2015 - The Year's Notables

[Timmytour]

No year, since records began, has ever had all of its months upto and including October at least 1C colder than its corresponding month in the previous year.

Only three years have had nine of the ten months at least IC colder than the previous year's month.

1667....1799,,,,and now 2015

Surely this year cannot be regarded as average!!!  

 

[BLAST FROM THE PAST]

I was camping in Sussex late July and Cornwall mid August.....the coolness of the evenings and nights was very noticeable....

 

BFTP

[Azazel]

the most boring year weather-wise for as long as I can remember. Probably because I brought a GoPro to document things like the weather.

 

constantly windy, cool and uninteresting. One hot day at the beginning of July and overnight storms, otherwise it's been dreadful. I don't even recall seeing a cumulonimbus in daylight hours once this year. No beefy showers, just infill, stratus, infill etc.

 

I hate winter, but i'm praying it snows just to make it interesting.

[Lauren]

Apart from that exceptionally hot day in July, it's been a very unremarkable year weather-wise.

 

I agree. That and that period of about a week, when we had thunderstorms down here for a few days running, although none significant.

[Methuselah]

Only two thing I can think of: July 1st and that spectacular night storm...

[cheeky_monkey]

everybody calls it boring..but 2015 has been a very uniform year so far which in itself is very unusual..apart from the odd day here and there it has not been either hot, cold, wet or stormy...seems we have been in gentle westerly drift all year long up until now.

[Captain Shortwave]

The final part of June and the first week of July was a fantastic spell of weather down here, surprising to see such a flip from notably cool weather to consistent mid-twenties and eventually peaking in the mid thirties at the start of July. Throw a few thundery outbreaks (mainly at night) and that summed up the best two/three weeks of the year.

There was a heavy fall of snow in Chelmsford on the 30th January, but that was it for significant snow.

[NUT]

A few events have stood out this year.

 

28th of Janurary for starters. Cracking snow while watching the new episode of Midsomer (was hard to concentrate on the TV)

 

Some snow during March at times was nice.

 

April 27th. A very heavy shower which turned wintry. Briefly left something on the grass (although didn't last)

 

July. Washout. Simple as. Awful and thunder during the early hours of the 2nd..............4th and 5th was nice but as poor as July was the last 3 months have really felt quite dry. Not really has substained wet periods since

[Evening thunder]

Nothing..

 

Well, ok every year has some events/statistics you can pick out.

 

Speaking purely from my home location (I did experience heat and one storm in Surrey in July)..

 

16.3C on the 9th Jan (during cloudy weather too), possibly a record or near record for the area.

 

April the 15th reached 22.1C, quite good for April here.

 

July 1st did have my highest min at 18.3C (and it was 23.7C at 2am, only 6 maxima were higher this year..)

 

Then July the 31st had my lowest July min at 3.6C.

 

August was very wet with 157mm, but it was relatively spread out despite a few 20-30mm falls (the river didn't do much).

 

The year also has the undesirable honour of being the only year I've recorded to not reach 25C once! 

 

Many of the stats that you can pick out occurred in the 'wrong' season (i.e warm in Jan and cold in July, reducing our already low seasonal range), and occur normally at all other times of year.

Apart from mentioned, no notable high/low maxima, only one sleety snow shower, no really significant falls of rain or strong winds, bits of thunder but below average and nothing major, though one 'average' thunderstorm passed overhead on the 22nd August.. also the year with the least downpours and lowest maximum rain rate since my records start (2008).

As mentioned by Azazel the year was also remarkably devoid of convective skies and cumulonimbus (sunshine and heavy/thundery shower days) here, and is the year with the least downpours and lowest maximum rain rate on my weather station's records (2008 onwards). 

I tend to think of 2011 being a boring year, but then it had that record April and Autumn heatwave.

2014 had much more interesting weather here though.

Edited November 2, 2015 by Evening thunder

[Styx]

The snow of August 3 was this year's big weather event. If you like how TV news hypes up weather stories then this is for you. Can't be sure whether it's viewable for you guys. Just remember they didn't send a news crew to the more elevated areas where there was more impressive snow, probably because all the roads were blocked. 

 

[Weather-history]

10 years ago or so I wrote an article about how notable years ending in "5" have been in the past, I'm not saying there is a pattern but that has been the quirk. It should be in the depths of the history forum.

For me, this has not been a spectacular year. Actually, in terms of seasonal feel, it's been poor. The 5 climatological warm months (May to September) were below average and when we headed into the cooler part of the year, November was way above average and by the looks of December is heading that way.

Worst type of year for me, I like my seasons to be as how you associate them, there is nothing worse for me than a very mild winter followed by a cool spring and summer then followed by an autumn that gets milder as you progress. Or the other scenario,  getting the summery weather  in the spring and autumn and little in the summer where we don't get the maximum out of it. 2011 was such a year.

April was decent and there were odd days scattered throughout the year but not a year that I will put on the list of the great years.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 6, 2015 by Weather-history
Correction

[Timmytour]

I think, WH, this December has both rescued and enhanced your observations about years ending in 5

Seems most of the notables came after I started this thread!!!....some additionals to those already stated....

