danm

GFS continues to churn out the eye candy for next week:

Summer8906 pretty much all of next week is looking fine and settled, as it stands. Why worry about the week after? It's so far away in forecasting terms.

One of those frustrating days where synoptic placement leaves some areas dull and grey.

...and mainly because it's cloudy. In East Anglia, just north of the cloud band, it's 23c.

In Absence of True Seasons totally agree. Ideally I don't want a year with above average rainfall, but if it mainly occurs, as you say, between October and March, and we then get a good Spring and Summer, then it doesn't really matter as much. Obviously that isn't what we've had for the last 18 months - it has largely been persistently dull and wet. So I'm not really bothered now about needing a significantly below average rainfall run of months or significantly higher than average run of sunny months just to balance out the stats. I just want a decent, largely warm and sunny Summer. I'm not asking for drought conditions. *Stormforce~beka* we're under a weather front. Doesn't really matter which way the wind blows, until this sods off it'll be cloudy.

B87 agree.

I don’t either, I really hope we get a good Summer. But I’m also comfortable with the fact that Autumn and Winter will likely be wet enough that means our entire year is above average.

B87 I guess you look at it from a statistical perspective which is fine. I’m really not bothered about what has happened until now. I’m bothered about what happens during the rest of Spring and Summer. If we get good amounts of warmth and sunshine, but it’s not enough to get the entire year at or below average, I don’t really care so long as we get the good weather. We probably will finish 2024 wetter than average considering we still have Autumn and December to come. I just want a good Summer. If 2024 still ends up wetter than average due to the wet Feb, March and April, then so be it.

Frigid the SW have really drawn the short straw. It’s dull and cool here today, but the last 3 days have been warm and largely pretty sunny. Yesterday had a lot of cloud but brightened up in the afternoon. Two 20c days on the trot. The SW have been stuck under a weather front that entire time.

B87 yes but I’m purely talking about the rainfall. I’m personally not really bothered about ensuring whether a month or a year is below average for rainfall from a purely statistical perspective, I’m bothered about how many days we get that are dull and/or rainy. Granted, over the last 18 months we’ve been much wetter due to so many actual days with rain falling. But let’s see how May pans out. It was bone dry yesterday except for a huge thunderstorm overnight that dumped a load of rain.

B87 less bothered by that to be honest as the rainfall came from a very intense thunderstorm. I’m much more bothered on number of days of rainfall. Hopefully with next week looking much better we will fall below the average for number of days with rain this month. If we are “above average” for rainfall due mainly to a few heavy downpours, I’m not too bothered.

Sun Chaser well all we can go on is what the models are showing. Yes, could all go t**s up, but this has been trailed for some time and currently has good, cross model agreement. But yes, nothing is guaranteed until we're at a few days out.

In Absence of True Seasons thing is, that was probably more of a convective t-storm, whereas what we have at the moment is tied up with an area of low pressure and a trailing weather front.

The runs this morning all show that at some point next week we have a SE'erly airflow coming off the near continent. Even without particularly high uppers, that'll quite easily allow temperatures in favoured spots to get into the high teens/low 20's. The runs this morning for next week look excellent.

Agree. If you have a couple of very intense thunderstorms, it can drop a month's worth of rain in a couple of hours. That doesn't really bother me so long, as you say, the rest of the month is fairly dry. Looking at the number of days in a month that has had rainfall is more instructive as we get into the Summer months. To be fair though, over the last 18 months it has been persistent rain that's been the problem. Got woken up at 4am by a fairly brief but very intense thunderstorm! Huge flashes of lighting. It takes a lot to wake me up, so that's saying something.

A cracking set of runs this morning. Once we get the weekend trough out of the way, it's high pressure all the way through the rest of next week. GFS: ECM: UKMO: GEM:

B87 that’s interesting. From what I’ve read, apparently the CS instrument overestimates sunshine in hazy or broken cloud conditions, which is why the KZ readings are adjusted up to match the old CS readings.

Northwest NI yep, UHI, urban heat island. Clearly seen with London still at 17c, Brum 13c, Manchester 15c.

Got this from the Met Office when querying why their anomaly maps show the corrected sunshine totals, but the number totals listed against each station are the lower, raw figures: There are two types of sensor the Kipp & Zonen and the Campbell Stokes. The Heathrow measurements switched from Campbell Stokes (an older style of instrument) to the newer Kipp & Zonen instrument in September 2005. After the switch the new measurements are adjusted to match the old, to give us a consistent measurement across the UK and a homogeneous time series for that station. The adjustment we use for these monthly data can be explained in an a published paper describing the problem and a similar adjustment (but NOT the one we use) which could be applied to daily data. You can find that here: https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wea.2288. We don't use this one because we don't grid the daily sunshine data, only the monthly. The newer instrument is adjusted to match the earlier one, to keep the UK measurements and the timeseries consistent. We list the observed, unadjusted data in the station files, but we map the adjusted data, because the network is a mixture of both sensor types (the key which describes which sensor is used for each measurement is at the top of the file, Kipp & Zonnen is marked with a #).

Some definite UHI effects going on this evening…

In Absence of True Seasons yep feels like a proper balmy Summers evening out there.

Very quiet in here tonight…. The ECM is a bit of a corker for next week:

Still feels warm out there. A proper balmy, late Spring evening at last. Still 19c at 8pm. Feel for those in parts of the SW, really caught the short straw over the last couple of days.

Met Office anomaly maps are out for April. Overall, it was about average for temperatures... Unsurprisingly for most areas, it was wetter than average... ...and again, unsurprisingly, it was duller than average almost everywhere... Looking at the number of days of rainfall, it was above average almost everywhere for days of rain over 1mm: ...but in terms of the number of days with rainfall above 10mm, it's the north and west that have been above average: So exceptionally wet in these parts, which can seen on the overall anomaly maps for rainfall totals with the far NW of England and S Scotland. Here are the actual values for reference:

Met Office anomaly maps are out for April. Overall, it was about average for temperatures... Unsurprisingly for most areas, it was wetter than average... ...and again, unsurprisingly, it was duller than average almost everywhere... Looking at the number of days of rainfall, it was above average almost everywhere for days of rain over 1mm: ...but in terms of the number of days with rainfall above 10mm, it's the north and west that have been above average: So exceptionally wet in these parts, which can seen on the overall anomaly maps for rainfall totals with the far NW of England and S Scotland. Here are the actual values for reference: