Thundery wintry showers

Yes, a bright flash and loud clap of thunder here just now - my membership of the No Storms Club literally went out with a bang!

I'm wondering if some of the storms I had in Lincoln last year were localised or maybe you missed some of the daytime homegrowns due to being away or in an office? I remember some pretty potent ones in May and July last year, with a total of 5 days with thunder in May and 7 in July. On 16 May 2021 I noted a spell of heavy hail and thunder and lightning and the University of Lincoln recorded about 40mm in an hour. 3 July was probably the largest one, which went on for a good few hours, when I managed to catch a lightning strike near the cathedral on video, there were also a couple on 4 July. This time last year I was on 4 thunder days, this year I'm on 0. It's true that we didn't get many imports last year though, and none before June.

Judging by the Netweather radar it seems that the electrical activity is fizzling out as it heads into Lincolnshire, so Boston and Skegness may well just get heavy rain.

I think there's a chance we could be too far north/west tomorrow, but there's a lot of uncertainty over it.

Some hefty showers going up just to the west/north-west of Lincoln within the rain band in the last 20 minutes, not electrified as yet, but I've opened the door on my balcony just in case it produces anything.

I had falling and lying snow in South Tyneside on the night of 20/21 November 1996 after the big low on the 19th moved out into the North Sea. It snowed for most of the day on the 24th but didn't settle. There was also falling and lying snow there on 17 November 1995, during a northerly outbreak in what was otherwise a fairly mild November.

1995/96 and 1996/97 to some extent remind me of 2009/10 and 2010/11, in that 1995/96 was a generally cold winter whereas 1996/97 was "front loaded", cold in the first half and then turned mild. Although January 1997 was a cold month overall, and some areas retained their snow cover from the New Year through to the 10th or 11th, there was very little snow after the first few days. However, I don't think the early part of 1996/97 was colder or snowier overall than either December 1995 or late January & February 1996, so for most of the UK 1995/96 would win comfortably, with the limited exception of areas that dodged most of the snowfalls of winter 1995/96 and got a dumping from the easterly at the end of December 1996. It's less clear cut when comparing 2009/10 and 2010/11 because of the exceptional intensity of the cold spell between 25 November and 26 December 2010.

May 1967 started off with a potent northerly outbreak with widespread snow showers but after that a cyclonic south-westerly type prevailed, hence the sea level pressure anomaly chart showing the low pressure anomaly to the west. At Waddington near Lincoln, May 1967 was the most thundery month in a record back to 1948, and by a fair margin, with thunder heard on 11 days (there have been numerous months with 7 or 8 days with thunder, but no other months had higher than 8). The cold snap at the beginning brought 2 days with sleet/snow falling, giving the first instance of snow in May since 1955, and it didn't snow in May again until the famously snowy episode in 1979.

Here's an Excel file with the new CET monthly values, annual averages to 2 decimal places and the 30-year averages from 1961-1990 to 1991-2020. The annual values may be slightly out because I'm guessing that the Met Office's values will be calculated from the raw monthly values rather than the rounded ones and therefore there will be some minor rounding errors. The average for 1995 that I get is 10.44. The 1961-1990 averages are mostly still the same as what I grew up with, but July is down from 16.1 to 16.0, October from 10.6 to 10.5, November from 6.5 to 6.4, and December from 4.7 to 4.5. Hope this Excel file might help with your stats Roger. CET20.xlsx

I think there were some issues with the "legacy" CET records, in particular a slight cool bias from around 2008 onwards, so I think they were right to produce this updated version and to keep the legacy records available. But I certainly see the point that some of us (myself included) memorised many of the old monthly and annual CET values and now some of them have changed, making it feel like the end of an era. The change that I definitely don't like is quoting annual values to 1 rather than 2 decimal places. For example, the year 1995 has gone from CET 10.55 to 10.5, and I have a suspicion that it's now 10.5 rounded up from 10.4*, because several of the monthly values for 1995 had 0.1-0.2C chopped off. (The late Philip Eden's CET value for 1995 was 10.47 if I remember correctly). While this can easily be done in Excel it would've been nice to be able to directly compare values to the same number of decimal places in separate tabs. I wasn't surprised to see March 1995 drop to 5.5, as the CET of 5.6 (-0.1 relative to 1961-90) always seemed a little high to me considering that most sites in England had a negative temperature anomaly relative to 1961-90 that month. Likewise for the polar maritime dominated month of December 1999 (5.0 down to 4.8). July 2006 going up from 19.7 to 19.8 was a slight surprise. The big surprise for me was December 2000 going from 5.8 to 5.3. I'd have expected a downward adjustment to that month, possibly to 5.6 or even 5.5, but the drop to 5.3 is such a large step that I'm wondering if there was a glitch. As an aside, it's a shame that neither Philip Eden nor his Climate-uk site are with us any longer as it would have been interesting to compare the new Met Office series with his alternative series. I have a strong suspicion (based partly on my memories of Philip Eden's series) that the Met Office version 2.0 would generally be closer to his series but still with some slight differences.

