Sunshine Level Watch 2024

[SunSean]

 Frigid Yeah April is often the sunniest month of the year or up there so it's a shame to get a massively dull one...after possibly the dullest 9 month stretch I've lived through lol. 2018 flip please.

[reef]

54.3 hours of sunshine for the first half of April here. The 1991-2020 average for the month is 164 hours, so it has some catching up to do!

[Scorcher]

Only 29.5 hours here so far- an absolute shocker of a month for sunshine.

If it carried on this way it would undoubtedly be one of the dullest Aprils on record locally.

[damianslaw]

 SunSean Shap 7 hrs up to the 11th - appauling! Sunshine levels in the past few days have been alot better, and with anticipated outlook, April 24 at least here in Cumbria may well end up an average month sunshine wise after such a low base state at mid point. 

Edited April 17 by damianslaw

[SunSean]

April 1st-20th sunshine amounts

Some places have shot up the table after a few sunny days but the overall picture is way below average (a recurring theme) for April.

My area, Shoeburyness, has never been so low. Hardly any sunny days, just a handful of poxy 5 hour days at best!

[Metwatch]

Another gorgeous 9,5 hours of sunshine yesterday so that has managed to bring the monthly total to over 100 hours now. Still around 45 hours to reach April average but since the 11th of April there's now a marked improvement. Today likely to record 0 hours, but from tomorrow to the weekend looks to be decent again, might add another 20-30 hours to the total if we lucky enough. By this point in April 2020, there had been around 190 hours of sunshine.

Last week was also the first week with more sunshine than average since mid January!

     

Edited April 22 by Metwatch

[SunSean]

 Metwatch I've noticed Coventry seems to be one of the sunniest places in the entire UK. Always in the top 3rd of the table and often amongst the top 15 even. I wonder what gives? Considering your annual average is around 1550, less than even Shobdon who are always in the bottom third, something seems wrong. Either your annual average is completely wrong or the sunshine recorder at Coventry is recording too much!  Meanwhile, Shoeburyness have only had 1 day above 9 hours sun since mid October 2023 (April 7th) in the dullest run in the stations history.

[*Stormforce~beka*]

I've had loads ... It seems ...

[Metwatch]

 SunSean

Hmm not sure, I find it's decently accurate, and matches with my own observations mostly. Yesterday and Saturday defintely felt like there was a good 7 to 9 ish hours of sunshine. I have compared with the RoostWeather website and there are usually 10-20 hour monthly difference between Steve's posts and on RoostWeather, maybe due to the way the data is coded or something not really sure, but to me that isn't really a large difference especially in the months with longer daylengths. Think we getting lucky is the best reason

Another good way to estimate rough sunshine amounts in recent days is through this webcam website which has the Coventry Airport on it and that goes back every 10 minute intervals for the last 3 days:

Wetter Webcam Coventry

WWW.WEBCAM-4INSIDERS.COM

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Wetter Webcam: Coventry > West Midlands > England Ferien-Wetter für Städtereisen inklusive Diashow und Bildarchiv.

 

Edited April 22 by Metwatch

[SunSean]

 Metwatch Yeah maybe it could be luck. Shoeburyness are meant to be in like the top 10 sunniest in the list but we're more like somewhere from the North West these days lol. 

 

[Jamie M]

 SunSean 

I hadn't realised the difference between Manston & Shoeburyness was that stark! I'd have thought Shoeburyness would have surpassed Manston as we begin to head into late spring and into the summer months 

[SunSean]

 Jamie M It's real close, Shoeburyness annual sunshine hours are 1885 & Manston is 1845. Lately though, Manston has been absolutely smashing us down in Shoebury! We only just surpassed 1600 last year which is pretty pathetic for our area & this year we'd probably be lucky to hit 1400 at the rate we're going lol.

[Jamie M]

 SunSean

Lol yeah, still awaiting the 2000-hour mark for a year that Zeebrugge in nearby Belgium seems to get fairly consistently in the last few years. 

 

[SunSean]

 Jamie M Definitely ain't happening this year that's for sure haha.

[baddie]

 SunSean I wonder if the sunshine totals were malfunctioned in my area. By the 13th, there was a 20+ hour difference between Nottingham and Lincoln, and most sunnier days still reported less than 2 hours of sunshine. I think I would actually have been around 75 hours by the 20th

Edited April 22 by baddie

[Addicks Fan 1981]

 SunSean my county is in the top five.   

[reef]

 SunSean I suspect Shoeburyness was closer to 1700 hours going by the metoffice maps. Not a patch on Manston at >1800 hours though:

[B87]

 reef Heathrow somehow managed to almost get to average last year, with 1671 hours.

That was almost entirely due to Junes 280+, as the other 'sunny' months (Feb, May, Sep, Oct) were only slightly sunnier that average.

[SunSean]

 reef 1637 hours was the raw figure recorded there. No idea how much of an adjustment they would need, if at all but the highest they recorded on any given day last year was a suspiciously low 14.7 on June 14th & 15th despite wall to wall sunshine & 16.6 hours of daylight. Weirdly, they were recording 15.6 hours as maximum days back in 2021 & earlier so not sure what happened.

[reef]

 SunSean If I remember correctly its in the 6-11% range, with an average of around 10% - which was the initial correction applied, but it is a bit more specific now. Basically, the newer Kipp and Zonen automatic sensors have a standard WMO threshold of 120 Wm-2, but the older Campbell stokes manual recorders burned the measuring paper at anywhere from 106-285 Wm-2 (A. Kerr and R. Tabony: 'Comparison of sunshine recorded by Campbell-Stokes and automatic sensors' (Weather, April 2004, vol. 59,90-95).

[SunSean]

 reef Yeah all very confusing! Would be ideal if the weather stations adjusted the figures themselves. 

[reef]

 B87 We ended up on 1682 hours and similarly, June was responsible for the biggest uplift as it was 62 hours above normal. Strangely, January was the second largest positive anomaly with 103 hours against the average of 61 hours.

 SunSeanI'd just do the corrections backwards, so the older figures are corrected to match the current automatic recorders!

[richie3846]

 reef it's all so confusing. I did a comparison between raw figures and met office climate summary maps. They definitely tweak the numbers upwards for the maps.

[Jamie M]

 reef

I've noticed some of these adjustments in some of the data for Manston from https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/manstondata.txt although not entirely sure when it stopped. 

July 2006 has a value of 350.1 hours for its K/Z sensor although the raw data from MIDAS seems to suggest it was 316.9 hours which is a pretty drastic difference. 

It makes it hard to compare values when there seems to have been some adjustment that isn't clearly stated, can only presume it was to continue the consistency of one instrument being used but this correction isn't being done correctly so 

[damianslaw]

 SunSean Shap bottom, but the last 2-3 days have been quite sunny. A very poor month for sunshine on the cards.