Moans, ramps and banter

[Racer]

The Sun’s out in Devon

[ANYWEATHER]

27 minutes ago, Racer said:

The Sun’s out in Devon

Are you sure you're not hallucinating

[Racer]

 ANYWEATHER It’s clouded over now, but still bright and dry

[SunnyG]

Forecast for London not too bad if it materialises.

[Wimbledon88]

Hope our northern friends survived yesterday's great blizzard.

There has been a lot of rain in London in the last 36 hours.

Nice and mild today though. Good for an early evening dog walk after work later. Very muddy though. Good job I don't mind that. Best get used to it looking at the forecast.

Mind you,the forecasts have been pretty rubbish recently.  The forecasters whether they be the Met Office or the amateurs on here haven't covered themselves in glory recently.Best just look out the window.

Meteorology and Climatology remains an aspect of science yet to be cracked.

[lassie23]

 Wimbledon88 all that data all those models all that knowledge, MJO NAO etc etc etc but no improvements in their forecasting

[*Stormforce~beka*]

 Racer What!? really??!

Like snow  I don't know what this sun thing is!

[Arctic Hare]

Here we go again... the flood barriers are going up in Bewdley for about the fifth time this winter - I've lost count tbh. Can we please, please have a drier than average month, not just a few days?

[raz.org.rain]

A return of a classic today, fluffy freezing cold drizzle. At least the wind has sodded off though. 

[mattcole2206]

 Arctic Hare I wondered if they would be up again. Came up the bypass earlier (live in Bliss Gate) and saw the Severn had again breached the banks. The rain has been relentless the last few months!

[Summer8906]

 SunnyG at least it doesn't show any further heavy rain, I'll give it that, but it continues to be mostly dull and depressing, and/or oppressively mild. Just two "OK" days there IMO, Sunday and Monday. Ironically the best day appears to be Monday, which had a huge low over the south of England last time I looked!

An exceedingly dull first half of February if that forecast does pan out. Just hope there is some improvement soon. When it comes to light levels (or rather, lack of them...) the weather seems to have forgotten we're now closer to the spring equinox than the winter solstice!

Edited February 9 by Summer8906

[HurricaneSteve]

These weather apps are a waste of time

24 hours ago, showed a dry & bright saturday

Just checked Alex Deakins latest forecast, Low pressure is moving right over the south-west tomorrow. Lots of showers breaking out. I see more mild, muck, light rain & drizzle is now showing for most days next week as well

[Summer8906]

 HurricaneSteve The 12z GFS for next week is absolutely vile, far worse even than yesterday's bland offering. Exceedingly wet (as well as dull and mild) by the looks of things, any hint of settled weather mid week is now gone and instead an endless run of lows on a southerly track, just at the right latitude to cause maximum impact on southern England. Never mind the political goings on at the moment, I suspect the big and dominant news story by this time next week will be flooding.

Really looks like this month might challenge 2020 for worst February of my lifetime, the rate things are going. A month with precisely zero going for it at all, so far.

GFS 06z suggests an improvement from the 19th but to be quite frank I don't believe it. A FI easterly. More likely the lows will go just that bit further north and we'll end up with the wettest, mildest and dullest February on record (yes, all three records broken) in Southern England. The Met Office long range forecast highlights this risk, suggesting late month could be cold and dry but could be mild and wet.

We just seem to be stuck in a rut with this kind of weather, it's been completely dominant for pushing 8 months now. It's got to end at some point - hasn't it? Or maybe this is the new norm, what climate change is condemning us to in the UK - endless mild, dull and wet southwesterlies with barely any breaks.

Also yet another dark afternoon, and yet another day more like mid-January than late February for light levels (but more like end of Oct, start of Nov for weather).

 

Edited February 9 by Summer8906

[TonyH]

 SunSean Look forward to a drought in Spring or Summer as often.

[In Absence of True Seasons]

47 minutes ago, Summer8906 said:

We just seem to be stuck in a rut with this kind of weather, it's been completely dominant for pushing 8 months now. It's got to end at some point - hasn't it? Or maybe this is the new norm, what climate change is condemning us to in the UK - endless mild, dull and wet southwesterlies with barely any breaks

The "stuck in a rut" situation is definitely real. Since July 2023 our weather pattern has effectively just been dull and wet, with brief respites here and there of clearer and drier conditions. 

But let's remember, the year prior saw pretty much the opposite type of rut wherein huge swathes of 2022 were dominated by sunny and dry conditions. It was all over the media that the sunny, warm and dry conditions were a harbinger of Britain's future and that we'll have a Mediterranean type climate in 20/30 years etc. 

Then followed 2023 which was obviously very different, and that cloudy, mucky and wet pattern is still lingering into 2024 thus far. Is this a harbinger that our climate is in fact not becoming more Mediterranean but actually more like South-West Norway, lol? I think not on both accounts... 

I don't think either of these weather ruts are/were related tbh. But this phenomenon of the 'rut' itself does indeed seem to be more of a modern feature of our climate. Britain was always renowned for it's hugely changeable weather. The classic phrase "if you don't like the weather just wait an hour" stood the test of time for a reason, but it honestly doesn't seem to really apply much anymore...because we seem to have a current trend of getting stuck in the same sorts of conditions for weeks (even months) on end. Maybe we will have a day of half day reprieve of something different, then back to the same dominant pattern of the rut that is present. Whether that be warm, sunny and dry aka much of 2022 or cool, cloudy and wet aka much of 2023 and now also 2024

 

Edited February 9 by In Absence of True Seasons

[Arctic Hare]

43 minutes ago, Summer8906 said:

Really looks like this month might challenge 2020 for worst February of my lifetime, the rate things are going.

