Azazel

Going back to an earlier debate in the thread - for me, a front-loaded winter is miles better than a back-loaded one (same applies to summer). For winter, after the clocks change and halloween/bonfire night arrive, you want some atmospheric fog and crisp, cold evenings beginning to take hold. As the days are at their shortest point and for the run up to Christmas, snow, or cold, crisp and frosty weather makes it all feel wonderfully seasonal - even someone like me who hates winter would love something like that (I think 2012 was the last time anything remotely close to that happened here?). Once the new year arrives, I obviously immediately look forward to spring so I don't care what happens after that point.

Cold, Calm and bright please. I think I just hate wind and rain.

Yep - feels positively frigid in the mornings especially.

I’ve just got a feeling on my waters that we’ll have some record cold this year. Then again I’ve said that before - just please not as wet as last year!

A beautiful spell of weather here comes to an end tomorrow. I will stick my neck out and say we won’t see 20+ degrees again until April 2021. I hope for everyone’s sanity we get a cold/snowy winter this year because it’s really going to be a struggle mentally with everything going on.

I wouldn't mind this - but chances are it'll be wet and windy most of the time.

Ahhh yes crane flies. The ones that are always flying around the kitchen with legs missing etc

Yeah daddy long legs are ok, they’re just stupid and fly into your forehead and stuff. There’s just something about house spiders - their long ‘bony’ legs - eurghhhh. I’ve held a tarantula with no issues though - they’re kind of soft and furry like a hamster - so it must be something to do with the body shape that gets under my skin.

It does seem to work in my experience. When I lived at home with my parents, it was an old house and I used to get big spiders in my room during the autumn. One year I put conkers around and peppermint spray I think it was and I didn’t see a single one that season. This big boy was on the back of the toilet door. Too big for me to catch on this occasion so I had to enlist my partner. She used to kill them but I’ve made her catch them humanely and put them in the garden - though on this occasion she doesn’t seem to have put it very far away from the back door.

3 in 6 days. *shudder*

I've never loved Winter, but there are elements of it I get nostalgic for. Unfortunately, times have changed since those days and with the global pandemic, I think this winter will be extraordinarily challenging. When I think back, I think of the run-up to Christmas - gathering in the local pub with the log-fire on, everyone in Christmas jumpers with ice/fog outside and being able to see your breath in the air on a still night. I think of having a hot-chocolate or cup of tea while playing MW2 or Black Ops 1 while the snow falls outside and everyone is online. The rare sight of a sunset casting golden light onto frosted trees and grass. The "smell" of Christmas? The sound of your shoes crunching in the snow and the muffled calmness snowfall seems to bring. Now for the bad: Not technically winter, but Bonfire night and the week surrounding it - fireworks are so lame and so annoying - plus they scare the s**t out of my dog. The endless wind and rain - everything is damp. The mud. The return of the fireworks around NYE. The Christmas rotation on the radio. Stop the Cavalry The fact it's always so dark and gloomy. I always get sick just in time for Christmas - completely missed the last one with my family because I was bedridden. Christmas dinners are genuinely quite awful. TV is terrible. Only so many times I can watch Jurassic Park.

Yes, the issue with UK winters in the south is lack of variety and basically 8 months of today's weather. Wet, dark and disgusting.

vile winter's day here today.

Another abysmal storm season here begins to draw to a close. We seem to be back in the 2007-2012 era for storms in my location. I’m not going to pin any hope on September delivering any goods - I seem to see more lightning in December than July/August these days.

And just like that - just shook out a towel to get in the shower and a decent sized blighter lands on the bathroom floor. Managed to trap him and put him in the garden though and then pegged it inside haha.

Autumn is also the season of giant massive f**k-off spiders. I am absolutely petrified of spiders, but I will try and remove them humanely by trapping them in a glass (I sweat so much doing this I need a sit down after) - if it takes me by surprise though as they have a tendency to do, then all bets are off.

clap of thunder in Andover.

mornings seem noticeably darker now.

I always find it funny when people say "just don't move" or "leave them alone" when talking about wasps. I tried the whole "don't move" thing when I had one buzzing around my face a few years back. It stung me on the neck. I knocked it to the floor and stamped on it until it resembled nothing but a stain. Awful little creatures.

With summer drawing to a close and little sign of anything particularly decent on the horizon I'm going to pass my final rating on this summer. June saw 3 hot days with a little storm I had to drive to intercept over Basingstoke way which produced a little bit of thunder and some torrential rain. The hot plume came to absolutely nothing in my location. July was the most abysmal summer month in recent memory. August of course saw the fairly lengthy heatwave and a storm in my location which was very rumbleiferous but didn't produce a single visible CG or IC strike. Based on my very simplistic parameters (out of 5 for heat and out of 5 for storms) I'm happy to give this summer a whopping 4/10. (3/5 for heat and 1/5 for storms)

we were the "cooking area" for storms today looking at the radar - this risk has now transferred north and west. At least i got to see SOME convection today.

I'm gonna go with shelf-cloud - think the storms today are supposed to be quite "pop-up" so outflow dominant.

convective downpour in Andover. No thunder or lightning observed though. Feels very much an April-showers type day.

I would love a front-loaded winter with a white christmas and then Spring starting on Jan 1st.

This going up to my NW