on the idea that moving on means holding lifelong grudges against people, often for things they haven't done, and that letting go of said grudges is a sign of not having moved on! Another line of evidence for my argument perhaps.
  3. Thundery wintry showers
    One week further on, and somewhat surprisingly, I finished the Doom 3 level episode- today! The penultimate level took three months to create (although I spent a lot of that time doing things other than level editing), then the last level took just one week.
    Thus I should even get some tinkering done with the earlier levels before I go to Norwich.
    Otherwise have enjoyed two nice sunny days, after the persistent cloud cover of the past week. Yesterday had a nice meal at an Italian restaurant and got pretty stuffed. The Bank Holiday weekend looks like a 'sunny intervals' fest, on the eastern periphery of our high.
  4. Thundery wintry showers

    Work

    By Thundery wintry showers,

    At the moment, I am a week and a half into an 8-week break at home, before I go to University (again!) to do the PhD. It's both exciting and apprehension-inviting at the same time- I don't know what it will be like! However, since I'm going to be researching into the realms of meteorological statistics, the work is bound to be interesting regardless.
    Other than that, relaxing. It's been a relaxing year out, but at the same time, I've been finding that with regards 'work-life balance', it's possible to have too much 'life' and not enough 'work'! I found doing my MRes at Leeds gave rise to a suitable work-life balance- hopefully the PhD will be similar.
    Having read about a certain member of N-W's recurring job problems, ranging from 70-hour workweeks to emotion-sapping office dragfests, reminds me of what lots of people have preached to me over the years. "Your mentality of 'I want to pursue a career working in areas where I enjoy the work' will have to change." they say. "You'll learn that money has to be the top priority- the mentality should be 'I can put up with work I can't stand, as long as it pays well'. That's life- it's necessary because it's just the way it is."
    There are plenty of social norms that I can't stand, and this is certainly one of them. I'm very used to being at odds with the social norm, and it can be a risky business (delving into the unknown, and if you encounter resultant troubles, it's seen to be your fault for being different.) However, so far, I've done a pretty good job at dodging this one, and it looks hopeful that I should be dodging it successfully for at least three more years.
  5. Thundery wintry showers
    I am preparing for my holiday in France with my parents, should be going away tomorrow and coming back on Monday 23 July. The region in question is near the Massif Central, more or less in central France, though will be spending the two weeks of the holiday in slightly different places. Most likely I will be spending much of the holiday lazing around, playing table tennis etc, consuming crusty French-stick bread and ice-creams. My holidays in France in the last three years were all very enjoyable so hopefully this one won't be an exception!
    Meanwhile the weather here in Cleadon has been uncharacteristically exciting- until last month I hadn't recorded more than three thunder-days in a month, yet today makes it four on the trot! Just as remarkably, I have heard thunder on 8 days out of the last 22. I don't like dull unsettled weather, but I'll take these convective "sunshine and showers" days anytime.
    That said, while sunshine amounts have been okay here over 1-4 July, it appears that this emphatically hasn't been the case over much of the rest of Britain- although to be fair we did fare particularly badly sunshine wise during June, so it's merely redressing the balance a bit!
    The weather outlook for Cleadon for the next two weeks is dreadful- the exciting weather set to end tomorrow, with lots of dull wet Atlantic dross to come. Although it looks pretty unsettled for central France too, I'll be hoping that we miss most of the dull wet dross and get sun, showers and thunderstorms instead.
  6. Thundery wintry showers
    I am away in France from 5 to 23 July- starting to prepare for that. In the meantime, I've been busy uploading my weather records into the internet; finally finished doing so yesterday, so that's that done! Meanwhile, this month looks set to break all kinds of weather records for the wrong reasons (e.g. record flooding, June locally in the northeast, the dullest of any month since Feb/Mar 2006!) I expect to be updating my website with monthly data not long after the turn of each month, rather like Paul Tall does with his Newton Aycliffe summaries.
    Other than that, had an enjoyable bowling alley trip on 24 June with my mates (as I often do at around birthday-time), and been raising some laughs at some of the Tom & Jerry DVD cartoons- apart from the censorship issues I ranted about in the last blog, it's a top-notch collection.
