danm

Properly grotty morning today, damp, cold. But the models are looking a lot more promising this morning. Get some warmer air in during the upcoming week and then things hopefully look like settling down into the second week of May. Monday and Tuesday also looks decent around these parts:

SunnyG today has been surprisingly very nice. Lot's of sunshine all day.

Summer8906 I suppose coastal Hampshire can be quite different to inland SE England, including London, at times. It's always cooler on the coast and if the wind is from the SW, you're always a little more likely to drag in some sea mist and low cloud from time to time.

B87 undoubtedly better than some other Summers. I’ve just gone back and looked at the records. July 2019 had 19 of the 31 days above 24c: August was very similar, bar a brief cool and wet spell mid month:

July 2019 had an average max of 25.5c and August was 25.3c in London. July had about average sunshine (slightly above for the SW), August was sunnier than average. The Summer had loads of days in that warm to very warm category (24-28c) and then 8 days above 30c. It was by no means a classic like 2018 and 2022, but was a very decent modern British Summer. Yes there were a couple of cooler and wetter spells, but we live in the UK, so that will happen in almost every Summer.

There was a wetter spell in the middle but that August started warm and ended hot.

2019 is one of those Summers I view as underrated. The only really poor spell was early June. You're right, it was quite humid but it was often warm, sometimes hot and there were decent amounts of sunshine.

Turning into a much sunnier day than was forecast.

It will change at some point. Let's hope it's the second week of May!

Well guys and gals, let's hope the GFS is on to something here for the second week of May. Please lord, deliver this for us...

Let's hope the GFS has picked up on a new trend as we head into the second week of May:

A brief plume week after next?

Alderc 2.0 jeez, sorry to hear that. I hope they catch the bugger, or did they stop once they hit you?

Nice sunny morning.

B87 my point was more that blasts of intense heat, as @Cheshire Freezewas talking about, are becoming more common. Even during average Summers. 2020 was a great example. A very warm mid July to mid August with an intense heatwave in early August.

We’ve had several hot blasts in recent years, not just 2018 and 2022. Those two summers were exceptional. The number of 35c+ days has increased significantly over the last 5 or 6 years.

Let's hope so.

I agree, there is no "should be". An average is an average, sometimes colder, sometimes warmer. The problem isn't so much the temperatures - we've had cold spells in April before - it's the persistence of the duller and wetter than average weather that's the main problem. We just can't seem to get a stretch of dry and sunny weather at the moment. I accept that in late Autumn and winter, it's what the weather is like at that time of year, but by now you'd hope we would get something more consistently dry and sunny. The SSW definitely put a wrench in things and hasn't helped. I dreaded the talk at the end of Feb of an imminent SSW, knowing this would be the exact result of it. Not snowy mid March nirvana as many on the Mod thread were hoping for, but a perpetuating northern blocking pattern, shunting troughs into the mid latitudes giving us dull and damp weather.

B87 yeh i think it's highly likely that the late season SSW has perpetuated northern blocking. Low pressure is just getting stuck at mid latitudes.

lassie23 hard to say for sure, northern blocking is actually pretty common at this time of year, but I do think the SSW has enhanced and prolonged this pattern.

raz.org.rain warm, wet and thundery according to those charts.

Considering the May average is about 18c for London, temperature wise we look OK next week according to this with 17c to 19c. The problem is it also looks pretty unsettled...

The reason i'm arguing against that is we can get brilliant sunshine under a high in mid winter with cold upper air.

Yeh i don't think upper air temps had anything to do with the cloud, that was more to do with the positioning of the high.

Adding to this, our issue is also being surrounded on water on all sides. The only way to get crystal clear blue skies in this county is if a high is slap bang over us with 1025-1030mb pressure, or having a SE’erly airflow from off the near continent which drags in dry air, or from a northerly airstream in mid winter as we had in Jan. It’s much easier in continental locations as low cloud getting dragged in off a cold sea is much less of an issue. It’s not looking particularly good in the west either.