Spring 2024

[reef]

 WYorksWeather I remember these charts last month. They were suggesting a warm, dry and sunny April, but now seem to have flipped to more of the same in April. It doesn't inspire much confidence in the May forecast as March also flipped in a similar way closer to the time!

[B87]

 reef It does feel like we are never going to see a dry and sunny month again.

[Don]

15 minutes ago, B87 said:

It does feel like we are never going to see a dry and sunny month again.

Oh we will!

Or maybe not as our planet morphs into Venus.  At least it will be warm......

Edited March 15 by Don

[raz.org.rain]

 B87 I'm willing to bet we get anything other than a washout summer purely based on how absurdly long this current wet pattern has persisted, it would be absurd to see it continue any longer.

[*Stormforce~beka*]

 B87 I feel this and have accepted it is true

 ANYWEATHER no chance

 Don September never fails us ...

[Summer8906]

 WYorksWeather "Blocked, average temps, rainfall near average" for April - I'll take that! After months of freakish wet and mild, and constant blow-torch southwesterlies, I have to say it sounds very inspiring indeed!

Anything (more or less) to get out of this pattern.

Edited March 15 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

 raz.org.rain Could be a dry April and May and a washout summer of course...

Seriously my gut feeling is something like:

April somewhat changeable, slightly cool, but also slightly dry, Northwesterly, the 9-month deluge finally breaks

May: warm, sometimes hot, sunny and thundery. Slightly dry again but wet in areas with lots of storms

June. Cool and wet, unfortunately

July Dry, cloudy, unremarkable temps overall, heat spike, year's maximum of 35C just after mid-month. Like a cross between 2016 and 2020

August: very average for the 2006-2023 period, so not great.

September: drier than average. Sunny. No silly heat

Oct: mild, dry start then stormy

Nov: wet, stormy, cold end

Dec: zonal Atlantic-dominated, stormy, but not so mild with more of a WNW-ly, finally bringing in a colder few months for the start of 2025...

Jan 2025: a cold winter month (but not far from average for the 80s) and widespread lying snow for a few days. Finally.

 

No expert reasoning behind any of this, just based on "it's got to change soon" plus a summer which will be different to last year, but at the same time, typical of the past few years.

 

Edited March 15 by Summer8906

[Summer8906]

 ANYWEATHER That's today?

I seriously wonder whether the Midlands has a considerably drier and sunnier climate than the south these days...

Nothing like that here. Even the forecast thundery showers, which I hoped might at least produce something interesting and clear the air a little, haven't arrived. Just constant dull, drab, moisture-laden humid southwesterlies, with occasional nuisance rain of the non-dramatic variety.

Very reminiscent of a poor spell in mid-October right now. At least we're not having to brace ourselves for dark nights in 2 weeks...

Edited March 15 by Summer8906

[Don]

38 minutes ago, *Stormforce~beka* said:

September never fails us ...

I hope it fails to be hot this year, although it probably will be!

Edited March 15 by Don

[B87]

We should be getting 4 months with over 200 hours of sun in a normal year. This year feels like we will get zero. 

We need a 10 month spell of below average rainfall. I don't want to see green grass throughout the summer.

Edited March 15 by B87

[raz.org.rain]

 Summer8906 so far the analogues all match up with unexceptional springs followed classic warm/hot and dry summers. Years such as 1989, 1995, 2006 and 2018 are currently the favourite and strongest analogues I think. 2022 and 2003 were also coming up as analogues. If you follow wx accounts such as Gavsweathervids he does some long range stuff and so far they suggest similar analogues.

[Summer8906]

 B87 Agree, slightly brown grass seems more "natural" to me for July/Aug.

[B87]

 Summer8906 It is the normal for this part of the world. I can see us having an average April and then some people will be complaining when we get a 2 weeks without rain. We need at least 5 or 6 weeks with no rainfall at all, to get the ground dry in time for summer.

Edited March 15 by B87

[Summer8906]

 B87 4 months with over 200 as a norm sounds impressive.

I think I'd consider 200 as my threshold for acceptable sunshine in a summer-half-of-year month.

Would also guess that 2021 didn't feature any month with at least 200 here. 2023 almost certainly had only two, and even 2022 perhaps just three (April, July and Aug).

I'm actually struggling to think of the last year which might have had four months with 200 hrs sunshine here. Thinking of the sunnier years, I'd guess:

2018 - May June July

2014 - June July

2013 - July August

2006 - June July

2003 - Perhaps the last, conceivable that June-Sep all made it.

1997, 1995 and 1989 are also likely from further back but struggling to think of any more.

Unless some other months were sunnier than I remembered?

Edited March 15 by Summer8906

[damianslaw]

 

Always interesting to look at analogues, but winter 23-24 closest analogue was 09-10 and look how it turned out!

Winter 23-24 much more closely resembled winter 97-98 that was a super El Nino, this year we had a very strong El Nino. March was mild. April cool and cyclonic, a good portion of mid May very good but turned wet and cool. Summer 98 a washout sadly, followed by the usual dry warm September. 