  7. Thundery wintry showers
    Just watched a few more of those Tom & Jerry episodes I got for my birthday. The cartoons themselves are fine, but there's been some annoying 'censoring' of them going on, especially the redubbing of Mammy Two-Shoes (I grew up on the uncensored versions that the BBC showed until 2000 and the uncensored VHS editions from the 80s and 90s). As it happens, the versions I have are the best available, and remarkably, there are no uncensored versions available any more.
    Yes, if some find the originals racially offensive, by all means release censored versions alongside the originals, but phasing out the distribution of the originals really is a case of 'political correctness gone mad'; a large majority of people didn't find them offensive.
    Okay, so maybe the 'blackface gags' were originally intended as racist jokes (which is totally unacceptable, but more a symptom of the way society was in the 1940s than anything else). However, there's a perfectly non-racist reason for people appearing in blackface following an explosion- I always assumed until recently that they went black because they were coated in charcoal. If we're to censor that sort of thing, should we do that with all cartoons that feature explosions, and should we censor the burning of toast because the fact that burnt toast is black could be used by bigots to perpetuate racism?
    I say all of the above as someone who is a big advocate of equality of opportunity and who despises discrimination of any form. But the real problem stems from people judging each other by stereotypes rather than as individuals, and embedding such stereotypes into social norms (such that they are accepted without question), and it's this that we need to be tackling. Most jokes about stereotypes, TV showings of stereotypes etc. are actually harmless as long as they aren't taken seriously (and Tom & Jerry is one of the most non-serious cartoons in existence).
    This obsession with "avoiding causing offence" is only scraping the surface of the problem, and is posing a real threat to freedom of speech and expression. I mean, in future will it be politically incorrect to like snow because it might offend those who have suffered bereavment of elderly people who died?
    Rant over.
  8. Thundery wintry showers
    Had a decent birthday today- indeed I can only remember two years when I haven't had a good birthday- it's probably partly because I make such a big thing of it!
    Got some new clothes, some sweets, and a set of Tom & Jerry DVDs. I haven't seen T & J for a long time, but I remember I used to watch it regularly at my grandparents' and I regularly tuned in to BBC when they showed it until 2000. According to reviews there are some issues with PC censorship (shame on the PC brigade) but haven't noticed any on my two favourite episodes. It was like putting the clock back when I viewed them- and I still find them as funny as I used to as a child.
    Had a good morning going to the local painting club and bringing a nice birthday cake in.
    As for the weather, many people might have noticed me complaining about Cleadon's weather today. Ironically, the post in my previous blog...
    ...turned out to be remarkably accurate, though at least the low cloud stayed off until late evening, giving us a sunny dry day rather than a dull one. And yes, I did hear, much to my angst, about how "lucky" I was to miss the showers.
    Yet another example to put with the rest of why, with the exception of its "thundery wintry showers" episodes in winter that inspired my Net-Weather name, I don't like the climate of the north-east coast. Actually, I think much of the North East has quite a reasonable climate; it's just along the coast that gets on my nerves.
    Might be doing more stuff this weekend. I feel more content with life; some feedback from UEA also about accommodation though I don't know where I'll be living yet, and probably won't know for a while. Some feedback also about Exeter and the Met Office- the PhD, and opportunity to work for the MetO, are feeling more mouth-watering as I get closer to the time. Meteorology has been my main passion since the age of four, and it's great to be in a position where I supply forecasts for an increasingly well-known, respected website (i.e. this one) and can think realistically in terms of pursuing a career in climate-related fields.
  9. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, my life has pretty much stagnated recently- being at home with lots of time on one's hands is great initially, but after a while I feel that I'm not getting as much out of life as I could do.
    The weather meanwhile has been ridiculously cloudy here; hardly a glimmer of sunshine. There have been a few showers and storms this month, but it has been difficult to see what's going on as there's always been North Sea "haar" in the way.
    It makes my blood boil on days when the rest of the country is having sunshine and showers/storms, Cleadon is dry but dull with coastal low cloud and temperatures several degrees lower, and I hear that my area is being very lucky with the weather, because at least it isn't raining. Looks like my birthday on the 22nd could turn out to be one of those days, if the low pressure ends up as far south as the GFS is currently showing.
    Have two weeks in France coming up in July, which should be good as I enjoyed my last three summer holidays there. As for the PhD, currently sorting out accommodation; so far things are going okay. Whatever the pros and cons of the Norwich climate, it's bound to be much more interesting than the weather we get up here. And of course, if I'm doing a PhD my life should be a lot busier.