Warmest December day ever
Warmest December ever by a bloomin mile!
The third warmest November on record
The warmest ever last three months of a year by over 0.5C
One of only four years to have as many as 9 months 1C or more cooler than the corresponding month of the preceding year
While no years has had every month vary by 1C or more from the corresponding month of the previous year, 2015 becomes one of only six years since 1750 to register 11 such months and the first since 1933 to do so


 

[Weather Observer]

 I would agree with Weather History that this year has not been inspiring. In dietary terms a bit like chicken madras for breakfast and cornflakes for supper.

1947 was the sort of year I could have lived with. Haven't looked up the CET but my dear old "Century of London Weather" by W.A.L Marshall,  shows that the average monthly value at Kew rose from -1C in February to 20C in August.

i am not proposing to move to Camelot, where proper seasons come round at the allotted time, but I would at least like to have a sense of which month of the year it is. The rutting stags in Richmond Park, shown in one of today's newspapers appear as confused as I am!

[damianslaw]

At the point this thread was made i.e. late October, I would have been saying very unremarkable, very average, but hardly anything of note. Late Jan into early Feb was seasonal with a decent run of frost and some snow. Spring and summer rather disappointing with no lengthy decent dry sunny warm spell - though April was ok.

However, the last 4 months were quite different. September was an excellent month here, lots of very dry sunny weather and cool to boot - ideal walking conditions. October brought more varied affair, yes wet at times, but we saw further lengthy dry sunny spells, the end of the month was too mild though for my liking with no frost.

November and December 2015 - oh dear, 2 shocking months, abundantly wet far too mild and dull - abysmal.. I though the couplets of Dec 13 and Jan 14 and Jan/Feb 14 were bad, but these two months I hope we don't see the likes of for a long long time. Words can't describe how bad the past 2 months have been in the Lake District.

[Timmytour]

The mean CET for October was less above than 1.5C of the mean for November and December combined. 

That's only the 9th year that has happened. But what makes it notable for this year is that October was in the top 50 warmest Octobers on record.  In every one of the other 8 years, the October was in the coldest 25 Octobers on record!

Edited January 9, 2016 by Timmytour
realised I'd left the important word "above" out!

[hillbilly]

A year to forget,little in the way of winter,a cold spring that lingered into summer so much so that it took over summer too,just a handful of days above 23 deg and shocking amounts of days below 16 deg,really did not feel like summer at all.A pleasant calm autumn at least gave some consolation yet a kick in the teeth with November and December becoming exceptionally mild and wet with the Calder almost flooding on numerous occasions before spectacularly on Boxing day giving the worst floods here since 1946,now cutting me off from my home town at Elland with the damaged bridge due to take a year to repair,still rain persists into the new year .

Edited January 5, 2016 by hillbilly

[iand61]

One day of heavy snow in January, one day of heat in July, three months of almost continuous rain throughout autumn and early winter and the mother of all deluges over Christmas with almost 120mm of rain here in 24 hours and flooding as bad as I've ever seen.

other than that a year of mediocrity 

[Methuselah]

Team England won the annual New Year Vomit Hopscotch title...

[Relativistic]

This year will be remembered mostly for November and December, both months being extremely mild and very wet. However, I think July was also an extremely interesting month, and one that deserves mention. Not only did it start off extremely hot (breaking, somewhat controversially, the highest July temperature ever recorded - 36.7C at Heathrow Airport), but the last week of that month was the 8th coldest on the CET record, and the coldest since 1920. Not only that, but we got the 5th coldest July minimum ever on the CET record on the 31st, which I think is astounding in itself. That cold record was achieved at a time one could argue was the least favourable time for it to have occurred.

So July was a month of incredible contrast. Due to this incredible swing, the drop in the CET from the first half of the month to the second half was the 10th largest on record for any July; there was the 3rd largest difference between the highest and lowest daily average for any July on record; and the largest range between the highest maximum and lowest minimum for any July. So overall, an amazing month.

I hope he doesn't mind, but I took these stats from a post that Born From The Void made in the July 2015 CET thread (page 11). You can view the original post here:

 

Edited January 7, 2016 by Relativistic Sting Jet
Didn't proof-read.

[Guest]

Spring 2015

Warm and pleasant. Higher temperatures and sunny! Remarkably unusual.

 

Early Summer 2015

Turn for the worse, a mix between mild cool, dry or wet.

 

Summer 2015

Unpredictable. One thing that can be said for sure is that it was a damp one. However, it wasn't all that bad. We got a record 23.5C.

 

Autumn 2015

Just like Spring, it was exceptionally sunny and generally warm. It turned into a dry one after September, giving some cool and rainy weather during November.

 

 

[Timmytour]

On 05 January 2016 at 9:55 PM, hillbilly said:

A year to forget,little in the way of winter,a cold spring that lingered into summer so much so that it took over summer too,just a handful of days above 23 deg and shocking amounts of days below 16 deg,really did not feel like summer at all.A pleasant calm autumn at least gave some consolation yet a kick in the teeth with November and December becoming exceptionally mild and wet with the Calder almost flooding on numerous occasions before spectacularly on Boxing day giving the worst floods here since 1946, now cutting me off from my home town at Elland with the damaged bridge due to take a year to repair,still rain persists into the new year .

<grabs omen and runs for the hills...>