La Bise

It's a funny thing perceptions, I feel the element lacking in summer in the evening in the UK is the warmness of the nights when I lived in Geneva. Over there, sitting outside in a tee and shorts at 2am and being confortable was pretty standard for me, not something I often find myself doing in Manchester! I also recall some very high night temperatures, particularly during the last major heatwave in 2006, walking home from town at 1am with a temperature of 29c and the last great summer I had, 94, before moving to the UK, with 2 months of 30c+ day temperatures and night time temperatures rarely dipping below 24c. Mind you, there was a major thunderstorm every 4/5 days to clear the air too...

And for those of us active in the hills in winter, so much frozen ground that I went weeks without mud on trousers and shoes(I go out every week-end and at night in winter)...No complaint from me!

Let's hope it hangs a few more days so I can enjoy yet another walk in the snow at the week-end...I guess I'll have to aim for the higher parts, Bleaklow or Kinder Scout.

Hey Snowingtequila, how's the snow further up. From the office, the Peak District looked nicely white although the snow line has gone up a bit?

Well, I can only recommend to you chaps to leave the pc alone for a a few hours and go out in the Peak District, loads of snow there and today it started snowing mid-afternoon and by 6pm, it was a winter wonderland. Roads were pretty bad mind you, even main axis like the Macc-Buxton A road was hair-rising at times.

It has been the best winter since I arrived in the UK for consistency. Very little mild weather, tons of frost, hardly a morning when I woke up and did without a jumper to go to work. If that means little snow due to drier conditions, so be it, I fail to seen the point of a few days of snow here and there with endless zonal dross the rest of the time. Shave off a couple of degrees from the avg and that's a typical winter of my youth.

Cranks, contrarians and ideologists with the odd honest man following a hunch for the sake of exhausting all avenues of investigation. I'm no fan of the man but Dawkins has on Evolution the exact position I hold on AGW, no debate is to be had as there is no serious work done by the "opposition" with the balance of evidence tilting decisevely in favour of AGW. Your beliefs are your own, if to you AGW is nothing but a conspiracy to raise tax or nothing but a natural aspect of climate change on our planet, you're welcome to hold them but please do not equate them, in scientific terms, to the huge body of work supporting the whole AGW issue. The only voices you regularly hear rail against it are the likes of Nigel Lawson or Jeremy Clarkson, in the UK and their "intellectual" equivalent all over the world. I think I rather pay attention to the Met Office or IPCC... That's over and out from me on this topic, the whole AGW discussion on here is utterly depressing and not worth the aggravation.

The only debate taking place re AGW is between meteo geeks on forums like these and loudmouth journalists, otherwise there is about as much debate in the scientific community about it as there is about evolution or the link between HIV and AIDS. Anyhow, it's snowing in the UK, it must mean AGW is a myth, sometimes you just have to smile at the insularity of it all eh...

Cracking pictures mate. I was up there back in Jan during the cold spell, no snow but frost galore!

I'm a fanatical hiker, it does play a part insomuch as I like to be prepared although I rarely go out without the full kit. Today was a good example when I did not bother with any waterproof gear (aside from by boots and gaiters, snow galore where I was, sank more than once knee deep in snow drifts. Pure orgasm!) but I don't spend too much agonising on what the models show, partly due to lack of knowledge partly due to being adaptable. I'm a simple man, I like my summers to be warm, my winters to be cold, that's what I was used to in Central Europe and to me is the best possible situation, well defined seasons. Suffice to say that I'm as happy as a pig in muck at the moment, today I spent 6 hours walking through what seemed like frozen Siberian tundra just a short train journey away from my home and quite frankly, if it could stay like that till March, I would be a happy man! I'm quite partial to a rainy, windy day with the leaves swirling away, to me this is the best suited weather to the UK, autumn is the one season that never fails to please me, be it on the trail or even mopping around in town. It makes a visit to a warm, cosy pub with good ale and a roaring fire an act of worship...

Cheers lads, here is hoping yours is voodoo science, I'm flying right in that super storm in December period you're predicting!

There was a puzzling mention on the NOAA site for Manchester Airport mentionning "smoke" as the weather conditions during an hour yesterday, now I understand. I was walking next to the Trough of Bowland yesterday and it was bone dry up there, you could walk on the bog terrain without any problems, in fact you could have done the walk in white trainers and come back with them fairly clean...

In layman's terms, what does that mean SB?

December, after a very mild start turned out to be pretty nice, with my favourite winter weather, cold and sunny days with ice and frost galore. January was awful aside from a very short interlude at the start. February was like December only with an incredibly mild week during the day but with bone chilling nights. March, which I consider a winter month, was quite alright, some interesting and varied weather. All in all, in the context of the UK, a pretty decent winter, at least I had a fair few cold and frosty nights and my winter wardrobe was used fully!

The 2003 heatwave started in late May on the continent, I was in Geneva for the weekend at that time and it was 30c+ outside during the day. It stayed cool at night so it was really the best of both world. However when I got back there in late june, it was rather different. Very luckily the first night was cool as they had been a thunderstorm during the day but by the next day, temps were up to 35c+ during the day and barely going below 25c at night, I remember walking home at 1am and the temp in the city was still 29c. It made it near impossibly to sleep properly, everything was going slower, commercial output must have dipped as most people simply adopted survival pattern, there is far less aircon offices in Geneva than in Manchester ironically. The heatwave only started to die down in august... Anyhow, the day I flew back, it was 37c when I left in a baking hot sun. In Manchester it was 16c and left trouser leging it down, the relief lasted about 5 mins then, sitting outside a cold pub, looking at the rain falling, I shrugged my shoulders and got on with it... My own longuest period of hot weather was in 94, I was still living in Geneva back then and we had over a month of relentless 30-35 c temps by day and hot nights although there was a thunderstorm every 4/5 days to clear the air for a short while and allow you one night of decent sleep (which in my case was even more compromised having just met a lovely girl...)

Possibly but most of the times it will be the same tropical maritime wet mush we get in winter, only a bit milder. Thank God for that incidentally, hot weather does not suit this country at all

A long, hot, summer...yeah right, about as likely as a cold, snowy winter.

A very good month for me. Cold nights, even during the mild spell during the day, lots of sun and bone dry for a while, perfect hiking weather. Being on top of the Peak District, the sun beating down on me, no wind at all and frost in the shadows/frozen streams certainly made me very happy!

-1c at Manc Airport at 8am, 11c now, probably 15c by 3pm then drops like a stone by 5pm...bit bonkers. It's like having two seasons on the same day, from deep winter to late spring to deep winter in what, 12 hours... :huh:

23rd of June, on the first day of sun after 6 weeks of "mild zonality", the forum goes in "pattern change" meltdown, GFS did not see it coming (predicting "mild zonality" for that day) and ECM hinted at it 3 weeks earlier but MetO remained uncommited up until T12 at which point the server crashed for about an hour.