Worryingly Wet & Worryingly Sunless

[Weather-history]

Even today, it still manages to rain for some parts, showers coming into some parts of the east of England. 

 

[Fen Wolf]

Beautiful here today blue skies, brings me joy and happiness 

[reef]

 Weather-history Yes, we've had quite a few light showers and pretty limited sunshine. It's cold too at 8.9C.

[Scorcher]

Only 52.4 hours of sunshine locally up to yesterday- absolutely pitiful.

It's going to be far the dullest April in the last decade. Some sunshine today but not wall to wall by any means.

No April has recorded under 100 hours here in the last decade and probably a lot longer than that.

Modern Aprils are usually pretty sunny so this is a bit of a shock- even after the last 6 months.

[B87]

Maybe this year we will get a more normal August for once, rather than the usual rubbish we got from 2006 onwards.

[Scorcher]

 B87 That statement would have made sense a decade ago. We have had a few good Augusts though since then.

2022 was one of the best of all time and ranked up there with 1995 and 1997. Also one of the warmest summer months on record.

[B87]

 Scorcher Since 2012, we have seen plenty of poor Augusts.

Great: 2022

Good: 2013, 2016, 2019

Average: 2012, 2018, 2020 (only because of the heatwave)

Poor: 2014, 2017, 2023

Dreadful: 2015, 2021

[Scorcher]

 B87 Much better since 2016 as a whole than the run we had between 2006 and 2016 though.

2019 had that memorable heatwave late in the month. 2020 had plenty of hot days, especially further south.

The Augusts between 2006 and 2016 were basically devoid of any high temps at all here. That has changed in recent years.

The nature of the British climate means we aren't going to get consecutive great months very often.

[B87]

 Scorcher If we can get majority bad ones in a several year period, then we should be able to get majority good ones in a several year period.

The bog standard August would still get a heatwave with sunny days. Only the very worst like 2015, 2017 and 2021 are devoid of summery weather.

The pleasant 2013, 2016 type Augusts we had were closer to normal than the 2015, 2021 types.

Edited April 20 by B87

[SunSean]

The aim of this thread to hopefully jinx us out of this infinite satanic pattern has clearly not been working lol. Here we are, still in a never ending abyss of grey & wet raw sewage except it has somehow managed to get worse with it becoming chillier as the days get longer! For me, this is turning into the worst year I have ever experienced & 2023 was bad enough but at least that one had a good February, acceptable May, good June & September! This one has had nothing except a sunny enough January. Wow, thanks so much weather gods for a good January & warmth rest of year....

[Sentinel]

I feel your pain, as a fellow resident of Southend the last 12 months have been pretty turgid. The constant south-westerly winds have meant loads of my sailing has been cancelled and I haven't even been able to swim in the sea. I'm hoping things warm up a bit and I can start swimming but things still don't look great. Having said that, I can remember in 1990 when we got just 10.5 inches of rain in the whole year. In fact 1990 - 1994 were very dry and we had severe concerns about drought. Not anymore we don't!

[SunSean]

 Sentinel I've never known our area to be so dull! As much as rain annoys me, I'd be ok with it if we had lots of sunshine as well but this combo of wet & dull....Hell no! Make it stop lol.

[Arch Stanton]

 Sentinel

Have you heard about the enormous volumes of raw sewage that the water companies are still releasing into our seas? 

Does that not put you off?  Our waters are ridden with e-Coli 

[Sentinel]

 Arch Stanton Where I swim there is an overflow pipe but we get very little sewage from it. To be honest, you can smell and sewage discharge from about 200 yards away and the last one was about five years ago. Whilst I don't doubt the problems of sewage being released into the sea, it is at specific locations and my one is not one of them.

[Arch Stanton]

 Sentinel

Bacteria in the sea will be transported away from the source by underwater currents, wind and wave action. Yes it will be diluted but it can still infect.

Good luck anyway, I hope you don’t fall sick when you do take the plunge

 

[stainesbloke]

 Arch Stanton It’s absolutely disgusting. How they can get away with it is beyond me. 

[Wade]

 stainesbloke I know, it is infuriating. The people running this environmentally unfriendly and ultimately vile process ought to be put in the sewers themselves. The rich, powerful and the tools of the rich and powerful have a complete disregard and disrespect for the planet and everyone below their stance on the food chain.

[Arch Stanton]

 stainesbloke

At the worry about going too far off topic I’ll just say that the way water privatisation was set up, with a deliberately weak & captured regulator, it has been nothing more than a 30 year state sponsored theft on an epic scale, it was designed like this on purpose which makes it all the more galling.

Circa £70bn of our bills has been used to pay out as dividends; I read today that Thames & SE haven’t even bothered mapping out their assets (infrastructure) after all this time.

Only in supine Britain could this have happened - no other country in the world has privatised water, they (both govts) really don’t work for us so think hard who you vote for at the next GE.

Unfortunately, our tax avoiding, media baron oligarchs make sure their newspapers focus on the really important stuff like: greedy nhs workers, the Kardashian's latest boob jobs, identity politics and bendy bananas instead.

 

 

 

[LetItSnow!]

