Higher Ground

This is the first time i can truly say the snow has been approaching moderately heavy since the morning. Seems like the far SW Birmingham has been rather late to join the party, especially as Stourbridge and central Brum are less than 10 miles away. Currently 5cm of new snow today, approx 7-8cm on grass where last week's snow didn't melt.

Pretty much stopped since then. So on top of the snow left over from Thursday on the grass, that's maybe just about 2.5cm or 1 inch of snow on the grass. Would be a very bumpy sledge ride. As others have said, it's pathetic really. The easterly set in 9 days ago today, we've had freezing cold air all around the UK, relatively warm seas potentially providing loads of moisture, winds from a variety of directions, and this is all we get...... Yet at latitudes much further south in the US, 1000s of kms from the sea, they get a foot or two of snow easy! i blame the laws of physics......

Indeed! 2cm here now

MONSTER flakes here too - each one a centimetre deep lol

BIIIIIIG flakes and lots of 'em -1.1C

Red pixel stop by B45 you know you want to

Looking at the raintoday radar i think it's about to smack it down with snow! If only briefly unfortunately.

Seems to be turning more to snow as it goes south so should be ok.

Snowing and settling! Temp up to -1.5C....

Gonna be interesting to see what happens here. Our precip is coming from Telford/Cannock way so it's been rain very recently..... Also it's up to 1.0C in Birmingham; however, still -1.8C here. Should know very soon...........

-1.8C Thursday's light covering of snow intact (except where most exposed to sunshine)

Just a quick question. I noticed the CET minimum for 24th June was 10.2C, which was higher than I expected as it was a relatively chilly night, which even saw a ground frost at Church Lawford. The CET appears to be derived from temps at Pershore, Rothamsted/Cambridge and Stonyhurst (Lancs). I had a look at the following: http://tinyurl.com/l6dry2 Minimum was 9C at Pershore, 8C/9C/9C at the 3 stations surrounding Rothamsted/Cambridge, and 10C at Manchester (nearest station to Stonyhurst, and more urban thus likely warmer). Not trying to be awkward, just genuinely curious as to how a figure of 10.2C would have been reached.

That's if the question is whether global warming has been occurring. It's a different matter if the question is how fast the underlying global warming is occurring. Then not taking into account cyclical processes such as AMO/PDO etc may be taken as mis-construing, when projecting from recent unusually low Arctic summer ice extents and upswing in Greenland melt to an imminent ice-free Arctic Ocean etc. Note here in Figs 1 and 3 the peak in late 2006 in warmth of Atlantic water flowing into Arctic ocean through Fram Strait: http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satell...the-fram-strait It's not surprising that this was followed by Arctic summers 2007 and 2008. But what happens next? Note my links in previous post re: Arctic cooling back to 2002 levels. If this persists, then it's plausible we will see this reflected to some degree (with a lag) in summer ice extent, Greenland melt etc. I'm not suggesting a massive recovery, but I'm countering the impression that the Arctic is in some kind of fast runaway process when actually it's more complicated with cyclical variations over a longer-term trend. Chris

Here's a bit of "evidence" for you (not that I'm arguing any major "global cooling" is or has been underway - but of course there are more possibilities other than just that or "runaway warming"!) May Arctic mean ice extent: highest since 2001 http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/n_plot_hires.png June Arctic mean ice extent so far: highest since 2004 [i checked this in Excel] http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm Arctic temperatures: coldest since 2002 on both 18- and 24-month (prior) moving averages for both RSS and UAH ("NoPol") i.e. satellite-derived temperatures for 60-82.5N [also checked in Excel] http://www.remss.com/data/msu/monthly_time_series/ http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/uahncdc.lt Antarctic sea ice: at historically very high levels: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM....anom.south.jpg Recent global temperatures: May 2009 was the 2nd coldest May since 1997 according to RSS (see link above, and coldest was May 2008); 4th coldest according to UAH. Current global temperatures: trending below both a year ago and the 1979-1998 average as of 14th June http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/exe...h?amsutemps+002 [ Note the reminder here that Ch05 is the channel to look at for lower troposphere temperatures, and current year can only be compared to previous with reasonable accuracy: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/06/may-20...date-004-deg-c/ ]

The last widespread ground frost in the south of England was only 3 days ago: http://tinyurl.com/kle3j5

Eugene does have a point though: for example, for my area (West Mids) the Met Office is now predicting that "Thursday and Friday will be bright, fresh and breezy" and for the UK from Saturday that "Temperatures will be generally near normal at first...".

Eugene: you need to change "subjectivity" and "subjective" to "objectivity" and "objective" to avoid saying the opposite of what you mean (unless you've got past even my irony radar?!) EDIT: think I'm too late, looks like he's gone - oh well.

In 2007 by 14th June you could already get a visual sense of what the minimum ice extent was going to look like: http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredat...0614-v5_nic.png http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredat...0914-v5_nic.png This year is not yet comparable in that sense, and so there is significantly less open water amongst the ice, on the Beaufort/Chukchi side of the pole, to begin absorbing the peak solar radiation - for now. http://www.iup.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsredat...0614-v5_nic.png Higher Ground (a.k.a Chris on various climate blogs......)

The winter-like weekend continues. Temp been below 10C since Friday evening. Currently coldest yet at 6.2C with moderate rain.

Great stat/link re: July 1988 - thanks! I note that the NE Atlantic SST Anomalies are pretty cold at the moment...... (As also indexed by the AMO)

Well I thought it came pretty close to what you were looking for in your question. 2007 and 2008 seem to have had the least maxes above 20C for St Mary as far back as those Weatheronline records go (1996). Also, average August max there was 19.4C for 1996-2008 so the normal average max is actually quite high, albeit there obviously tends to be a small range because of the island location. All it takes is a few days of settled weather and 20C ought to be broken, but I guess these were in short supply the last couple of summers. (I guess it got warm over the mainland when there were warm winds from the continent, rather than prolonged settled conditions?)

Where's the last place you'd think of??!!............. How about the Scilly Isles....... seems it came pretty damn close there the last couple of summers: 2008: 20C+ only recorded on 3 days, highest max ~21C 2007: 20C+ only recorded on 4 days, highest max ~20.5C So if you still think in Fahrenheit, although it's touched 70F (21.1C) on one day it hasn't been "into the 70s" there (in anything more than an academic sense) since 2006! It therefore seems almost a dead cert there must have been a summer in recent decades when 20C wasn't recorded there? Given the warming of the North Atlantic....?

The Pinatubo volcanic eruption was June 1991. Coincidence?" "...June 15 saw the onset of the climactic eruption..." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatub...mactic_eruption

I was surprised to find the temp was just 5.5C here when I checked half an hour ago. And the weather was clear, although we had had some sharp showers a while before.

If they lasted the weekend I doubt they melted much more today, as max temp on Great Dun Fell (840m) was just 3C - may even have been some snow falling up there right on the top?