I wondered if I'd hear any thunder today, but it appears to have been just a little too far east of here. I remember last year being active for thunderstorms in May and July. I counted 7 days with thunder in July 2021 including two consecutive days with good displays on 3 and 4 July. Not a lot happened from August onwards though.

I wasn't alive then, but it strikes me as possibly one of the more interesting years. The distribution of sunshine was quite unusual: it was a very dull year overall in the south, but quite a sunny one in the north-east. Trevor Harley's account of the year notes that the sunniest region of the UK was along the coast of eastern Scotland and the far north-east of England. The winter of 1980/81 was one of the sunniest on record in London, with some high diurnal ranges from sunny anticyclonic weather over much of England at the end of January and beginning of February, but it was unremarkable sunshine wise in the north and west. A succession of short-lived northerlies in early to mid-January resulted in a relatively high frequency of snow despite the month as a whole being mild, especially in the north. Glasgow was heavily hit by snow midmonth. March 1981 stands out as warm, very dull and wet, but with a snow event in the north around the 22nd/23rd. April saw a particularly dramatic switch-around from a warm first half to snow in the second half, and even Exeter had a bit of lying snow near the end of the month. May looks like it was wet and, in places, thundery. Summer 1981 was relatively dry but cool and cloudy overall for most, but August 1981 had a fair amount of dry sunny weather as well as some intense thunderstorms in places early on. Autumn 1981 had a fair amount of interest, a warm sunny first half of September followed by a very wet second half, a very cold October which was also very sunny in the north-east, and an exceptional outbreak of tornadoes on 24 November. December 1981 was probably the snowiest December of the last 100 years for much of the UK, although in the north it was not generally as cold as December 2010. Some exceptionally low minima in the second week, and a scattering of heavy frontal snowfalls.

I was in Exeter in 2018. Unusually, Exeter got a couple of dumpings of snow from the two easterlies in late February and March, as well as a bit of sleet mixed with rain at the beginning of April. April was warm but often cloudy and wet. Then May was generally warm and sunny - I remember the two hottest and sunniest spells indeed coincided exactly with the Bank Holidays as others have mentioned. In June 2018, Exeter Airport recorded no measurable rain, and I remember experiencing just a couple of showers which didn't really wet the ground. Intriguingly, the Junes of 1976, 1995 and 2018 all had a similar sunshine distribution. Even though the synoptic patterns were different (south-westerlies in early June 1976, northerlies in early June 1995, weak high pressure in early June 2018), all three months were cloudy for much of the country until the 20th, and then very sunny in the last third of the month. Exeter had 85 hours of sunshine on 1-20 June 2018 and nearly 150 hours on the 21st-30th. Hot sunny weather set in towards the end of June and persisted well into early July, perhaps a watered down version of the pattern that we had in late June/early July 1976. However for me Summer 2018 peaked in the period May to July, rather than in the three main summer months. August was fairly dry and warm but much cloudier. Nonetheless, I think of 2018 as the nearest approach to a 1976/1995 style summer that we've had since the turn of the century, edging out 2003 and 2006.

I vaguely remember a summer from my early childhood in South Shields when it was sunny and cloudless for long periods and I was fascinated by how the shadows kept shifting position as the sun moved across the sky (I was born in 1984). I guess it could have been 1990, as mid to late July was very sunny that year, but it's more likely to have been 1989, as that year there were long periods of sunny weather from early May through to mid-August. Over 300 hours of sunshine was widely recorded in the south in May 1989 (beaten only by May 2020), while in July 1989 Glasgow Airport (which gets around 170-180 hours in an average July) fell just short of the 300 hour mark. The very disturbed spell at the end of February 1989, with exceptionally low pressure below 960mb, has interested me. When I first got into observing the pressure charts at Wetterzentrale I mistook the exceptionally low heights for exceptionally low thicknesses/cold air. Snow was indeed quite widespread across the UK during that spell, even in the south-east, but it didn't stick around for long at low levels. However apart from the somewhat feeble easterly on 2 December 1988 the rest of the winter quarter of 1988/89 was very mild and completely snowless over much of lowland Britain. December 1989 was exceptionally dull over much of the UK (widely 20-30 hours of sunshine), which was in stark contrast to most of the rest of the year. Generally 1989 stands as one of the UK's three sunniest years on record (1995 and 2003 were the others), although parts of the N and W had a similarly sunny or sunnier year in 1955.

