Norway Summer Update

[opplevelse]

Here we find ourselves on midsummers day, and 2008 has thus far been a mirror image of 2007. Early heat in June was unusual with significantly higher than average temperatures for nearly 2 weeks. This peaked at about 31C on the 8th june, and shortly thereafter a more typical succession of fronts moved in. Temperatures are a returning to normal 15-20C but the precip is still with us.

Relatively high humidity combined with a typically conditionally stable atmosphere has led to some convective down bursts later in the afternoon in Oslo over the last few days. Not the easiest thing for the forecasters to pick!

Anyway, just thought you guys might be interested ... if anyone is interested in discussing scandinavian weather in english and in a bit more detail, we always welcome new members over at www.scandinavianweather.com , we currently only have a few regular contributors over there but the weather can be fairly interesting above 60deg, so if you are interested please say hi

Cheers

James

[Gray-Wolf]

Hi James!

Some of us fared little better this side of the North sea! Went on to Todmorden Agricultural fair on Saturday and was glad of the 'hardening' that riding bikes in my early adult life brought me (no such thing as bad weather just poor clothing choices!) even the Falconry display had to be abandoned as the Peregrine and Harris Hawks fled for shelter on the trees surrounding the park!!!!....quite humorous really

It does appear (to me at least) that we are moving into a new type of predominant weather types over our summer/winter with our 'British Monsoons' intensifying (bringing flooding problems and the spectre of 'un insurable housing' to more than a few) and winter snow fast disappearing or being at best a very transient feature if it falls.

The sad thing is that it does seem to help confirm the prediction that are made about the changes we are to expect as global warming takes it's impact. How the heck will things be if we loose our polar ice over summer and open up huge areas to evaporation and the attendant precipitation falling consequently?

Could you imagine the warm moist that ruins our June's bumping into intense northerly precipitation events???? I fear we ain't seen nuthin' yet!

[opplevelse]

Yes that would be interesting!

The atmosphere continues to feel unstable, and judging by the clouds, and convective development over the course of a day, I think I am right. Unfortunately I do not seem to be able to find any decent soundings around Oslo (Closest are Stavanger and Gotenborg). The Skew T's from both these sites show a slight instability in the 00Z data, but that is not consistant with the extent of development I could see in the later afternoon

The Norwegians tell me this current setup is reasonably unusual. Afternoon thunderstorms are the realm of the tropics, not 60deg north! But what is weired for me (being an Antipodean), is that we are seing this convective atmosphere, with 15-18C ground temps! That is bizaare! Unfortunately I have a feeling that the unstable part is only the lower 2-3000m as full development in the late afternoon seems to be stopping at about 10,000ft ... GRRR Where is that Oslo sounding?!

[SIG100]

Weather data for Oslo: http://retro.met.no/observasjoner/oslo/Osl...dern/index.html

[opplevelse]

Thanks SIG100! and good to hear from you (have a look at my sig )

I am well aware of met.no and the new (much better) collabaration with NRK site www.yr.no but I am interested in finding soundings from Oslo ... I just dont think they do them

[SIG100]

Soundings? Do you mean cloud cover, cloud height, sunshine, air pressure etc.?

All data from the NMI stations are available (free) on http://www.eklima.no

You just have to register.

[Coopsy]

Have moved this to the international weather section

[opplevelse]

Soundings? Do you mean cloud cover, cloud height, sunshine, air pressure etc.?

All data from the NMI stations are available (free) on http://www.eklima.no

You just have to register.

No, an atmospheric sounding is where a weather baloon is released and records, temperature, pressure dewpoint windsped and direction into the upper atmosphere ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_sounding

You can download the data from http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html. The most common form is the "Skew-T" plot and can be used to detirmine the stability of the atmosphere. For example, it can tell you whether a theoretical parcel of air will rise (creating free convection and this is associated with thundersorms and instability) or not.

This is an example of a skew-t plot created from a sounding in Stavanger

Pity you have moved this to international, it was about the summer, and now I doubt anyone will see it, Norway, aint exactly like, I dunno, Indonesia in comparison to the UK ... oh well.

[opplevelse]

Just got back from Portugal, where the weather was lovely and warm, but on the way there I snapped some pics of a lovely bubbling Oslo sky.

Convective activity has settled down now, but still some lovely weather and the possibility for some better conditions on the weekend.

[opplevelse]

Stinking hot day here ... only 11:30 and already 27.7C outside my place. Definitely a vastly different summer than last year, and a warm one for Norway. Will be interesting to see if we get any convection today.

[opplevelse]

huge thunderstorm just hit oslo with 2-3 strikes a second of CGs and ICs very strong outflows and multiple downbursts ... I have never seen anything like this in Norway before ... AWESOME!