Maz

Suddenly and Unlike yesterday, convection seems to have initiated to E of Manchester on the Pennines. Can see a number of towers out East. Maybe Rochdale, Bacup etc will see something as steering flow seems more S->N than the SE->NW I would have expected.

Bone dry here yesterday and a glorious day and then able to sit outside all evening. Clear skies and warm already. Shaping up for another hot one. Will see if convection is closer to Pennines today and impacts here.

Shap in 3rd place!!! At around 300m, surrounded by hills, not far from the sea, it’s normally competing for dullest place in UK. Normally only appears in the weather league tables in winter as it is a frost hollow and gets very cold nights. Shows it has been an unusual spell of weather.

30c used to be reached only after a slow build up of mid then high 20s, and often rarely reached at all. Now 1 day of SE/S winds and temps soar towards 30.

Foehn effect with SE’ly coming off the Southern Uplands. That is impressively hot though (as was west Wales with an Easterly foehn yesterday). Cheshire/Merseyside also close to 30c now winds switched to SE giving a good foehn effect. Just plain hot in SE England, with a little bit of urban heat island impact to give the highest temperatures. Notably hot day widely for early June.

The feel has changed markedly in the last hour or so. Now feels heavy and sticky, even the wind is warm. After so many low dew point days, feels very different. Does feel thundery, but here any cloud build quickly flattens and dissipates- presumably the “cap” being mentioned on the convection thread. Clear blue skies again now, maybe Chris’ coastal convergence will be the trigger over there, but will stay sunny here.

Which website is that from?

Seems to me 30c in this country used to occur after a run of mid to high 20s. But last few years the wind turns S to SE and it’s 30+ straight away in SE, S Central and East Anglia.

Personally I prefer the fresher, comfortable heat. Saying that, without a spell or two of hot days I do feel cheated of “summer”. The same in winter if we don’t get a cold/frosty/snowy spell. The rhythm of the seasons is important I guess and I do agree, from yesterday, it has felt like “summer”.

Come the weekend the air over us is forecast to be sourced from way south. Air that is currently moving around Storm Oscar and moving over sea that is around 4-5c above average temperatures for time of year. Hence if there is any degree of sunshine it will quickly get very warm. It also brings lots of moisture, so if cloudy we get a very sticky, humid high teens instead.

Yes, this article gives detail about the warm seas that the source of our air may have passed over come 7 days time. Unusual Ocean Anomalies are being detected in the North Atlantic, impacting the Atlantic storm systems as we head into the Summer season » Severe Weather Europe WWW.SEVERE-WEATHER.EU Unusual Ocean Anomalies in the North Atlantic have developed over Spring, potentially impacting the weather patterns in the... which would appear to support the higher dew point argument- therefore potential for high surface temperatures but more especially heavier rain and more instability.

Models firming up on Biscay low to SW and high to N, NE or E. Hence pointing strongly to a S, SE or E wind, growing humidity and higher temperatures. The exact balance of the two forces and how they play out over time from Thursday onwards is far from decided. A change in weather pattern will always give considerable model variation. (Worth remembering if using an automatically generated app from just one operational run). The mix of the forces and their progression will determine whether it gets very warm or hot, for how long, how wet it gets and of course where. Interesting model watching. @Tamara perhaps has highlighted the key ingredient- the deepening cut-off low with moist and hot air sourced from way south. Fascinating seeing how that plays out….

Good Got very lucky with a 1 week holiday near Ashbourne, Derbyshire in the week before Easter - 6/7 lovely crisp sunny days, frosty mornings, warm in the sun in the afternoon. Then final week in May in Pembrokeshire. Barely a cloud in 7 days, pleasantly warm. Perfect! The spell from mid May on, which was near my perfect weather in NW England (then SW Wales). Got lucky on my work trips too, great days in NW Wales and Edinburgh and two stunning drives up and back from Edinburgh too, with snowy scenes. The dross for most of March and a lot of April marks the season down as did the Manchester SE’’ly “hole” opening and ruining the early March snow event ( it was so close I literally ran from my house with a dusting of snow to knee deep drifts though!)

Not bad on our decking today either - west is best!!