  10. Thundery wintry showers
    My Winter Snow Events file has been updated to cover Winter 2006/07 (I think it's unlikely that we will get any snow in the first half of May). With a score of just 11, Winter 2006/07 was the most snowless, along with 1997/98, since 1991/92.
    For those not 'in the know', the Winter Snow Events was largely inspired by L.Bonacina's 1875-1975 (recently extended to 2004) categorisation of past winters. I attempted more of a numerical/statistical analysis of the snowiness of past winters, aiming to include every snow event that occurred across lowland Britain for each winter, and awarding each snow event a score from 1-5 depending on how widespread and intense it was. The snow events for each winter are added together to give the winter's "score".
    Winter_Snow_Events.doc
  11. Thundery wintry showers
    May as well start writing some blog weather forecasts; partly because many other members of the forecast team are doing a similar thing, and also partly as a means of keeping myself up-to-date with events.
    21 April: A very hazy day across much of the country, with some patchy rain affecting Scotland, Ireland and to a lesser extent northern England under a rather moist south-westerly flow. South-eastern areas should experience the most sunshine. A warm day over England & Wales with highs touching 20C in the south, and around 15C across northern England, but cooler across Scotland with highs of 11-14C widespread.
    22 April: A weakening band of frontal rain will move south-eastwards, with continued warm south-westerly winds. South and east of a line extending from Hull to Shrewsbury should be warm and dry with some sunshine, temps again reaching 20C in the south, and rather hazy. Much of northern England will be dull and wet all day. Drier brighter weather and highs of 14-16C will work its way southwards across Scotland.
    23 April: It looks like eastern areas will have a mostly dry sunny day, but with cloud amounts increasing from the west during the day, and rain spreading into western Britain by the end of the day, with freshening SSW winds. 20C will again be the high across south-east England, with 15-18C across most other parts, maintaining the above-average temperatures.
    24 April: The rain will linger in eastern areas, with another pulse moving north-east across central & southern England during the afternoon; highs of 15-18C in the warm muggy southeast, 13-15C to the north and west of the rainband. Western Scotland and Ireland will have sun and showers, intervening areas dry but rather cloudy.
    25-27 April: Sunshine and a few showers, and slightly above-average temperatures (12-16C) will give way to dry sunny settled weather as high pressure asserts itself; there is a good chance of this settled weather lasting into May and producing a heatwave at the beginning of the month.
  12. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, at long last, it seems that I have a Stevenson screen set up such that there is, at worst, only a small anomaly relative to the sort of readings one would expect from standard Met Office stations (by small, I mean quite possibly no greater than a degree Celsius on the sunniest days, which is pretty good for a back garden site)
    I have had an automatic weather station since 22 June 2005, but until November 2006 the temperature sensor was placed on the side of a hut, giving anomalously high readings by both day and night in summer (due to heat radiating off the hut) and anomalously low overnight readings in winter (due to exposure).
    November 2006: set up Stevenson screen but with only one set of louvres; result; anomalously high readings in sunshine. Put on the second set of louvres and it worked fine until February/March when I started getting anomalously high readings again.
    The instrument was situated right next to a fence; some members of this forum suggested that the proximity to the fence, when heated by the sun, was probably a factor. I have recently had it moved further away from the fence, and it seems to have worked. So for the moment at least, it looks like I'm not going to have to keep 'calibrating' my readings relative to what my two older, more primitive thermometers are showing for days when the Stevenson screen readings is anomalously high.
    The last few days, incidentally, have been a big test of this, with plenty sunshine every day except Friday. My maxes were 18.8C on Thursday, 12.3C on Friday, 16.1C Saturday and 16.3C Sunday; pretty promising readings I'd say.
  13. Thundery wintry showers
    It is often considered that as we pass adolescence, we become old enough to decide for ourselves, therefore we cease to be influenced by social pressure and we never follow the crowd; supposedly only "weak" people follow the crowd. This argument is often used to dismiss the idea that any form of social pressure can be a factor in people's decisions, so if a person makes a negative choice the person gets 100% of the blame, end of story.
    To my mind, that idea is flawed. Yes, we make decisions for ourselves, but social factors attach 'strings' to our decisions. For example, if I have a choice between X and Y, but the real choice is "choose X and be rejected, or choose Y and be accepted", if I then choose Y, it does not follow that the external social 'strings' (rejection vs acceptance) didn't influence my decision. Also, saying that we are all influenced by society is not necessarily a criticism; if we were never influenced, we would never learn from anyone.