I will accept that if, and only if, we get a repeat of spring 2020 with days on end of sunshine and blue skies! Not that in reality I have any choice in the matter, obviously.

But yeah. With month after month of wetter than average conditions, the ground is now so wet that even a moderate amount of rain sends river levels shooting up (as seen in the graph I posted). In terms of risk of any significant flood, rather than one-off exceptional events, I'm struggling to remember a worse time. Even the 2007 floods, though undeniably extreme, were confined to a couple of months.

[ANYWEATHER]

Nearly 3 inches of rain here the last four days ,rivers running high again. We have already had more than our monthly rainfall, which is about 2 inches! Unfortunately at this rate we are going to be pushing record amounts of rain this  month ,going by model output....for February. Can't see any light at the end of a dreadfully, dark ,wet miserable Winter......All I can say about this Winter is its totally Obscene.

[ANYWEATHER]

 In Absence of True Seasons you could argue ,say for instance ,1911/1912 were two years where the weather was stuck in a rut. Hot and dry 1911 and painfully wet and cold 1912.......

[marky810]

Came home to find patches of snow still around in gardens and on cars left parked up. Local roads around the airport area resemble streams especially Carlton village and east Chevin road where it’ll run off the land for weeks. No more rain now please, not a drop until April.

[Summer8906]

15 minutes ago, ANYWEATHER said:

Nearly 3 inches of rain here the last four days ,rivers running high again. We have already had more than our monthly rainfall, which is about 2 inches! Unfortunately at this rate we are going to be pushing record amounts of rain this  month ,going by model output....for February. Can't see any light at the end of a dreadfully, dark ,wet miserable Winter......All I can say about this Winter is its totally Obscene.

 

When do you see the next settled spell arriving incidentally? Just trying to get some hope of when this likely 8-month period of atrocious conditions with just short breaks will end.

I'd guess spring is our best bet for a dry slot this year, as the Atlantic tends to go quiet and spring is usually the driest and sunniest season these days. So March/April or April/May to be the two best months this year? That would be my guess.

Edited February 9 by Summer8906

[ANYWEATHER]

1 minute ago, Summer8906 said:

When do you see the next settled spell arriving incidentally? Just trying to get some hope of when this likely 8-month period of atrocious conditions will end.

I'd guess spring is our best bet for a dry slot this year, as the Atlantic tends to go quiet. So March/April or April/May to be the two best months this year? That would be my guess.

Probably about right! But I hope it comes sooner rather than later. If we do get a dry spell, it will probably be courtesy of a Scandi high in March and April and even May. Due to the suns strength by April which is equal to August , it’ll soon dry the ground up . Of course all speculation at the moment!

[WYorksWeather]

 Summer8906 I think it's very hard to predict when we might see an improvement. Probably a good chance would be if we could start to bring some early season heat from southern Europe. A dry continental airmass on a direct southerly, maybe slightly milder than average but still with cold nights.

Doesn't look like the wet weather wants to let go for the next four weeks at least, looking at the long-range weeklies from EC46 and CFSv2.

Just looking back at how little interruption we've had to this dominant pattern since the June heatwave broke down. From my memory, the only settled spells I can remember that lasted at least a week (I can't even think of a spell that's lasted longer than that), we have the early September heatwave, the early October settled warm spell, then maybe the late November / early December cold snap, the mid-January cold snowless spell, and that's really it. So in total probably about a month out of the last eight (if we include February) has been notably settled weather. And against that we set an extremely wet July, plus most of September, October, and December.

A change really can't come soon enough. I really wonder when we will see our first month that is even noticeably on the dry side this year (say 50% of mean monthly rainfall or less across most of the country).

[reef]

A dull, cool easterly Spring would be the final insult after this horror of an Autumn and winter. Probably a guarantee then!

[WYorksWeather]

 reef Worth cross-posting the post I made in the model banter and emotions thread:

Quote

Just imagining what the 'sod's law' kind of next six weeks would look like, as far as most people's weather preferences.

Probably the next two  to three weeks near average temperature wise, so not cold enough to deliver any snow, with cold drizzle. Then into early March, the effect of a major SSW hits, and we get a significantly colder period, but since it's later on and with the general warmth of the Northern Hemisphere this year, just at best one or two snow days, otherwise largely restricted to high ground. Probably similar to the event we've just had.

Following that, temperatures remain below average, but there's no longer a reasonable chance of snow, and so we get day after day of cold drizzle across most of the UK, punctuated by one or two more named storms. Major flooding issues likely again by the end of March. Temperatures are just above average for 1961-1990 due to a lack of frosts, but cool by day with an absolute max of about 16C all month. And of course, another month significantly wetter and duller than average.

I'm hoping that by writing that out, whatever happens can be viewed as at least better than what I've just posted!

As you've said, given the way things are going, let's assume it'll be like my post above, and anything else will be an improvement!

[Summer8906]

The S*d's law forecast for the coming weeks IMO would be for a continuation of wet, dull and very mild. Such conditions would cause all the spring flowers to come out early, whereas wet and cold might at least mean they would be delayed so that when spring finally arrives, we could enjoy them.

 

Edited February 9 by Summer8906