Worryingly Wet & Worryingly Sunless

[Derecho]

13 hours ago, TwisterGirl81 said:

think most of us are feeling the same way, the sun seems to have been down graded a little this week, hopefully it’ll revert back….can’t wait to have months and months on the trot of average sunshine, let alone above average, this pattern has got to break at some point hopefully the second part of spring, to have this continue into the summer months would be just downright cruel.

It looks like the longer range outlook (next week) is more anticyclonic. With a more north-westerly flow likely into next week you may be more sheltered too.

It ain't much but it's a shift away from the moisture rich south-westerlies we have often had for months on end!

You'd have thought that pattern would have broken into late March... Late March to early June usually see just as many easterly days as westerly on average.

Last time we had a prolonged period of anticyclonic weather must be late May and into June? A truly awful period of weather, early September the exception

Edited April 10 by Derecho

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 Mark Bayley a wild run of above average wetness, especially due to its protracted and prolonged nature. 

Extreme in every sense of the word. Far more so than the drier spell that preceded it in 2022. 

[In Absence of True Seasons]

I thought the latter part of this week and the weekend were meant to be much better?

The only "better" thing about this is that it's not raining all the time.

Outside of that, it's still very poor from any sense of proper Spring sunshine. Temps aren't anything to shout about either, for my area. 

Big downgrade from the mostly sunny Friday and Saturday that was showing a couple of days back. Expected though, obviously. The downgrades are pretty much inevitable when it's sunshine on a weekend lol.

Edited April 10 by In Absence of True Seasons

[TwisterGirl81]

 In Absence of True Seasons met office are always very negative with their sun symbols, I’m sure it’ll be more sunny that they are indicating for you  

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 TwisterGirl81 do you think? Hopefully that'll be the case. Personally I find Met Office to be semi-accurate with sun, just not with rain.

It's BBC who are the real pessimists lol. 

Either way, having a weekend that's properly dry will be a rare thing, and much welcome, even if it doesn't deliver the clear skies we're wishing for.

[*Stormforce~beka*]

 In Absence of True Seasons I wasn't expecting any sun. Don't want it either. It's too bright  

[SunSean]

 In Absence of True Seasons I don't look at the Met Office forecasts anymore as they've been getting it consistently wrong for ages now. 

One things for certain, I've got a week off next week, so if there's not a few days of sun upcoming, I'll be booking another last minute holiday and getting off this SSW infested, fecal gargling, sewage snorting, grey as dishwater, wet as a strip club island and off to a normal country that actually experiences something called sunshine! Lol.

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 SunSean Next week is looking better at present, but obviously that can (and knowing our luck, probably will) be downgraded closer to the time.

Still looking at Crete? I was checking out the weather and potential flight prices etc yesterday, looks tempting indeed. Was looking at Cyprus also, which is similar.

[richie3846]

 In Absence of True Seasons C'mon it's about 4c above average for your location! Light cloud symbols usually indicate a reasonable amount of sun/hazy sun at least. It'll feel very spring like and warm I'm sure. 

[SunSean]

 In Absence of True Seasons It was Corfu I was looking at but I'm gonna give it a few more days and then decide lol. Not having a week off with zero sun.

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 richie3846

It's a tall order for me personally to convince myself into believing that slate-grey skies from dawn to dusk are good just because it's not piddling down with rain and 12c lol.  

There's no sugar coating it. Most of 2023 and now all of 2024 (outside of that 1 week in Jan) has been dire for anyone who likes dry, sunny and settled conditions. Or anything other than damp, cloudy and mild, frankly! We are in the wettest 18 month protracted spell on record, accompanied by nearly every month in the last 12 months being below average sunshine hours, so I'm rightfully at my wits end. April is on track to deliver another below average sunshine month (in my area, at least).

This is all especially compounded for me, as someone who feels properly drained and - eventually, quite unwell - when there's a general absence of sunshine / sunlight. I've always been a bit of a lizard in that regard, but in my mid-20s I developed a gut-related auto-immune illness, and it's so, so much worse in prolonged periods of little sunshine / low light levels and low vitamin D / UV etc. Throughout much of summer 2022 I basically forgot I had an illness at all, as the prolonged warm and sunny weather made it go basically dormant. Was great. 2023 and now 2024 has been the opposite of that. 

Edited April 11 by In Absence of True Seasons

[TwisterGirl81]

It’s actually becoming clearer, what sorcery is this  god I hope it stays like this

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 TwisterGirl81 Enjoy it! Very regional today, so some lucky, some less so.

Definitely deserve it in the SW though. Well, we all deserve it, but your areas have been truly plagued by the wettest and dullest conditions lately.