    I'd agree that only "weak" people are easily influenced into making negative decisions, but even strong-minded people can be swayed, if strong enough social 'strings' are applied to their decision making processes. It's probably fair to say that, as a general rule, the more social pressure is required to 'sway' someone, the stronger the person, but there's no such thing as a person with an infinite 'stubborn-ness' threshold.
    So what sorts of social pressure influence us? It ranges across a variety of spectrums, from individual peer pressure, manipulation and outright bullying, to social norms representing codes of behaviour or belief that are generally accepted without question, and where it is often socially unacceptable to deviate from them. In larger-scale forms, people are often also influenced by the weight of consensus (if everyone believes/does it, it must surely be 'right'!)
    Even the "we are who we are" concept cannot accurately be used to dismiss the influences of social pressure. People learn to conform from an early age, particularly in the school years, and this helps to mould our personalities as we get older. In all of these cases, I include myself under this bracket; I like to think of myself as an independent thinker but I, too, can be 'swayed' given enough pressure in that direction.
    I think it's important that this preconception is challenged, because in reality, many problems do have social pressure as a root factor. At a small-scale level, people can manipulate and bully others into making negative decisions; it makes no sense to me that the bully should be absolved of all responsibility on the grounds that "a strong-minded person could withstand an infinitely high amount of social pressure". This is relevant to many issues, such as school bullying, employer abuse of working hours (manipulating employees into 'wanting' to work 70 hours per week) and friendship issues (if a jealous third party tries to break apart a friendship, a 'true' friend is expected to withstand an infinite amount of manipulation, such that the third party never gets any of the blame and the friend can never get any support)
    Negative social norms also contribute; people often make negative decisions based on the blind acceptance of codes of belief or behaviour that are passed down the generations. For instance, take discrimination against women in the early 1900s; I'm pretty certain that the campaigners had to tackle and break down various social norms before they could make any significant headway against the issue. Accepting that people made their own decisions, and absolving social norms of any responsibility, would almost have been tatamount to resignation, and a 'that's life' attitude to the sexism.
    So, we need to recognise that social pressure can be a factor- in order to enable it to be addressed!
  14. Thundery wintry showers
    A very warm first half. I spent the first third of the month on the Isle of Arran, with some very warm, sunny and summerlike weather during the first week, but the second week was somewhat more cloudy.
    A funny 'quirk' on the 10th- while I travelled from Arran to Leeds and then Tyneside, it was dull everywhere apart from a 10-mile radius around Lancaster (!!) where it was very sunny.
    The second half of the month didn't contain any particularly memorable events in Leeds (where I went to university after midmonth) but it was consistently sunny and generally warm.
    The month averaged 60% on my ranking system, and was the third September in a row to make a sixties score- by contrast, most Septembers of the 1990s 'achieved' forties scores.
    I doubt October will achieve anywhere near that kind of score though!
    Statistics from 17-30 September in Cleadon, Tyne & Wear:
    Mean Max 17.6C
    Mean Min 9.0C
    Mean SLP 1006mb
    Total precipitation 6mm
    Highest max: 21.1C (22nd)
    Lowest min: 3.6C (24th)
  15. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, quite a quiet period in some ways. I've been busy applying for PhDs, and had a couple of interviews at Manchester and UEA- I'll be giving more details of what's been going on when I get confirmation of whether I have funding or not for any of the projects. Hoping to get funding this year, or else it's another year of hunting for what limited employment there is in this region in the fields I'm after.
    According to the law of society, I'm supposed to be obsessed by money and thus getting any old job just to get paid, but at the moment it's not a major issue; the main one for me is getting advanced in an environment/meteorology/research type career.
    Other than that, been messing around, doing some oil paintings (many of which were weather-related, including a "Spanish plume" hazy scene, a picture of a cumulonimbus from that snowy ENE'ly that never was around 22 February 2007, and a stormy sunset. Some non-weather-related pictures too. Also, I've been playing quite a bit of chess.
    Saw the programme on the Global Warming Swindle- I think I made my views on it fairly clear in the environment thread- a good summary of the flaws in the views of the extremists who support anthropogenic global warming (AGW), but not a major challenge to the science behind the theory of AGW. I'd quite like to see a programme on TV that takes a more intermediate stance, along similar lines to Philip Eden's books relating to the subject, rather than focusing on one side or the other. It's hard to argue with the notion that humans are probably affecting the climate to some degree- even if you take out the CO2 issue, there's aircraft contrails, methane, old aftereffects of CFCs, deforestation, albedo changes etc.
