Summer 2020 style winters.

[Summerlover2006]

With winter approaching I got the idea for a new thread.

what I mean by a summer 2020 style winter is that in summer 2020 for weeks and weeks on end there was wet cloudy and cool weather but out of nowhere at certain points in the summer we would get some extreme heat.

ate there any winters with this style where it would be mild and wet for weeks then out of nowhere we would get quite an intense cold spell?

I can’t think of any because it seems more often then not we get one or the other with UK winters either a cold winter or a mild winter with little change.

[Harry233]

 Summerlover2006 you could probably say the winters of 2006/07 and 2015/16 both very mild winters but there was a cold snap in February 2007 with some snow and the second half of February 2016 was generally cold. Both years were very mild winters.

[Frigid]

Winter 2011/12 springs to mind. A short-lived cold spell in December, a short-lived warm spell in June 2020. January nothing of note really, same with July 2020 except the final day. February featuring a prolonged cold spell, August 2020 featuring a prolonged heatwave. 

[LetItSnow]

 Frigid  Summerlover2006 100 years earlier is an even better example. The winter of 1911/1912 was extremely topsy turvy. It was a mild winter overall with a C.E.T. of 5.1C.

December 1911 was exceptionally mild and wet with south-westerlies practically all month.

January 1912 started mild and wet but a deep cold pool to our north-west provided some resistance and by mid-month there was a battlegroud set up which brought very heavy snow in places. Then it became rather non-descript in the second half, but the atmosphere was building.

Early February 1912 opened the doors to an absolute monstrously cold spell with severely cold temperatures and heavy snow. The cold broke by the 7th and the rest of the month was exceptionally mild with blowtorch southwesterlies.

February 1912 was similar to February 2021.

More details about this winter

 

[Weather-history]

Winters 1947-48 and 1949-50

Late February 1948

Second half of January 1950

 

 

 

 

 

[Thundery wintry showers]

Historically it hasn't been that unusual to get a generally mild winter but with some intense snowfalls. 2003/04 was quite a good example in eastern England. In southern Britain 1993/94 was quite mild overall but with some notable snowfalls. And indeed for some regions 2006/07 was a good example with notable snow events around 24 January and 8-10 February.

In terms of temperature, it is somewhat rarer. I can't think of any generally mild winters that produced a few intensely cold spells, but several spring to mind that had one intense cold spell. 1947/48 and 1949/50 as Weather-history mentioned, I also thought of 1971/72 which was generally mild but had that very cold easterly at the end of January which broke some date records. I'd also put 2011/12 in this category, as the only intense cold spell was the one in early February - the third week of December did produce snow for some but it was just a few degrees colder than average.

I wouldn't class 2015/16 as an example, or even close - the northerlies of mid to late February 2016 were very tame, due largely to the exceptional warmth on our side of the Arctic during that month.

 

Edited November 14 by Thundery wintry showers

[TheOgre]

What about 2022/23?

December was very cold in the first half then went straight to mild and wet until mid January. In mid January it went very cold for about a week then the rest of the winter was mild and dry.

Also 2023/24 - This one more so.

Started December on a cold and frosty/snowy note then the rest of the month and into January was very mild and wet. Mid January was rather frosty and cold for about 10 days I think then went back to very mild and wet for the rest of January and February.

[Summer of 95]

For a really good analogy you'd need to add cold spells in the autumn to parallel the warm and sunny weather in spring 2020. Which does make 1993-94 a good candidate: cold in October and November, very wet in December (although it wasn't totally without cold), mostly boring in January then the cold came back in February. Although I'd definitely class 1993-4 as an "average" winter while 2020 was a "poor" summer (very wet and cloudy, July was also very cool until the last couple of days).

Or what about 1919-20? Incredible autumn that outdid a lot of winters. Then what looks like a mostly un-wintry Dec and Jan, also a mild Feb except a snowfall around the 20th (in Bonacina), then it looks like there were cold snaps in March.

[SummerShower]

Another couple I would add are the winters of 1997/1998 and 1999/2000.  Both years had what I would say one fairly intense cold spell about a week before Christmas.

Both gave snowfalls here, and the 1999 one produced the deepest snowfall since 1991 locally (surpassing anything here in 1995/1996).  They were both shortlived however, and the rest of both winters were not far off 'summer 2020' style.  

I will note though summer 2020 had 1 sudden heat spike in each month and these winters had only the December cold spells really.  However, they are 2 of the closest I can think of.

