Summer 2023 chat

[mb018538]

2 minutes ago, SunSean said:

Surprisingly sunny morning which was not on the forecast at all. Satellite shows clouds encroaching but its still turned out way better than the predicted zero hours of sunshine that was forecast!

Same here....been sunny and quite oppressive at 27c. No starting to cloud over, but I wasn't expecting such a good first half of the day either.
ECM only had 23-24c as the max here, so UKV has led the way again.

[cheese]

3 minutes ago, mb018538 said:

Same here....been sunny and quite oppressive at 27c. No starting to cloud over, but I wasn't expecting such a good first half of the day either.
ECM only had 23-24c as the max here, so UKV has led the way again.

Yeah, today has turned out nicer than yesterday here, the opposite of what was forecast. 

[richie3846]

1 hour ago, mb018538 said:

A lot less activity than the UKV was predicting for midday currently showing on the radar....perhaps it'll ignite fairly soon.

A little further south over France and in the channel, gives us a clue to what we may expect later on!

[Summer8906]

47 minutes ago, reef said:

Stations just report raw numbers regardless. Any adjustment is done afterwards.

The fact is, the 1961-1990 average for August at Heathrow was 186.62 hours. The 1991-2020 average is 202.12 hours. The 1989-2006 period had an unusually high number of 'good' Augusts, but even if you used the mean most central to that period (1981-2010), the average is still just 204.67 hours.

Although it may not seem like it. We're getting sunnier in the UK as the decades pass. You'll always get spells in there that deviate but Heathrow's annual averages show it:

1961-1990: 1519.44 hrs
1971-2000: 1574.23 hrs
1981-2010: 1632.58 hrs
1991-2020: 1674.81 hrs

I suspect those 1991-2020 figures are very heavily influenced by the first 16 years of the period, though.

I would expect the summer figures for 1991-2020 to be lower than those of 1981-2010, given that 1981-90 featured four good summers.

Edited June 18, 2023 by Summer8906

[*Stormforce~beka*]

1 hour ago, danm said:

I think it’s a dead cert we’ll see some big thunderstorms over the next few hours:

 

It’s already 25c here in London. Feels very warm and humid out there. 

That's just rain. Nothing to get excited about ...

[Weather26]

4 minutes ago, *Stormforce~beka* said:

That's just rain. Nothing to get excited about ...

Cue later this evening when it all goes northwards meaning we can get excited! 

[Summer8906]

1 hour ago, SunSean said:

Not saying you're wrong but this still makes no sense to me though- Why would Heathrow's station simply not do this themselves? Also the fact that prior to 1989, the figures were less or in the same ballpark as the 06-22 period.

Aug 36.6 v 42.2 (-5.6%)

We were sunnier 7 months out of 12 comparing to the 1975-1988 average- is this still an unfair comparison?

Perhaps the 89-06 period was so good in terms of sunshine that we believe there may be something wrong with recent sunshine recordings and if this is the case, was prior to 1989 so awful that it was less than when the sunshine recorder was switched? Hence my confusion!

Interesting that the comparison with 1975-88 still shows a drop for August, though to be consistent it really needs to be compared with 1972-88.

There were of course a number of good Augusts in this period (1975 maybe only the first half, 1976, 1981, 1983 and 1984). All of these were, AFAIK, sunnier in London and the SE than any August from 2006-21 inclusive.

By contrast if we considered something like 1958-74 that would I suspect be comparably dull to 2006-22. In this period only 1959 was notably sunny though there were one or two moderately decent months like August 1964, perhaps comparable to years like 2009 or 2013.

Edited June 18, 2023 by Summer8906

[Dorsetbred]

8 minutes ago, richie3846 said:

A little further south over France and in the channel, gives us a clue to what we may expect later on!

It's still tracking NE /NNE at the moment so looking further west is in the dry, as are we on the Sarf coast at the moment. Only potential seems later for the tail end stuff lacking good storm potential.

[FetchCB]

UKV looks like a bust for today as it showed at 2pm a rash of showers breaking out from midday over the Northern home counties 

Latest radar shows nothing and the storms pushing up from France is wider than predicted but the last couple of frames imply they might be dying as they hit the South Coast 

 

[Bradley in Kent]

The wind has really picked up which (I'm guessing is the same 30 miles South) is laterally ripping apart any convection columns. Very little lightning to speak of so basically we're now looking at a bit of rain from the South; hardly noteworthy!

It happens time and time again, models and forecasters completely overdo thunderstorms. But then again I fool for it time and time again!

[Summer8906]

8 minutes ago, Bradley in Kent said:

The wind has really picked up which (I'm guessing is the same 30 miles South) is laterally ripping apart any convection columns. Very little lightning to speak of so basically we're now looking at a bit of rain from the South; hardly noteworthy!

It happens time and time again, models and forecasters completely overdo thunderstorms. But then again I fool for it time and time again!

You wouldn't believe it, but IMX mainland northern Greece is considerably more thundery in summer than central southern England. Furthermore there is less general "clag" so you see far more in the way of impressive Cbs and distant night-time lightning. The storms don't often pass directly overhead, so most days are dry, but on quite a few days they are visible, and audible.

I spent the whole of August last year there, and while it was unusually so for the area, it was amongst the most thundery months I've experienced in my lifetime. (The other, July 2013, was due to spending two weeks in an extremely thundery Pyrenees; the hot humid airmass experienced in the UK that month appeared to destabilise over the high mountains).