  16. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, with a lot of help from my dad, I finally have a kind of Stevenson screen set up to house my automatic thermometer sensor, which is placed by the side of my back garden near a fence (and at the opposite side from the house). It is louvred at all four sides, and has a plain white top and bottom.
    Some inflated readings while the sun was shining on the screen today that I might have to look into; don't know if the sun is somehow causing the screen to radiate heat despite it being 100% white, or if the sun shining on the solar panel has anything to do with it. Readings were fine after 2pm.
    Hopefully, next summer it might mean not having to correct for inflated maxima due to warming from the hut, wall or various heat source that my thermometers were previously situated on.
  17. Thundery wintry showers
    These stats are copied from my June 2006 weather summary in the thread. I could sue myself for infringing my own copyright and make myself put up with Starforce 3.0 Professional copy protection just to read my discussion (only kidding; been uninstalling a computer game because of above issue)
    Statistics for June 2006, relative to estimated 1971-2000 averages for the location:
    Mean max: 18.8C (+2.2)
    Mean min: 11.2C (+2.0)
    Mean: 15.0C (+2.1)
    Difficulties with rainfall recorder- only 2mm, which I don't trust at all, though it was certainly a very dry month.
    Warmest: 24.8C (12th)
    Lowest max: 12.6C (25th)
    Highest min: 15.4C (17th)
    Lowest min: 7.6C (27th)
    The first 12 days of June in Cleadon were dry and very sunny in general, though cooling sea breezes ensured that the maxima weren't particularly high during the first 10 days; as the wind changed to a southerly the 11th and 12th were very warm.
    From the 13th onwards the weather was rather cloudy and dry with a fair amount of anticyclonic gloom, though the month ended with a couple of sunny days. It continued rather warm, primarily by night,
    It was the warmest June since 2003 at Cleadon. The average minimum was actually 0.1C higher than 2003 (although given inhomogeneities in my records, not statistically significant) but the average maximum was 0.6C lower. The sunshine excess of 1-12 June was largely negated by the mainly cloudy weather thereafter, with an excess of around 10% according to the Met Office sunshine maps. This means that June 2005 was actually sunnier than June 2006, while the last significantly sunnier June occurred as recently as 2003.
    Leeds did rather better sunshine wise, with an excess in the 20-30% region.
  18. Thundery wintry showers
    Currently cracking on with this main project, and failed the latest PhD application- looks like I'm going to be going home and looking for jobs (preferably related to meteorology!) in the autumn.
    There were some astonishing thunderstorms yesterday, which I posted about in the storms section. Continuous thunder for 20 minutes isn't something that happens very often, let alone three individual storms in one day.
    It seems that Sue started something of a trend among the moderators with Sloganizer.net- I had a look on there myself. After the usual typing in of my own name, I had some humorous experiments typing in the likes of "thundery wintry showers", "snow showers", "the weather", "the GFS", "an idiot", "a complete failure", "pie", "a nonce", "an imbecile" and "murderers"... plus some vulgarities... and some humorous stuff came out. My favourite was:
    "I wish I was a complete failure."
    And how about: "Call a friend, call an idiot."
  19. Thundery wintry showers
    In Cleadon, Tyne & Wear, the statistics were as follows:
    Mean Max 14.8
    Mean Min 7.2
    Mean Temp 11.0
    Warmest: 20.9C (5th)
    Coldest max: 9.3C (13th)
    Coldest: 1.7C (14th)
    Warmest min: 11.8C (18th)
    Precip: 39mm (I think my rain gauge might have under-recorded slightly!)
    Air frosts: 0
    Fog 1, Hail 0, Thunder 0, Sleet/snow 0.
    In Cleadon the first half was warm, though less so than in many other regions of the country, with the wind off the sea helping keep maximum temperatures down. The second half was cooler than the first half, for the first time in May since 2000. The second half was unsettled and windy with westerly winds.
    The month as a whole was about 0.8C up on the local long-term average, but was the warmest May only since 2004. The 13th featured the first single-digit maximum in May since 1997, but occurred due to extensive cloud cover, whereas the 1997 single-digit maximum was associated with a day of sunshine and snow showers.