It could have been the 6th April 1989. Cold air came in from the east on the 4th and 5th and brought snow for some, and then on the 6th some of that cold air came around to south-west and central southern England via a north-westerly on the southern flank of low pressure. 850hPa temperatures of around -5C would support wet snow in areas of heavier precipitation. There was also a cold north-westerly on 24-26 April 1989 with snow for some but the precipitation charts for that period don't suggest a shower streamer on a north-westerly, whereas they do suggest one early on the 6th.

I grew up in South Tyneside, and in observations from 1993, I observed snow showers on 18 April 1995, though it didn't settle, and there were hail and sleet showers on the 19th and 20th with a centimetre of lying hail at one point on the 20th. There was sleet & hail late on 3 April 1997. 9-16 April 1998 had snow falling on most days, and a covering early on the 12th from east coast snow showers. 13 April 1999 saw a spell of persistent snow from a polar low and snow showers followed that evening. It didn't stick around for long at Cleadon, but parts of the region with more elevation saw significant lying snow. 3-4 April 2000 had snow, but it didn't settle. Likewise 18-20 April 2001. I observed snow showers on 8 April 2005 and again on 8 April 2006. The 2006 one was localised and unexpected and the Premier League football match at Sunderland was called off due to the snow (yes, Sunderland were in the Premier League back then!). In both cases there were dustings on the ground from the heavier showers, but it didn't stick around for long. In Norwich I had snow showers on 6 and 7 April 2008, with some dustings on the ground on the 6th. In South Tyneside I had two days of sleet and wet snow in early April 2012. I was in Exeter in 2016 and 2017 so missed those two late April snowfalls (although there was hail and thunder there from the 2017 northerly), but in April 2021 I saw sleet and wet snow in Exeter on the 6th, and then, after moving to Lincoln on the 9th, I saw frequent snow and hail showers on the 11th. Some locals have told me that Lincoln had some lying snow on 5/6 April 2021 before I arrived. Also I remember that April 2015 had a snowy end in north-east Scotland. The Aprils of 2018 and 2019 started off with snow but mainly on high ground. Statistics tend to bear out MP-R's observations: in most parts of the UK, lying snow is more common in November but falling snow is more common in April, probably due to northerlies being more potent in April but the stronger sun melting the snow more easily.

1984 was the year I was born, so I don't specifically remember the weather that happened, but that January has always stood out for me as a particularly exciting-sounding month, with its high frequency of thunder as well as being snowy from the north Midlands northwards. At Waddington thundersnow was reported twice during the month (on the 3rd and 26th), also with thunder accompanying sleet on the 14th, and the period 21st-23rd was particularly snowy, in a synoptic setup quite similar to that of 5-7 February 1996. April 1984 stands out for its high sunshine totals, warm days and cold nights, and July & August for generally warm sunny weather. September to December 1984 don't stand out for me as particularly interesting looking months. The autumn was very wet in some parts of the country.

The mild winter of 1987/88 stood out at the time after a run of generally cold, snowy winters from 1977 to 1987. A couple of members of the Climatological Observers' Link noted similarities between that winter and the winters of 1974/75 and 1975/76 and wondered if 1988 was going to be a hot dry sunny summer along similar lines to 1975 and 1976. Then of course came that infamous July... February 1988 produced record breaking sunshine totals in many southern and eastern parts of England (though subsequently beaten by the Februarys of 2008 and 2019), and locally it had more sunshine than June 1987. In the Weather Log it was noted that this was the first February for a while when easterly winds were absent, although there were some (fairly tame) northerlies late in the month. At my current local Met Office weather station, Waddington, there was a frontal snow event on 22 January 1988 caused by a secondary low in a polar maritime air mass, and a couple of dustings from the northerlies of late February, and another brief snowfall in mid-March. Thus, by today's standards it wouldn't stand out as an unusually snowless winter, but compared with the winters of 1977-87, it would have seemed unusually mild and snowless. June 1988 was a generally dry settled month, but persistent NE winds brought frequent cool cloudy weather to the east and south. It was warm and sunny over much of Scotland though. Waddington had 8 days of thunder in July 1988, mainly from a showery thundery first week, but the rest of the month was generally dull and wet, and at times windy. The west and south-west had a particularly grim month: in Weatherwise Philip Eden noted that at Plymouth, the highest max in July 1988 was just 18.3C, and, in contrast, in July 1989, the temperature exceeded that value on 28 days out of 31. Lancaster's stats for July 1988 included a mean max of 16.3C and just 111 hours of sunshine. Trevor Harley noted that a cold November and mild December stuck out this year. November was generally dry, sunny and anticyclonic, but is most remembered for its northerly outbreak around the 20th which brought widespread snow, but the high pressure then repositioned to the south for December bringing a mild anticyclonic/westerly type, which then persisted almost without a break until mid-February 1989.

