virtualsphere

36mm of rain here in the last 24 hours... already 83mm for May which could well end up being wetter than April here.

Interesting to see all of the five warmest were over 150 years ago, and the warmest recent May is now 20 years ago.

If you haven't already, reading this excellent informative post #397 from Boar Wrinklestorm earlier may give some hope to folks in south Wales! Might be a bit too far west here, although if it's travelling west you never know...

11.5C for me please

As someone living in SW Wales I can confirm nothing much of interest so far - grey skies & a few moderate showers up until now, but I did notice the chart is for 3pm!

20mm here today - was also expecting more given that we had 27mm on 9th April.

Surprisingly we're still in with a chance of breaking this record, although it looks to be very close at this stage. If we are going to beat it, this is the year to do it after the record breaking April last year!

As of 7.30pm, we've had 27mm here (near Cross Hands, Carmarthenshire) - the highest daily rainfall in quite some time.

Thanks for clarifying. I don't think we've been below 6.8C since 1989 so that's a tall order, but much more likely than the 5.4C needed in 1799. Interestingly April 1989 followed a mild winter and also had a warmer March than April - maybe we'll have the same this year.

Very early days yet, but what is the biggest CET difference between two consecutive Aprils? With the record high being set last year, if the current set-up continues we might be in with a shot of breaking it.

9.1C for me please

5.6C for me please.

Nobody mentioned 1999, which is hardly surprising as it looks like it was fairly mild and benign. I'll always remember the Easter holiday that year, though, because driving back home after visiting family for the break, I'd got within half an hour of home when snow started to fall and got heavier and heavier until it started to settle and made driving pretty tricky! I don't remember the exact date but looking at the charts I guess it was from this:

I'd agree with your comments. I've been reluctant to write off winter too early, especially as Feb started with the promise of some proper winter weather, but sadly the cold temperatures were shortlived here and we've seen no lying snow so far. There's still a few weeks left where we could see some lying snow, but the models don't look promising. Having said that I think we've done well in Wales for snow generally over the last decade in comparison with other parts of the UK so maybe it was our turn to miss out this year. From a personal point of view I'd give 2007-08 a higher score than this year as I enjoyed the frequent hail showers that winter. 2006-07 would have been dismal but it was rescued by an exceptional but shortlived snowfall event in February which delivered in one afternoon snow as deep as anything we had in 2009, 10, 11. Sadly it was gone about 2 days later.

I wouldn't get your hopes up for Tues, I don't think there'll be much if any ppn around. Best chance would look to be next weekend or after, from either a battleground set-up or an undercutting Low. The models haven't yet agreed on the final outcome - and although it's looking less likely than yesterday, they are changing on a daily basis so I wouldn't give up yet, it's too far out in an uncertain set-up.

Yes, the UK wide radar seems to suggest the front is slowly decaying in situ. Still enough on it for some snow if conditions are favourable but from the forecasts I've seen the best chance for anything significant may now be over. With the models as they are though, there's still all to play for over the next couple of weeks!

Mainly sleet here, or in the words of my 3 year old son, it's "raining snow". Just a very light dusting of snow on the top of our oil tank...

1.5C for me. About time we had a cold and snowy Feb.

5.3C please.

7.0C for me please - have a feeling it could be mild, wet and pretty windy though would like very much to be proved wrong.

Thanks for replying, I'd not thought of the solar cycle so from that perspective 11 years seems like a good choice. I like the idea of using a statistical model for pattern matching; it will be interesting to see how that pans out and whether, even if the actual temperatures are out, the temperature progression through the winter follows a similar line to your graphs as well as which months are coldest. It's a shame in a way there isn't more data to work with - it would be good to try something like this out using larger blocks with data from the last 1000 years to include different periods of weather and solar activity!

Fascinating stuff, especially considering how the graphs appear to be well matched at the beginning and end. What made you choose 11 year blocks? It would be interesting to know what effect increasing the number of years in the blocks of data would have, e.g. I wonder if a block of 15 years would return more accurate results than a block of 10, and that would be more accurate than a block of 5?

7.8C for me please

Interesting point - according to the MetOffice data, August 1947 beats it with 10.3mm compared to 17.8 in 1995: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/datasets/Rainfall/ranked/UK.txt

Looks like a squall line... (hope I'm allowed to post - please delete the image if I'm not, but it's a good example of what the excellent NW radar can show) Edit: and if you subscribe to the real radar, place names show up too! No sferics showing though. Just passed through here a few minutes ago - moderate to heavy rain and gusty winds.