Over spring, I’ve enjoyed the relaxed pace of this thread, and detailed analysis. Certainly indications today that there will be a change of gear now with some “excitement” injected into the mix if we are counting down towards a possible hotter spell. The long spell of “northern-ish” blocking (it’s just north of UK, but squeezed between the twin subtropical and polar jets, is not really a true Northern block in my books), gives a very different starting point to recent summers - there is no Azores high whether bloated, in its usual home or pushed west, which is highly unusual. Will be fascinating seeing how the jigsaw pieces fall into place from here.

That’s a really good bit of analysis, which does show the importance of perception. Over the whole of spring, my location (just north of Manchester on west side of Pennines) appears to have had very similar sunshine, temp and rainfall to London. After a slow start, my perception is of a good spring, whilst in London the perception is of a bad one. The anomalies all show positive for NW England, and 2 1/2 weeks of glorious weather (warm, sunny and comfortable is perfect for me, rather than heat) to finish May, heighten that perception considerably. Of course, endless moist SW-NW winds over an inflated Azores high - a very common synoptic the last few summers (most summers really), and it’s a very different story. I’m enjoying the current weather, but can sympathise with those more often under grey stratus and a nagging cold wind.

Cloud has even got to west wales coast (where I am on holiday). First clouds in the sky for the whole week! Think we will cope though and it’s already breaking up. Imagine further east it will be a real struggle today.

Great spell of weather this! For me, this is ideal. Sunny, warm, but fresh and comfortable. I posted at Easter saying I couldn’t believe how lucky I had been with UK family holidays. Following Yorkshire in mid August last year (30c day after day), got the warm and settled mid February week in Suffolk and then the high pressure (but frosty) week before Easter near Ashbourne. I’m now in Pembrokeshire for the half term week with the family….3 wet days in 5 UK weeks, most other days sunny. Away first two weeks in August too - Yorkshire. Expecting a monsoon as penance!!!

Nice! First 25c of the year courtesy of a west wales foehn effect - which will have raised the likes of Porthmadog 2 or 3c above areas the other side of the Welsh hills. Wall to wall sunshine and dry soil from 2 to 3 weeks with very low humidity and a steady breeze will have helped too. Very interesting to me when Keswick, Tulloch Bridge and Porthmadog are top of the temperature pops!

At the risk of being boring, I can only repeat what others have said. Perfect weekend’s weather, most of last week was really nice and the outlook for the foreseeable looks exactly the same. Such spells are not common in NW England, although, as @damianslaw has pointed out late spring/ early summer is statistically our best period with SW/W winds at their least frequent. Make the most of it is my advice!!

Turning into a really “pleasant” spring spell. Unremarkable and not memorable, but it is steady, comfortable and, well, “nice”!!

True, but from a weather watchers perspective it is interesting to see the local differences. Well I think so anyway!

For those suffering in the grey zone today, take a look at the top 20 temperatures for today. It’s a list of what are usually the coldest and/or wettest places in UK - Aveimore, Capel Curig, Malin Head, Londonderry…..don’t they deserve their relatively rare day in the sun?

Unbroken sunshine today for the first time since the week before Easter. Sitting on decking watching the village cricket. Very English! I’m not a heat lover*, so for me sunny, high teens and low humidity is just about perfect. Should have put gloves on for my early (pre 6am) run though, it was ‘autumnal’ like heavy dew, shallow mist around the river and rather chilly! * Heat is far better than our normal grey, coolish drizzle though!!

Hi, I’m not well informed on global teleconnections. I can see that a very large N Pacific/ W’rn N America ridge, given a long enough wavelength, causes a trough in the Atlantic and a ridge over Europe. And that indicates for UK, ridge - plume - unsettled - ridge recurring pattern as wavelengths vary, the amplitude of the waves vary and there is an interaction with the summer build of continental heat in Europe. I can’t work out how the WWB (westerly wind burst) in the Indian Ocean fits in. From the quoted post the WWB seems to lead to a big trough in the eastern Indian Ocean. Is that somehow forcing the northern hemisphere subtropical and/or polar jets north, creating the big Pacific high and hence a big Rosby wave that sees the resultant pattern I have described above? If so the size of the response must be crucial. If there is more/ less amplitude in the Pacific, the downstream wavelengths will be longer/shorter and hence the locations of the troughs/ridges different. If any of you knowledgeable teleconnection folk are on here this afternoon, I would welcome your thoughts, to help my understanding. The developing El Niño is clearly the big thing happening at the moment, I’m just interested in how you are taking that and projecting the potential summer 2023 impact on NW Europe.