Worryingly Wet & Worryingly Sunless

[CryoraptorA303]

What a surprise, the south coast is taking the lead for the first time since February. Doesn't surprise me as the Sun has come out here.

Could the SE finally be regaining control of its climate?

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 CryoraptorA303 if the models for the next 7-10 days are anything to go by, no. By and large just more of the same dull and wet conditions. 

 

[B87]

 danm August and October are decreasing in sunshine hours vs 81-10. 

[Sun Chaser]

 CryoraptorA303  Part of me, having lived in the SW for nearly 20 years, is saying deal with it like we always have because that's what the weather is like down there! So much SE envy growing up.

The other part of me, having lived in the SE for 6 months now and due to move back down soon, is realising how 2023/24 has been the most dire late autumn to early spring period I've ever experienced including the very worst winters in the SW. It has been absolutely excruciating here. It's been even worse. Maybe I don't have to be jealous of the SE's warmer summers any more because tbh what IS this weather torture atm????

[Scorcher]

 CryoraptorA303 It's more common in spring than any other time of year for areas away from the south to be the warmest areas on any given day. The temperature of the North Sea is pretty irrelevant if it's an offshore breeze and coming from the land.

Same goes for areas on the western coasts of Merseyside and Lancashire. Places like Crosby and Blackpool can see some surprisingly high temps in spring despite the Irish Sea being cold when the breeze is easterly or southeasterly. Often warmer than places inland.

[CryoraptorA303]

Looks like our old mate Crawley (It's south of the border in West Sussex, it is not Charlwood! Can someone get on the Met Office's case about that) is on top right now, after a woeful performance this month so far. It's been going with some of the lowest daily maxes in the whole country barring the Highlands and Pennines.

Of course, this is only updated on an hourly or bihourly schedule, so any of the top 10 or so stations could realistically be recording higher temperatures at any given moment. It's almost strange to be seeing these stations on top after so much of the month has been dominated by the central plains.

 Scorcher That is fair, March-June is prime "Scotland maxima" season and it's almost common to see heatwaves peaking up there in this bracket. Donna Nook is still an odd one to see though, even with the offshore breeze it normally stays cool.

The southern Lancashire plain seems to do best in May-June, in March and April the Irish Sea still tends to be a constraint. However yes in several May and June heatwaves Blackpool and Crosby have ranked quite high, sometimes higher than the deep SE.

May is a weird one though, the very highest temps are restricted to the deep SE, e.g. 1922, 1944, 1953 if you count Heathrow, 2005 and so on. 2010 and 2012 were to my knowledge the only two May heatwaves where 30°C was observed north of East Anglia. It's quite a bizarre development when you consider that this same region is completely dead from June to mid-July (aside from the June 30th daily record at East Malling) before picking up again and spearheading the majority of daily maxima as the North Sea peaks in temperature and the subtropical ridge reaches its northernmost point. What happens in May specifically to cause the southward move of maxima before returning further north?

[*Stormforce~beka*]

[CryoraptorA303]

Quite a close race, it's impossible to say which station will see the highest temp today, especially as we have another 2 hours of warming to go. Safe to say 18.1°C will be exceeded if it hasn't been already. A few 19s aren't off the table either depending on how it evolves.

[CryoraptorA303]

 Sun Chaser South of Hertfordshire really isn't much better for rain than the SW in winter, if anything parts of the southeastern coast can be duller and wetter sometimes. You have to go into East Anglia to see lower winter rainfall. Summer is the only time any difference is really seen and even then, sheltered areas of the SW peninsula and the more coastal areas attain very comparable sunshine anyway. The English Riviera and south Devon in general seems to always be sunny every time I've been there. The only timed it rained in Cornwall while I was there was on a couple days in August 2015, otherwise it was acceptably sunny, probably sunnier than here actually. Really only the Sussex coast and East Anglia are noticeably sunnier than a lot of the SW, London is very overrated for Sun imo. I can't remember the number of times I've gone into London and it was cloudy while here it was decently sunny.

[CryoraptorA303]

Looks like Crawley (NOT Charlwood ) did it in the end. This will very likely be the final maximum for March 2024, but of course with 11 days left, another attempt at the first 20 can't be ruled out for certain yet.

All three automatic Kent stations will be in the top 10 today, with Goudhurst in a very rare move potentially seeing the highest figure, but Frittenden might've surpassed it earlier. Of course we have no idea whereabouts Faversham is but I doubt it reached higher than these three. It'll take ~3 months to actually find out if it didn't beat Crawley, which is almost certainly didn't.