    Spring 2006 as a whole was the coldest spring since 2001, but also the sunniest in the area since 2003. However, this hides the fact that March was quite dull, and May near average, with April having sunshine about 40% above the local average.
    Leeds
    In Leeds the month had a rather different character, with an exceptional warm and sunny first half (23-24C reached on a couple of occasions) and a cool unsettled second half. Convective storms were a regular feature of the month in Leeds with three thunderdays, all of which featured quite impressive thunderstorms. All in all, I was happy to be here rather than in Cleadon.
  20. Thundery wintry showers
    Since I didn't get my weather records in until after the April 2006 Summaries thread was closed for some reason, here's the April 2006 Summary.
    Mean Max 12.2C
    Mean Min 4.3C
    Mean Temp 8.3C
    Highest max: 16.7C (25th)
    Lowest max: 6.9C (4th)
    Highest min: 9.5C (25th)
    Lowest min: -1.8C (5th)
    Air frosts: 3
    Precipitation: 27mm
    There was sleet/snow on 3 days (sleet on the 7th and 9th, snow on the 8th) and four days with hail or graupel. Snow was lying at around 3pm on the 8th April, but there was nothing on the ground by 0900 the next morning.
    Overall the month had a rather cold first third with sunshine and wintry showers, then the remaining two-thirds were dry, consistently warm and notably sunny. There was a remarkably homogeneous nature about the warmth, with no maximum above 17C for the first time in April since 2001.
    The average maximum temperature was actually higher than for April 2005, but the average mean and minimum temperature were both the lowest since 2001. It was also the driest April (along with 2002) since 1997.
  21. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, this was something of a surprise- my biggest snowfall since 22 December 2003, looking likely to be the longest lasting since the New Year period of 2001/02, and easily beating anything I saw in Lancaster.
    I was getting concerned when I woke up at 6 am. on Wednesday morning and saw no lying snow. I had forecast that the snow would probably settle on Wednesday, and up to that point, we had been warmed too much by the sea, and had had mainly hail and sleet showers. That had been in line with my prediction, but of course the settling snow was the most important compartment of my prediction, and there would be some disappointed faces if I got that bit wrong. But then, at 8:30am, suddenly, there was lying snow. I took way too many photographs of the "beast from the east" for my own good, and a handful of them may well crop up on the site after the breakdown tomorrow.
    Unfortunately we threw away the sledge recently, but plan to go out to Cleadon Hills today and do everything but sledge instead.
    As for Christmas itself, it was quite good. I got a gamepad, and a Monty Python DVD set from the series, and various other things. The Boxing Day tea was massive- so much so that we have spent the next two days finishing off the leftovers!
    On a N-W theme, I received a copy of Philip Eden's latest book, which didn't surprise me as people generally know of the high level of respect I have for him. A good read, and I particularly liked the strong comments about extremists at both ends of the pro and anti GW spectrum at the end- very much in line with my own views on the topic. It was also interesting to see his account of the August 2003 heatwave in France, given that I was also there at the time. I remember going out into the heat for 20 minute bursts, feeling ill and coming back in again, and spent most of the last few days of that holiday in the bath. In a way I am pleased I had the experience, so that I can brag about how I lived to tell the tale and know what 40C+ feels like, but I certainly wouldn't want to experience it again.
    And, unbelievably, there was more snow here in Cleadon than there was in Leeds. Yes, Sod's Law has finally failed to come up trumps.
  22. Thundery wintry showers
    Well, after an extremely hectic last week of term in Leeds University, I am back in Cleadon, Tyne & Wear for the Christmas holidays- but unfortunately coming down with a bit of a cold.
    Will be seeing quite a bit of the people I know from my junior school, one of whom has been my closest friend for over 10 years. Also have a bit of revision to do for exams in January.
    Having set up my professional weather station and, for the first time, having a thermometer which I know is accurate to within a couple of tenths of a degree Celsius, I am hoping that there will be a decent fall of snow in Cleadon- even if it happens while I'm in Leeds- in order to see what the "temperature profile" looks like, and whether snow does indeed settle readily at temperatures of up to 1C, or whether my past thermometers over-read a little. There might, just might, be a chance this Saturday. I'm not going to complain if it's a bog-standard 36 hour northerly with an inch of snow for Tyne & Wear if I happen to be here when it matters.