Edited June 18, 2023 by Summer8906

[Luke Bowett]

1 hour ago, Luke Bowett said:

A hazy day but temps at a comfortable 23C where I am now with maximum expected to be 24C between 14:00 & 15:00. Got woken up by a thunderstorm moving over at about 04:00, with more forecast later on in the evening.

 

Now 25C and clouds have increased, humidity at 55%, feels a lot more than that. From my phone radar, thunderstorms have hit Bournemouth so correct me if I’m wrong

[mb018538]

Looks as if the cap has been breached in the last half hour (a little later than anticipated), severe storms starting to break out north of London and in the Midlands. All the heating from the morning is about to be put to use. Here we go!

[Snowy L]

Unexpected storms woke me up last night, day of very hazy sunshine today and warm again at 24C. All kicking off again near Birmingham,

[Mapantz]

Overcast and below 20°C here. All very boring!

[AWD]

40 minutes ago, FetchCB said:

UKV looks like a bust for today as it showed at 2pm a rash of showers breaking out from midday over the Northern home counties 

Latest radar shows nothing and the storms pushing up from France is wider than predicted but the last couple of frames imply they might be dying as they hit the South Coast 

 

Which is what is exactly starting to happen now.  Radar starting to return cell development over the northern Home Counties, Chilterns into the Midlands.

The UKV apologises for the 15 minute delay.

[Don]

Humidity much higher than during recent days today and rather overcast.

[Sun Chaser]

46 minutes ago, Summer8906 said:

You wouldn't believe it, but IMX mainland northern Greece is considerably more thundery in summer than central southern England. Furthermore there is less general "clag" so you see far more in the way of impressive Cbs and distant night-time lightning. The storms don't often pass directly overhead, so most days are dry, but on quite a few days they are visible, and audible.

I spent the whole of August last year there, and while it was unusually so for the area, it was amongst the most thundery months I've experienced in my lifetime. (The other, July 2013, was due to spending two weeks in an extremely thundery Pyrenees; the hot humid airmass experienced in the UK that month appeared to destabilise over the high mountains).

In the past 10 years I've seen more thunderstorms in Greece than I have in Plymouth...

Did you get the huge storms on 14th August in northern Greece? We had torrential rain in Skopelos as the storms moved southeast throughout the day

[MP-R]

3 hours ago, Catbrainz said:

I am wondering in NW/SE split set ups how does the SW and NE tend to fare? I guess South Wales counts as SW so ill give how it tends to run out for here. If the split is stable we tend to join ether one or end up in a battleground between the two set ups. Like say NW has 7 days of rain and SE 7 days of sun often we end up with 3/4 days of rain and 3/4 days of sun. 

It really does vary here but it does at least tend to be dry. Months like July 2010 and August 2018 were fuller than average but warm. July 2016 was dull in the first half but much sunnier ij the second half. August 2009 was overall quite sunny. All months were dry.

Id say we do marginally better for sunshine when the pattern is inverted and the SE is worst and NW best. No doubt due to drier air, more land crossing fur North Sea cloud to break up etc. Cloud also breaks up over high ground to my SW though so…

[danm]

20 minutes ago, plymsunshine said:

In the past 10 years I've seen more thunderstorms in Greece than I have in Plymouth...

Did you get the huge storms on 14th August in northern Greece? We had torrential rain in Skopelos as the storms moved southeast throughout the day

Greece is very mountainous so what we found this week with some lower heights at times were some big storms not too far inland over the mountains whilst the coast where we were was dry and largely sunny. 

[mb018538]

After a good few weeks.....the heavens have finally opened here. Some welcome rainfall!

[LetItSnow!]

2 hours ago, reef said:

Stations just report raw numbers regardless. Any adjustment is done afterwards.

The fact is, the 1961-1990 average for August at Heathrow was 186.62 hours. The 1991-2020 average is 202.12 hours. The 1989-2006 period had an unusually high number of 'good' Augusts, but even if you used the mean most central to that period (1981-2010), the average is still just 204.67 hours.

Although it may not seem like it. We're getting sunnier in the UK as the decades pass. You'll always get spells in there that deviate but Heathrow's annual averages show it:

1961-1990: 1519.44 hrs
1971-2000: 1574.23 hrs
1981-2010: 1632.58 hrs
1991-2020: 1674.81 hrs

Interesting how we’ve seemed to get sunnier but wetter - A combination you wouldn’t think would make much sense. 

[Catbrainz]

1 minute ago, LetItSnow! said:

Interesting how we’ve seemed to get sunnier but wetter - A you wouldn’t think would make much sense. 

If I had to guess I would say likely ether more convective over frontal rain or more mobile weather systems with more heat about meaning rain comes in heavier but hangs around less. 

[LetItSnow!]

Just now, Catbrainz said:

If I had to guess I would say likely ether more convective over frontal rain or more mobile weather systems with more heat about meaning rain comes in heavier but hangs around less. 

Yet somehow I'm not sure because it has been reported my members AND the Met Office that thundery activity has decreased in the past 30 years. Perhaps a mix of warmer summier and stormier winters, the latter of which usually see sunnier than average conditions due to the amount of passing weather fronts. Winter 2013/2014 was actually sunnier than average in many places despite record rainfall.

[MattStoke]

Looking a bit ominous at Edgbaston.