[B87]

 Summer8906 what I think we will get based on the last year:

April: a poor month, like last April but a bit drier.

May: warm, very dry but dull.

June: cool, wet and dull.

July: average temperatures and rainfall, dull.

August: hot, dry and sunnier than average.

September: warm, dry and sunnier than average.

October: very warm, but extremely wet and one of the dullest on record (as is standard these days).

November: cool, dry and dull.

December: cool, dry and sunny first half. Record mild second half, dry and dull. 18c on Christmas Day.

[B87]

 Summer8906  200+ sun months here for the past 10 years:

2023: 2 (May, Jun)

2022: 3 (Jun, Jul, Aug)

2021: 1 (Apr)

2020: 2 (Apr, May)

2019: 2 (Jul, Aug)

2018: 5 (May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep)

2017: 3 (Apr, Jun, Jul)

2016: 3 (May, Jul, Aug)

2015: 4 (Apr, May, Jun, Jul)

2014: 4 (May, Jun, Jul, Aug)

[Summer8906]

 damianslaw with 1998 wasn't it August that was the dry, warm month and September generally rather wet and dull (except one week just after mid-month)?

Wouldn't want a repeat of 1998 though this year. One of the poorest years for weather with only Feb, May, Aug and Nov any good. After the 9-month deluge I think a 1998 repeat would probably see many people trying to leave the country!

[Summer8906]

 B87 OK, thanks. It does seem like London is actually a shade sunnier than coastal southern Hampshire these days, even though historically the converse was true. I do think the increased frequency of SW-lies and more exaggerated west-east splits has a role to play here.

My guess (and it is a guess) would be that these months exceeded 200:

2023 - May, June

2022 - April, July, August

2021 - April (sorry, forgot this one!)

2020 - April, May, September

2019 - April, July perhaps

2018 - May, June, July

2017 - April

2016 - May, August

2015 - April, June, September

2014 - June, July

2013 - July, August

2012 - August, perhaps

2011 - April

2010 - April, June

These were all the months since 2010 which I would consider "acceptably" sunny from Apr-Sep.

I could be wrong though and it may be that my threshold for acceptability is actually above 200 - one has to realise that in summer there are a lot of potential "lost" sunshine hours early in the morning!

Edited March 15 by Summer8906

[WYorksWeather]

 reef Just had a look actually from my post back in February, and then it was showing a mostly cool and blocked spring all the way through. So there is a difference now with a warmer May actually.

Of course it is always a bit of a coin flip / dice roll type thing - the CFSv2 going for a warm May probably only slightly increases the probability compared to my prior thoughts on the matter, since there's not a great deal of confidence in these predictions.

To be honest, the same is true for virtually any form of long term projections short of something climatological. In short, if you say that the temperatures in a given month will be half a degree to one degree above the 1991-2020 average, you're probably not going to be too far off most of the time, simply because that's the general trend.

[Summer8906]

 B87 Interesting you go for warm, very dry and dull in May; I'd have said that was almost impossible to achieve in May as cloudy weather would be either cool or wet.

Interesting you're going for a good Aug!

Edited March 15 by Summer8906

[WYorksWeather]

 Summer8906 The only way I think you could get a pattern like that would maybe be anticyclonic gloomy easterlies, perhaps? I don't see how you could have very dry and yet lots of cloud as well though - some of that would probably inevitably fall as rain.

 

[B87]

 Summer8906 I don't want that to happen, ideally I'd want repeats of 2003 or 2022 all the way through.

We had a warm, dry and dull May as recently as 2022: 20.2c av max, 34mm rainfall and 174 sun hours.

[Summer8906]

 WYorksWeather Mind you, dull easterlies in May tend to be pretty cool (or they're warm but cyclonic, hence wet); if the air's warm the cloud normally breaks.

 B87 Interesting, here May 2022 was dull and warm but rain was at or above average, a lot of S-lies or SW-lies. I guess some kind of exaggerated anticyclonic SW-ly could produce warm, dry and dull but that's somewhat unusual synoptics for May.

Edited March 15 by Summer8906

[WYorksWeather]

 Summer8906 I tend to agree, but thinking more about the orientation. If it was slightly south of east, that could still be warm, but drag in a lot of gloom with it maybe?

I do agree that that combination of warm to very warm, very dry, and fairly dull, is probably one of the more unlikely May combos! That's more March type stuff as we're seeing at the moment. In March the south-westerlies are still on the very mild side as they suppress any possibility of cold nights - 15C max and 3C min is a colder mean than 12C max and 8C min.

In late spring, to get a high CET, the daytime temperature starts to become more important. In May you want those days into the mid 20s or above, as you're not going to manage the same sort of day under cloud and rain - 22C max and 8C min, for example, is going to be much warmer than anything you could achieve with a small diurnal range at that time of year.

I would say that from April through to September is the period when warm correlates with sunny and dry. Between November and February is generally the inverse - mild correlates with cloudy and wet. October and March are a bit in between.