[Weather-history]

 SummerShower

That easterly before Christmas 1997 was pretty  pathetic in terms of cold. Manchester Airport for instance didn't even get below  freezing at any stage during that period. The lowest maximum at Heathrow was 3.8°C 

The CET for the 15th-17th December 1997 was 3.3°C

 

[Summer8906]

 Summerlover2006 Perhaps 1993/94. Generally very wet and fairly (but not very) mild but had a few short potent cold spells in late Dec/Jan and a longer one lasting around 10 days in Feb.

Edited November 17 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

4 hours ago, Weather-history said:

That easterly before Christmas 1997 was pretty  pathetic in terms of cold. Manchester Airport for instance didn't even get below  freezing at any stage during that period. The lowest maximum at Heathrow was 3.8°C 

It did produce lying snow in southern Hampshire though so was memorable because of that. By contrast the last time we saw lying snow in December in this area was 2010, so 13 consecutive snowless Decembers now.

A shame the snow of 1997 brought in that horrendously wet period though, which would last until around January 9th.

The 90s were probably the most interesting decade for December weather down here, with 1990, 1995 and 1999 also featuring snow events (mostly slight, but I guess that's the south for you) in southern counties.

By contrast the Decembers of the 2010s (except 2010) and the 80s (except 1981) were notably mild and snowless. What the 80s lacked in December though was more than made up for by the Jan/Feb events.

Edited November 17 by Summer8906

[LetItSnow]

 Summer8906 June, October and December were months mostly that escaped the warming trend during the 1990s, unusually. So much so that June and October decreased in the 1971-2000 averages.

[Summer8906]

 LetItSnow Indeed, October 1992 and 1993 were notably cool, the others didn't seem notably so but I guess only 1995 was notably warm. The 90s Junes didn't seem that cool as we had five good ones on the trot from 1992-96 but then again we also had 1990, 1991, 1997 and 1998 as well, all of which were cool and cloudy and three of which were very wet.

The 00s also had fairly seasonable Decembers too, though mostly without snow in this area. But the Decembers since 2011 have been mostly terrible! (Hence I don't have high expectations of the upcoming one...)

Edited November 17 by Summer8906

[LetItSnow]

 Summer8906 The only warm Octobers of the 1990s were 1990, 1995 and 1996. Junes were 1992 and 1993. Decembers were generally a mixture though.

The run of Decembers from 2011 to 2023, bar 2022 have been unspeakably bad...

Back to the topic at hand and I think the winters of 1911/1912 and 1947/1948 stand out as the clear winners in this category.

February 1948 looks like a strange one.

Then it flipped back to anomalously warm in March 1948. Extreme see-saw period of extreme mildness and severe cold and snow.

[Summer8906]

 LetItSnow I guess if 29 Feb 1948 had the same synoptics as 1 March it must have threatened max Feb temp records, as that setup also looks very sunny.

[Summer8906]

17 minutes ago, LetItSnow said:

 Summer8906 The only warm Octobers of the 1990s were 1990, 1995 and 1996. Junes were 1992 and 1993. Decembers were generally a mixture though.

OT I guess but October 1996 didn't seem that warm, I just remember it being rather cloudy and changeable. I remember a lot of SWlies so presumably it was mild nights that did it as I don't remember much in the way of notably warm days, one Sunday around mid-month and that was it.

Surprised June 1994 and 1996 didn't come out notably warm. The opposite of Oct 1996 I guess, warm days but cooler nights.

Edited November 17 by Summer8906

[LetItSnow]

 Summer8906 June 1996 had something like 280 hours of sun in London and maximum temperatures around 1.5-2.0 above average but nights were comfortable. A completely forgotten month in terms of summer warmth it seems.

Back on topic and the winter of 2022/2023 does seem an uncanny fit as well now I think about it. Like I said in the moans thread, it was a month of two halves. The mild first half continued into January which was very non-descript but very mild with quite a bit of rain. However there was a bizarrely severe spell of frosts in the second half which lead to central London getting down to like -7/-8C. I remember it very well as during the morning the skies were crystal clear and everything was covered with a severe thick frost which looked like snow. Then it flipped to anomalously mild but often sunny and dry in February. 

Had the two cold spells linked up over Christmas and into the first half of January then the winter would have been fondly remembered and perhaps even a classic. A mild first half to December would have been fine, then cold and snowy with severe frosts in the heart of winter, then a mild and springlike February.

The same pattern was oddly seen on the other side of the pond as December 2022 had an absolute beast of a cold spell in the run up to Christmas before being followed by one of the warmest Januaries on record for the USA, particularly on the east coast. That's happened for them before though, the winter of 1989/1990 which had a monstrous December before fizzling into extreme mildness in January and February... Oh look at me rambling!