  23. Thundery wintry showers
    In Cleadon, Tyne & Wear, the stats were:
    Mean Max 9.6C
    Mean Min 3.2C
    Warmest: 14.6C (3rd)
    Coldest: -3.7C (19th)
    Lowest max: 2.6C (28th)
    Precipitation: 49mm (62)
    Air frosts: 10
    Days of snow lying: 0 (smattering on 28th)
    Sleet/snow: 3
    Hail: 3
    It was the coldest November since 1998, and the sunniest since at least 1947 (probably for much longer). The first half averaged 10.2C and the second half averaged just 2.5C making it the warmest first half of November since 1994, while the mean minumum of -0.6 in the second half was the lowest since 1993. The month was a few tenths of a degree below the average for 1971-2000.
    Illustrating my approval of the month's weather, in Leeds (where the month was very similar) I awarded the month an average of 65%, which is the highest rating for a November since 1996, and the highest of any month since May 2004.
  24. Thundery wintry showers
    In Leeds, this was a very warm and extremely dull month. The statistics on Philip Eden's site suggested that the North East had barely half the normal sunshine, and I can believe it.
    The first week saw near-normal temperatures, and persistent anticyclonic gloom- layers of stratocumulus covering the sky the whole time. It became brighter in the second week with some notable warmth around the 10th and some sunny spells, but then it became dull again.
    The 15th to 26th was another extremely dull period, and this time it was generally wet as well, with an exceptional lack of cool nights. Only three days stood out as featuring any sunshine of note- the 16th was dry warm sunny and quite summerlike, while the 20th and 25th featured a mix of sun and showers together with a few rainbows.
    The 27th was a remarkable day- sunshine all day, and it must surely have maxed at between 18 and 20C. After the dullness of the past 10 days, it was amazing to see the sun again, let alone see it all day! However, after a day of sunshine and showers on the 28th, it became extremely dull again, while staying warm.
    At 42%, this October would appear to have been the lowest scoring October since I started taking weather records, and the lowest scoring of any month since November 2004. Sunshine (or lack of it!) was the main factor here.
    Data is again patchy, with no temperature records from 6 to 16 October inclusive, but here are the stats from the dataset I have:
    Mean Max 14.5C
    Mean Min 9.5C
    Precipitation: 75mm (this is the whole month's total; the device kept a record of total rainfall even though it stopped transmitting to the computer)
    Highest max: 18.1C (27th)
    Lowest min: 6.7C (23rd)
  25. Thundery wintry showers
    Had quite a hectic week this week.
    On the work front, I had to sort out my project for my MRes course- am doing investigations into a convective cloud initiation project. This will hopefully be relevant to my interests as convective clouds have always been a major fascination area.
    The Atmospheric Science Away Day on Tuesday was good- if a little bit intensive, it is hard to maintain concentration through 3 hours at a time of talks! Also had a good party on Wedensday evening with the Tenpin Bowling Society- I brought a Halloween mask and scared the pants off a few people, and was the only one to bring a mask. Also improved my score this week- 294 in 3 games, so I am back to my usual standard of about 100 per game. Now to break 300 in 3 games! Also saw Man Utd vs Lille- a rather disappointing game in which they lost 1-0 and, IMO, never really looked like scoring. What on earth has happened to the Mancs, they'll be lucky to get in the Champions League again at this rate!
    Some students were talking about snowfalls in Leeds during February 2005, including one day when there was a large amount and there were some large scale snowball fights. So it does snow here, although I am reliably told that it snows rather less here than it does in Sheffield. Whereas during my Lancaster years I wasn't too fussed on easterlies, I would be all up for a good 'Siberian' blast this year, provided that it brought snow showers rather than days of dull dry stratocumulus dross and temperatures between 2 and 5C the whole time.
    There were a couple of impressive firework displays in Leeds last night. I just don't grow out of things like that- many of my posts on the forum may appear serious, but in reality the inner child still lives on. Probably the best displays I have ever seen with a great variety- and free, too.
    The main difference between Leeds and Lancaster continues to be the social side. As I have lamented about before, traditionally friendships have been hard to make and even harder to keep, but it doesn't seem like that in Leeds- I have found it remarkably easy to make friends here, and so far, there haven't been any problems with 'friends' showing themselves to be unreliable, or 'true' friendships being prised apart by possessive and jealous outsiders. Long may this continue, please!
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