On 18/03/2024 at 20:02, LetItSnow! said:

The "is it getting wetter?" question is interesting, so I thought I'd put the anomalies of each decade of the past 100 years

Only putting this here as I don't know where else to put it, so feel free to move this to a more appropriate place like in the CC section, but back in March the topic of rain days came up in order to determine whether if it's getting wetter or if the rain is getting more intense but rain days are increasing. It was allowed here then. Thanks to the Starlings Roost Weather website I'm able to see a graph of UK wide rain days (and other data) all the way back into the 19th century.

Starting with annual rain days. We can see a very high frequency of rain days from the begininning of the graph until about 1931 which then it decreased. From the 1960s through until the 1990s there was a sharp reduction with somewhat of a return, albeit less so, to the values experienced in the first half of the 20th century. Compared to the mid-20th century there are more rain days now but not to an unprecedented level, at least since 1891. 

But annual can hide seasonal variation, so let's take a look at the trend for rain days in the winter. Again, we see a decline in the number of winter rain days in the mid-20th century and this makes sense as weather patterns were more blocked in the winter leading to more successful thwarting of Atlantic fronts. There does, unsurprisingly, seem to be a trend back up in the 21st century and quite sharply so, suggesting that rain days in the winter are becoming more common and with more moisture in the atmosphere this does follow the idea of our winters become wetter and stormier but not just by intensity, but in frequency. 

Now we'll look at the summer. Now there is a theory that UK summers will get drier. Let's see if the rain days data shows this. It actually shows a sharp decline already took place in cooler times but has now moderated back to a higher frequency though only sort of back to a regular level. Whether this was natural variation in the mid to late 20th century or a sign of things to come, who knows. But it shows that at least currently, summer rain days appear to be static.

Here are spring and autumn too. Spring rain days appeared to drastically fall in the mid-20th century among other seasons but then increased in the late 20th century and have actually decreased again. Of all the seasons, spring seems to have the most of a sinewave pattern and whether we go back up again or not is unknown. Spring is a bit of a wild card as March could easily see a similar trend to the rest of the winter but by May blocking could be more intense. Autumn is the most straightforward however, with there being not much of a trend in terms of rain days, perhaps slightly upward. Again, October and November are more likely to be affected by the increasing zonal pattern whereas September is more of a wildcard.

Winters look the most clear to me with summers a little less so. We're only about 30 years into this new phase of climat e so trends are very much in their infancy and will have to be monitered very closely. However, putting it all together, I would say at the moment there isn't much evidence to suggest our rain days are becoming more infrequent, at least yet. It's interesting looking at the sections of the graphs that cover the first 30 years of the 20th century, a time when the UK climate was warming quite fast compared to the 19th century, though this was mostly felt in the winter. It's telling to me how both times the climate has begun to warm, rain days and rainfall have increased. We know warmer air holds more moisture. Now larger scale patterns could change this, but provided we stay Atlantic dominated, I say keep those umbrellas at the ready.

[Weather-history]

The NW England/NWales region looks like it has recorded its 10th consecutive month of 100mm+ giving a total of around 1344.7mm. Almost 150% of the 1991-2020 average.  There are only 4 years for the region wetter than this.  

Remarkable.

 

[In Absence of True Seasons]

How long is this thread going to be relevant? 

I'd really hope come May I wouldn't need to post in here, but here we are.

This has legitimately been the worst prolonged periods of weather in my entire life. Not really sure how I cope with our climate if this is any sort of "new normal" or a type of pattern that starts happening more frequently. If it's a "once in a blue moon" situation, sure, but I have this horrible feeling that it won't be. The "once in a blue moon" will more likely be a 2022 situation where things are much sunnier and drier for a prolonged period.

[SunSean]

 In Absence of True Seasons It is exceptionally worrying! I honestly had hoped this thread would work as a lift of the curse, just like how the guy's one did when he made the "worryingly dry" thread lol but so far, no avail. I plan to start praying at night in the hopes of more sunshine because lately, for someone like me who rarely gets down or sad, this has been one massive test of my mental state lol.

I've done 4 solo trips abroad since March 2023 & if I hadn't done any of those, I'd no doubt feel even worse at our current situation!

[Fen Wolf]

 SunSean i also have been away a few times this year due to depression as this was likely the hardest winter i have faced from the the SAD, wet weather and dullness.  
 

Equals over a month away so far on and off.  Might be going again. 
 

Some days i want to blow my brains out because my stupid brain cannot feel or express happiness like it is meant to.  Other days it’s not so bad.  
Let’s hope sunshine comes our way and warmth! 
 

[B87]

 SunSean There's definitely a depressing feel in the air when the weather has been this bad, this far into the year.

Then you get people saying it's been normal, when it has been anything but! A normal British spring has plenty of sunny and dry days throughout all three months. This year, barely a handful of sunny days.

Edited 16 hours ago by B87

[Emz by the Thames]

 Fen Wolf I don't usually suffer much from SAD, but this last winter and spring I've never felt so affected by constant overcast weather. It's really zapped my energy levels and made me feel depressed. So if it's affecting people who don't usually suffer much, I can't imagine what these endless dull days are doing for people who do.

Hope you feel better soon, fingers crossed for some sun.