[SunSean]

 In Absence of True Seasons What auto-immune illness do you have? I had UC back in late 2015/early 2016 & was told I would be on meds for life but began a low carb diet & have been on no meds since about 2018 & not only that, I don't even get ill anymore. Not saying that works for everyone but it worked for me, along with 4000iu plus of vitamin D with K2 per day. The power of nature over big pharma, who knew! A patient for life is a customer for life 

[*Stormforce~beka*]

 SunSean I need to try a new diet for my IBS but can't handle it right now with catering for all the kids fussiness - I do 3 different variations and meals as it is. I can't be doing iwth adding me being fussy into the mix!

[SunSean]

 *Stormforce~beka* Low carb would definitely help with that! Highly recommended it when you get the chance 

[*Stormforce~beka*]

 SunSean dunno about low carb as I would loose too much weight. I'm only 7st 2 as it is! But cutting out gluten and dairy woudl be a good start. Will do fodmap

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 SunSean It's a type of Crohn's / IBD. Yeah I've done some experimenting with diets, it's interesting how impactful they can be in relation to illnesses like this.

I've personally found that the sort of 'healthy' diets prescribed by mainstream media / pop culture i.e. lots of leafy greens, salads, raw veg, high-fibre grains, beans etc really exacerbate my symptoms. I tried a raw vegan-type diet a few years back which is supposedly the most "anti inflammatory" diet, and it made me feel like death.

I currently have a mostly animal-foods based diet (close to keto but not quite) so lots of meat, fish, dairy, alongside some fruit and whole carbs like porridge, sourdough bread etc. By far the easiest for me to tolerate and minimises all the fatigue, inflammation, brain fog etc. 

I take vitamin D, as well as magnesium & zinc combined supplement. 

The modern healthcare/medicine industry is a little useless for helping to treat illnesses like this. If there's nothing by infrastructurally wrong with you on their scans and via blood tests etc, they'll just say "It all seems to be fine!" when it's clearly not fine. They have no holistic approaches to illnesses at all. I had to effectively do my own research into the mechanisms of the human gut and trial-error ways to help minimise my inflammation via diet, exercise, etc. Plus of course, as you say, telling a patient to eat less processed foods and hydrogenated oils means less £££ for the system, ultimately.

Edited April 12 by In Absence of True Seasons

[summer blizzard]

In our hunt for an anticyclone it's worth saying that the Euro0z had 1020mb+ over the whole UK from days 7-10. 

[In Absence of True Seasons]

Groundhog day.

Saturday has literally been the only day in my area this entire year that's delivered anything solidly warm, dry and sunny.

[richie3846]

 In Absence of True Seasons It's not really one for the message boards this, so if you want to message privately then that's good with me. Many of these autoimmune conditions are often caused by unprocessed stress and trauma, which is not so obvious or easy to see, and the medical world is way behind the curve with this. There is a way forward with all this, and if you wanted to chat privately, let me know. I may be able to offer some further reading and pointers of where to start looking. People are recovering from these types of disorders once they address the underlying issues in the brain.

[Metwatch]

Comparing the end of February to today, the area next to the River Sowe in the city.

Certainly an improvement in areas exposed to more sun but some paths still muddy such as below, so I suspect it's mostly the stronger sun doing most of the work rather than much in the way of dryness. This time In April 2020 or 2021 everything would have been bone dry, miss those months! We really do need another 2-3 weeks of virtually no rain to get close still!

Edited April 18 by Metwatch

[In Absence of True Seasons]

 Metwatch Definitely an improvement, but still not great, especially considering another wet spell could easily push back the drying-out that's being achieved. 

Sunshine hours has been poor this April and will continue to be poor throughout the remainder of the month, looks like.

Going to have soggy, saturated ground into May, it seems! Our garden is still ridiculous spongy and wet. Not something I've ever seen in my lifetime this late in the year.

[Metwatch]

2 hours ago, In Absence of True Seasons said:

Going to have soggy, saturated ground into May, it seems! Our garden is still ridiculous spongy and wet. Not something I've ever seen in my lifetime this late in the year.

Last April into May was similar too before it turned drier through mid May.

It does appear the short lived trend of drier Aprils this century is coming to an end with the second April in a row with rainfall near average / wetter than average now. If April 2025 isn't dry then that's an era of recent drier Aprils over and done with completely!

[richie3846]

 Metwatch under the surface, roots are sucking the water out much faster than we often appreciate on the surface. This gives surface water a larger space to travel into. Grass can suck down to about a metre and trees around 3 metres or so.