Other likely top 10ers are Northolt, Kew Gardens and Heathrow. Wiggonholt and Wisley may just make 8-10th. Sadly Cippenham, Chertsey and Teddington don't upload their data to Met Office archives.

Cloud cover seems to be coming back now so we won't see anything higher. It was nice to see the Sun for about eight consecutive hours for the first time all month. It's coming and going now, desperate to hold on but the cloud is going to win in the next couple of hours.

For f**k's sake, please let the mid-terms be wrong. No more big storms and please let there be a settled-ish end to this dreadful month.

Edited March 20 by CryoraptorA303

[Weatherman24]

 

[Freeze]

 CryoraptorA303 Crawley and Charlwood are 2 separate places, isnt the Gatwick station within Crawley though? 

[CryoraptorA303]

 Freeze There is no official station at Gatwick.

The station often called "Charlwood" is actually south of the border in West Sussex, so the name is an incorrect designation. There isn't really another nearby settlement to call it, so it should simply be designated as Crawley.

It would be somewhat forgiveable if it was officially listed as "Charlwood, West Sussex" in records, but as the holder of the record in the South East & Central region at 39.9°C (the only station south of the Thames to reach rounded-up 40°C in fact), it is listed as "Charlwood, Surrey", so the designation is doubly incorrect; the record wasn't set in Charlwood nor in Surrey, it belongs to West Sussex.

The other alternative would be for Surrey to cede Charlwood to West Sussex so that the designation becomes correct, but I would take a wild guess that it would be easier for the Met Office to simply correctly designate it as Crawley.

There was another example of this some years ago but far more egregious, the old Santon Downham stations was over 8 miles away from the settlement and well within Norfolk! However in records this station was later changed to the correct designation of "Lynford, Norfolk".

Edited March 20 by CryoraptorA303

[Freeze]

 CryoraptorA303 fair enough, there is no official station at gatwick but there is a station in north crawley called  london/gatwick airport as seen on netweathers live weather stations which is a few miles away from Gatwick itself. 

Maybe they should just call it Charlwood, and not Charlwood Surrey? Since its quite a few miles away from Crawley?

[CryoraptorA303]

 Freeze If Crawley is unacceptable then Burlands Farm will work:

[raz.org.rain]

Rain, rain and more rain in the forecast here. But I had to do a double take when I saw this in the forecast...

 

[CryoraptorA303]

 raz.org.rain What the hell? There must be some sort of error there...

I'm hoping the mid-terms completely fall apart and we get something drier than another week of "light showers", but sod's law and everything

Can we PLEASE have a better April than this? Please make a 2020-esque turnaround...

[CryoraptorA303]

Another decent day today all things considered, 17.5°C at Northolt and outside of London and the surrounding area 15-16°C so nice enough for no jacket. Things turning colder and duller although no heavy showers over the weekend for most so there's that at least. Unfortunately next week's blast appears to be locked in now so let's hope it's not as bad as what we've seen recently. Hopefully that'll be the end of it and we can see a much better April

[CryoraptorA303]

We could probably do with these kinds of temperatures at the moment.

[raz.org.rain]

 CryoraptorA303 the back end of March looks like more utter garbage. There's even suggestion that April could see low pressure Atlantic dominance. Perhaps the only saving grace of the ongoing SSW is it'll force a change in the jet stream's path and it'll stick to our north for the next 12 months. If you believe some observations, further developments in the strat could very well give us a high pressure dominated summer.

[*Stormforce~beka*]

 CryoraptorA303 lucky for some ...

[Weather-history]

I thought we might get away with it this March in terms of wetness, but it is going to be yet another wetter than average month.

[sarahng]

Please, please could we have an improvement instead of this never-ending greyness!  It is utterly depressing.  I keep thinking I will get going with jobs in the garden, but it's just too chilly and dull.

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 CryoraptorA303 Seems to be located to specific spots.

My parents are in Southern Andalusia at the moment, near Málaga, and they've said it's thick cloud and quite chilly. 

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 sarahng honestly would've been surprised if Britain's productivity / economic output took a dip during the Feb-March period this year. 

Everyone seems so sluggish and repressed. Feels like there's not much life or energy anywhere because it's been so dull and gloomy for so long, since last October effectively, with only the sunny cold spell in Jan as a proper break.