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A decent couple of days here after the damp weather on Monday. Depressed temperatures for the time of year, but pleasant enough in sunny breaks, reached 11.6C today.

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.

Yet another dull drizzly cloudy day here, and that wind....fooking bugger off!!! This country is a complete miserable hellhole.

Maybe, but you did say that it's only been warm because of the mean so far this month, but we've actually run a little above average for max temps over the first 23 days of the month. Yes, that will likely drop a little as we get to the end of the month, so maybe finishing marginally below average.

Not a bad day but a lot of cloud still. Sunny intervals rather at a premium again especially this afternoon. Max 11.7°C.

Sign for those with a greenhouse

B87 Yes, again the dullness is the notable part about this April, not the temps.

CryoraptorA303 April 2016 was also far sunnier than this month with 185 hours at Heathrow vs a probable <120 hours for 2024.

danm The forecast has plenty of days below 15c, which will help to drop that average though.

A rare dry day but mostly cloudy after some early sunny spells Max temp 10.1C, now 8C, Barometer 1014mb falling slowly, Wind F2 NNE, Rainfall nil

Ooh hello:

SunnyG Yes, I am very old.

Weather Enthusiast91 Personally you mean?

Which ones in recent history?

I'm royally fed up of this insipid weather on the north sea coast. Cool to cold, dull to dreary, damp to wet. It's even worse than this time last year, which I thought was about as poor as it could get.

SunnyG I remember that well.

Another frustrating thing about our climate is that whilst I would like to see some more cold records being broken, they seem to happen mostly during spring or summer as opposed to autumn or winter which is when we want it. And when autumn and winter do arrive, it's warm records that are being broken.

Ben Sainsbury Me too man! Should've gone now. Oh well, hopefully I can get something from May 6-14!

danm Agreed, I don't think daytime temps have been low as the Sun has been coming out almost every day for at least some time. The sunshine stats are as low as they are because of the insanely dull first week or so, without that they'd be below average but not to this level. A below average warmest day for sure (which is 23.4°C for Heathrow between 2003-2023), but not by much and falls well short of the lowest maximum of the period, which is 17.3°C in 2021. Temperature-wise, this is the kind of April expected of a backended post-Nino spring really, especially a Super, there's nothing that unusual about it. April 2016 was substantially cooler than this and was also wetter than average. The dullness and wetness, especially up north is the more notable feature imo.

You're right. It's no coincidence that the NW has their driest, sunniest weather between April and June, just ask @damianslaw.

In Absence of True Seasons Spring is the time of year that the west generally does have it better than the east coast. We are on the receiving end of the easterlies that are so common from April-June. The April-June period is the time of year you can generally bet on the west coast having a high percentage of days better than the east and is also the time that western England, Wales and Scotland have the most daily maxima.

reef I've noticed some of these adjustments in some of the data for Manston from https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/manstondata.txt although not entirely sure when it stopped. July 2006 has a value of 350.1 hours for its K/Z sensor although the raw data from MIDAS seems to suggest it was 316.9 hours which is a pretty drastic difference. It makes it hard to compare values when there seems to have been some adjustment that isn't clearly stated, can only presume it was to continue the consistency of one instrument being used but this correction isn't being done correctly so

Not sure you are correct with this. The average max temperature at Heathrow for the first 23 days of April 2024 is 15.2c against an average for the month of 15c. It's been chilly recently, but I reckon we could get into the high teens again next week. Here are the maxes so far in London this month. It's been dull and wet at times, but apart from the last week, it hasn't been cold: