Evening thunder

This is about the worst weather pattern down here. Yesterday looks like it was about the only sun in 12 days if the Met Office forecast is right which is back to its usual recent appearance of not having a single 'sunny interval' symbol in the next 7 days. And either our weather or the BBC forecast quality is crap, because it shows no hint of brightness for the next 14 days I'm going to the Alps on tomorrow anyway, but this same pattern probably means poor snow conditions, no fresh snow for about 2 weeks, and it's been mild with freeze/thaw cycles.. No real sign of the weather pattern changing much for when I return either. Not sure it's possible for weather to be any more boring.. Changeable climate my ass! Oh well.. lol. The effects of the SSW are gunna have to be good, to make this worth it.

Are people in the other thread actually surprised that charts near/after t+240 have changed? Happens more often than not. At this time of year I'm happy for last weekend's weather.. pretty stormy on the seafront on Friday evening, and then sunshine and showers with thunder heard from multiple cells, and hail, until Monday. Yet it was also pleasant in the sun with a few beautiful sunny mornings. I prefer either that or sunny clear weather with frosts (like we had at the end of October), over any chilly cloudy 'not worth it' weather that cold synoptics can often bring this time of year (although not always, such as late November 2010).

Lol so some know more than the Met Office/model programmers It's an ensemble mean anomaly map which will always show watered down values compared to any single ensemble (or the actual outcome), and when you apply, say ~0.5C warming since the reference averaging period, most of the world may come out warmer than average. So better for interpretation/looking for patterns than taking the numbers at face value.

Nice to have a bit of weather, good stormy conditions at Sidmouth on Friday evening, surprising amount of cars driving through all the spray and some stopping to watch, one in particular had more than it bargained for as a wave crashed over its bonnet! 28.0mm of rain here from the main front. Although the most intense showers missed here, I heard thunder from three separate cells yesterday and still had some heavy showers. 11.8mm in total since 8am yesterday (about half that last night). It's usually too early for proper cold here so I like either this sort of weather or sunny conditions with frosts at this time of year. Possibly 23rd December 2013 I had 42mm and remember a couple of intense line segments missing me. I recall the river Mole in Surrey flooded very badly. There's a small section on this page whch says a swathe from Dorset to Kent recorded 50 to 70mm https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/interesting/2013-decwind

Despite the stats for this Autumn not looking bad, the weather seems to have had a knack of writing off whole days (usually at weekends like last Sunday once again), but anything intense enough to be interesting has missed here. Last night all the heavy stuff went west of here, and has been going just east of here for a few hours, and now just west of here again...

Low of -3.8C at 00:30, no frost this morning as it's currently 3.6C and we had a rain shower giving 0.4mm just before 6am. There was quite a nice sunrise, lighting some of the cumulus clouds up in orange. I notice it's still around -1C in places towards Exeter, and at the airport.

Just past 6pm and it's already -0.3C here, this time last night it was +1.3C. Not sure if it would end up colder than last night if it stayed clear all night, however in reality it shouldn't be quite that cold due to more cloud that's forecast to come in.

Wow, a minimum of -4.9C here which smashes my station's previous October record of -2.9C in 2008. Ironically that's also just 0.4C away from the minimum that the beast from the east (and last winter) gave us, reason being the wind never dropped then to allow a valley inversion. Some winters don't get a min this low. Yesterday had -1.0C, and Saturday morning -1.9C. I also drove through sleety rain between Tiverton and Exeter on Saturday evening.

It reached 19.9C here yesterday with cloud and windy weather, It was very mild overnight with a min of 16.6C on Friday evening, but the temp fell to 13.9C by midnight on Saturday night so it won't show on my records. In general though this Autumn has been pretty boring here.. some pretty cool minima at the end of September and one on the 7th Oct (0.1C) but otherwise, nothing particularly notable in any department. No notable falls of rain. Windy on Friday/Saturday but not really 'stormy' (it rarely is here these days). No convection or even sunshine and shower days (when was the last one of those?) Funny how often the bits of weather we have had i.e occasional wet days seem to have been weekends though! And from the models it looks like yet another boring-type high pressure is coming.

Not posted much recently but not had much to post. Some pretty cool minima at the end of September. Friday/Saturday were pretty windy but not really 'stormy' (rarely is here these days). No particularly heavy falls of rain, with the heaviest west of here on Friday and east of here today. Now the rain is easing off but not properly clearing, to leave another drab boring weekend day..

I think of it as around average overall here. Warmer and colder than average weather balancing out, and it did have more variability and interest than some summers. August was a bit poor (as ever), but June was a bit warmer than usual with that mid month hot spell. Some good thunderstorms around the 18th/19th July (and this isn't meteorological summer, but the most frequent lightning I've seen overnight on the 26th-27th May, distant but flashing literally every second). Overall, better than any 2007-2012 summer (though 2010 not too far behind), better than 2015, about level with 2016, behind 2014, 2013 and 2018.

I notice the GFS is persisting in looking much stormier than other models, I don't think any UKMO/ECM run has shown anything like it although the UKMO has a weaker storm a bit further north this morning. Virtually nothing on ECM again... though I guess this shows that if the lows/jet interact in the right way there is potential for something. I'm ready for some sort of weather though, this September is doing what September often does, i.e. reminding me of the Green Day song 'wake me up when September ends'.. (basically it's been flat high pressure ridging down here but not especially sunny and never in a position to give anything notable)

It was for me though not as good as this year. A decent June and July's mean maxima was 2C above average. August was cool though. 26th is quite good in an index including 118 summers.. It was actually sunnier than than 2018 in parts of the SW (as was 2013).

I'd put summer in the 'good' category, perhaps 'very good' but not quite 'Excellent' here. This is a main reason: If anything it felt like I could have been in the deeper grey, and August is when many people holiday and visit the SW. In June and July (and May) the SW was also less anomalously sunny compared to many parts of the country, so the result was a somewhat sunny summer here but not exceptional, and that's the impression I tended to get: Also for the weather enthusiast there wasn't any thunder, or any exceptional temps like 76, 83, and 90 managed (even though they were modelled at times). 1976, 1983 and 1989 had more days above 25C here, and 1976 (exceptional I know) had a mean maxima nearly 1C higher (so this year wasn't the joint hottest here). Obviously it's a bit much to ask for all of those in one summer but an excellent one needs a decent August, and tbh August 2018 wasn't decent enough here. If including May the rating would be a touch higher though.

I was wondering where the mean temp for this summer would end up, with the caveat that in a warming world it's easier to get mean temps rivalling the 'hottest' without quite such exceptional 'on the ground' feel, as it no longer requires quite such exceptional synoptics and the resulting sunshine/mean maxima anomalies.. Not sure how much that applies to this summer though though. If a 1976 occurred today I guess it could be around 0.5C warmer? I expect if/when we do get another summer to rival that synoptic wise, we will beat mean temp records by quite a significant margin.. like much of Scandinavia has this summer (and in May). Anyway August was too cloudy here (February had similar sunshine levels), for this summer to rival the 'best ever'. I think by most measures that is the case here.. sunshine, mean maxima, days over e.g. 25C, and extreme maxima have been higher in the best previous summers. It was still very good though.

Definitely a different feel indoors the last couple days, jumpers required after a notably cool 4.1C min yesterday and 6.3C today, followed by today's wind and rain. I don't actually mind days like today in Autumn or the odd one in summer but there's been a bit too much of it at weekends and too much cloud this month for this summer to truly rival the famous ones. August may well finish below 2013 and 2016 now (it definitely will for sunshine). However if we're going to get a day like today I'd rather have had the heavy rain that turned out to be mainly north of me, so at least there's some weather interest, rather than a boring light-moderate rain/drizzle fest write off which stops you doing things just as much.

August started well here, and will probably finish at least slightly above average temperature wise. However it has been rather cloudy, 76 hours on my station (probably a slight underestimate but still not good). The Met Office had sunny symbols yesterday afternoon but instead the cloud thickened here while breaking up for Dorset/Somerset eastwards. 0.1 hours of sun this weekend which makes it 3 out of 4 cloudy or wet weekends. Anyway, I thought I'd plot my maxima so far this summer against a crude average line: (just made a smoothed line graph using the monthly average maxima for Exeter Airport and subtracted the average difference between there and me) Quite impressive how many days are above average. The May-July period was probably one of the best. However I think one could argue that August doesn't look quite good enough for summer to be one of the all time classics, as it's one of the two warmest months on average and when most people holiday.

Models seem to have been near the mark here (and much of Devon/Cornwall), 25.4mm since midnight, and 5.6mm yesterday. Yesterday had a surprisingly cool min of 4.6C and then only reached 17.5C in the cloud and dampness (mean temp was the coolest of the summer). Last night a much milder min of 16.0C. No sun yet today either and the highest so far is 18.9C.

Down to 4.6C overnight here, didn't expect it to be quite that low! Tbh most places in Europe can get the odd day being cool and wet due to the placement of a low. Continental areas also more often get bigger swings in temperature. I don't mind the odd day of poor weather really, it's if it becomes weeks. Though tbh recent days have been a bit cool/showery here and this weekend isn't looking great. It will be back to the mid-20's for you soon though of course in an average summer 6C above average days could be balanced by 6C below average days (or a longer duration of slightly below average).

But you stated matter of fact that the end of September 1969 saw a mini heatwave, and then quoted the stat that it was in the 70's. You only mentioned subjective experience and 'stats being irrelevant' afterwards when people suggested otherwise. If that's how we do things I may as well say it was 36C yesterday because I was doing physical work outside and felt pretty hot.

Frustrating from an enthusiast POV, a shame that even on this summer the modelling that delivered something major for my area couldn't come off.

After another cloudy start we did get decent sunshine in the afternoon afternoon/evening yesterday and a max of 27.6C With no sea breeze it was still 24.7C at 8pm. Then the temp dropped really quick, down to 14.4C by midnight (the minimum on the previous night was 16.7C). Min was 11.7C this morning, now 21.3C and sunny, the onshore breeze will keep it less warm today.

Yes and the labelling of model runs as going off on one, wrong, hilarious etc which then turn out correct

Overcast start and it's still cloudy yet again, the weather seems to be trying it's best to drag this summer's rating down considering these are supposed to be the hottest days before it cools down (there's also the downgrade of 1pm temps from 26C to 21C over 5 ECM runs for tomorrow). Lets see how the forecast of sunny at 12 goes.

Cloud broke up by 11am, to give cumulus and sunny intervals. In a sunny spell it reached 28.1C but both lower and then mid level cloud meant no sun at all from 3pm until about 7pm with the temp hovering near 25C. Some late sun now and cooling down a bit, bringing the sunshine total up to 4.0 hours. It does beg the question would it have got hotter, and follows the theme this summer on the potential hottest days of warm spells The dew point has been notable hovering around 20C all day. I felt pretty warm after a walk in cloudy conditions and a temp/dew of 25/20C.