For mean temperature, February 1990 was generally the warmest February of the last 100 years in the south, but February 1998 was warmest in the north. February 1998 had a very marked north-south split in sunshine amounts. The cloudy north was unusually warm by both day and night, whereas the sunny south was also unusually warm by day but saw relatively low minima. For mean maximum temperature February 2019 was generally the warmest, but, with it being a very sunny month in most parts of the UK, the average minima were much lower. Apart from a few notably warm sunny days in parts of England, February 1961 was a generally cloudier month with a greater emphasis on high night-time minima. The exceptional warmth was also more confined to England and Wales. Given the lower global temperatures of the time, though, it was still pretty exceptional.

At Durham, June 1987 had just 89.4 hours of sunshine, a total which was exceeded in November 1986 (89.6 hours), March 1987 (99.6 hours) and February 1988 (112.8 hours). The mean maximum temperature was just 15.1C. At Waddington it wasn't quite as exceptionally dull, but its 133.5 hours of sunshine was still the lowest for any summer month since July 1973. Also, checking the Waddington stats for January 1987, it reached just -5C on the 12th and there was a snow depth of 30cm on the 14th. As we'd normally expect in an easterly spell, the east was generally more heavily hit by snow in January 1987 than the west, but it was also very snowy in the usually snowless south-western coastal fringes, with over 30cm at Penzance for example.

I decided to check against the stats for Waddington near Lincoln, and Christmas Days 1982 and 1983 (maxes of 10.2C and 10.9C respectively) were both a little warmer than Christmas Day 1987 (9.5C max) but would have felt colder because they were windier and recorded no sunshine. I can see why Christmas Day 1987 stuck out in the memory of some because for much of England it was a very sunny day in the middle of a generally dull spell, and it was indeed mild, though not exceptionally so. Waddington recorded 5.9 hours on the 25th and only 0.1 hours on the rest of the days from 23-30 December inclusive.

I was in Lancaster during that spell and snow showers developed on the afternoons of the 25th, 26th and 27th, and there was a covering on the night of the 26th/27th, but not a lot, it melted quickly the following morning. My parents were living in Cleadon near the coast of South Tyneside, and they had a dusting from the northerly on the 23rd. There was a more significant fall on the evening of the 26th, but it was marginal near the coast, giving just a dusting. For much of the 27th wet snow fell near the coast that didn't settle, though significant accumulations occurred inland (e.g. I remember Durham getting a lot). On the 28th, as the northerly flow slackened, it was the turn of the coastal part of the region to get sizeable accumulations of snow. Despite sunshine and daytime maxima of 4 to 6C, some of this lying snow stuck around until 3 March. Yes, for some parts of the UK, particularly parts of eastern England, 2003/04 was a surprisingly snowy winter considering that it was generally mild, thanks to northerly outbreaks around 22 December and 28 January as well as the last week of February.

June 1980 was exceptionally thundery in some parts of the UK, I recall that Tutiempo.net had Newcastle Weather Centre down as having 9 days of thunder, which is slightly more than Newcastle normally gets in a whole year (about 8 days). As well as the hot thundery start to the month, there were 5 consecutive thundery days from the 22nd-26th associated with a slow moving area of low pressure, light winds and limited frontal activity. It was generally dull and wet in between those periods, though. I wasn't born then, but it was one of the many historic months that caught my interest. I didn't find much of interest re. July or August though. As LetItSnow! noted some parts of the country had a notably dry sunny April and May in 1980. The November snowfalls also stick out for me, even though the mean temperature for November 1980 wasn't far from normal. Some parts of the north-west, e.g. Glasgow, had a white Christmas that year from a showery north-westerly, though most of the UK was sunny with temperatures close to or just below normal.

Although it was long before I was born, I've been interested in this winter for a while. When browsing the chart archives I noticed some very impressive northerlies around the middle of both January and February, and then a classic "south west snowstorm" setup in late February. Good to see the contemporary newspaper articles. It sticks out for me as a winter that was somewhat more remarkable for snowiness than for intensity and persistence of cold.

It depends on where you live - here in Lincoln there were two days of thick fog last week and one of those days had a maximum of just 1C. There was also a foggy spell last December, although on that occasion temperatures stayed above freezing. But with climate change, as time goes on it perhaps gets more difficult to get frost and freezing fog on average.