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sunny_vale My optimism for the year was extinguished once we got another late season SSW. Those things are the deathknell for Spring & guarantee endless gloom. To think people were saying, "oh it won't be that bad this time!" or "we could be on the good side of the SSW!" well guys, it was even worse than last years SSW lol. Hope this isn't gonna be an every year thing now otherwise Spring is a thing of the past! I'm normally fairly optimistic & I was back in January but yeah, this is the worst period of weather I've ever lived through, can't lie!

In other news; I have three hedgehogs in my garden right now. One large, two small.. ish.

jamesthemonkeh I wish that SSW didn't happen. Just want some warm sunny weather. Getting seriously depressed

2 / 3 hours of sun this morning and now in comes the cloud, like clockwork. No doubt it'll all clear again this evening after dinner-tine lol. We genuinely need the starts to align in this country to get an actually sunny, or even mostly sunny day. Utterly infuriating.

Another clear blue start to 100% overcast by 10am. Worst climate ever!

Arctic day up temps mostly around 5-7C but very cold northerly biting. In the few sunny intervals felt nice enough out of the wind. Managed first cut of grass albeit in thick coat and hat. Quite happen with hitter. Old in the winter but this constant cold is getting tad wearing. Was going to say at least it’s dry but I hear rain now on the roof window…

Hawesy very similar here though a bit more cloud this evening. Down by the river this afternoon.

A decent day, especially by the poor standards of this month. Sunny spells and pleasant enough in the sun. Minimum was 0c, max 12c.

I'm starting to suffer from MSS (Miserable Spring Syndrome), but I don't know what to call it: 1975, 1983,1996 or 2013!

Just to add I saw snow hail and sleet yesterday looking out of my conservatory window here in North Yorkshire. This is ridiculous , yes I love snow and Frost but not in nearly May. I'm seriously thinking of using a tanning salon to get much needed vitamin D. It was warmer on Christmas day then it is now,,, I can understand some people seriously questioning climate change, the weather is certainly not like it was for me growing up as a boy in the 1970's.

jamesthemonkeh fine for those further west, Ireland looking good again, those in the east will have to put up with a cool north/north east flow, low cloud etc, I'd rather it was centred 300/400 east. The feed of northerlies is endless here in the east.

I mean, it could be worse, it could be battering down all day. Light rain on the dog walk this morning, but hat and gloves on. They're usually collecting dust already at this time of year.

What I’m finding more astonishing than how poor and cold our weather is, is that there’s not a single day on the 00Z where temperatures anywhere in the UK at any given time are above 18C… and that goes out till the 10th of May, 3 weeks from the start of meteorological summer.

If only it was ..... On this occasion its a warm easterly ..

A bit of rain recently 0.4 mm from another little feature that WRF picked up well.

2.9c raining ️ so much for dry until Sunday oh well… how are we still in this rut? picked up a bug in Londonford mixed with hay Fever lovely jubbly At least managed a good walk yesterday, lots of gardening and odd jobs sorted.. including stopping crows nesting in loft through broken vent cover… by crawling in loft space and blocking vent to 5cm

Heard the rain on the dormer roof when I got up this morning and although it looks to have passed through now, it’s left everything damp so nowhere near as good a start to yesterday and Tuesday. doesn’t look like a bad day coming up though, maybe a few showers but compared to the conditions we’ve endured for much of this spring, passable. just need the warmer air to push up ahead of Saturdays system and for that to remain to our south, then we may manage to get a half decent few days.

Mapantz aww hope you leave some treats for them

TwisterGirl81 'though to not see a wisp of cloud somewhere in this country for a whole DAY would take a small miracle' I've just corrected your typo

Cloudy morning, mainly sunny afternoon which combined with light winds felt very nice even though max today was 10.5c. Showers of rain this evening and 5c, Met sticking to their guns all day that these showers will turn sleety around dawn. If it wasn't the fact that its useable light outside until 21:30 now, you'd think it was still mid March...

Mike Poole thanks Mike I'm afraid I'll breach every NW filter imaginable if I type what I really think of the last 6 months of "weather " locally. As always, in unsettled phases the NW cops for the majority of Atlantic systems but this period has been beyond the pale. Like many others I'm desperate for some warmth and sunshine but I'm struggling to see anything resembling this on the 00z NWP . Late season SSW is disastrous for Spring so I always get a feeling of dread when we see SSW's in late Winter. One year we'll see a major SSW in November and get the benefit HL blocking when most of us want to see it,ala Dec/Jan NOT April/May..

B87 yes, I'm writing off May and the remainder of spring now as we know how long these patterns take to shift. That's 2 months down from what I describe as the "warmer and lighter" half of the year (April - September) . April and May used to be my favourite months of the year because the nights are drawing out rapidly, plants are in bloom and you get those first lovely warm spring days. Not anymore lol. Might even be my new least favourite part of the year because there is something so irredeemably cruel and foul about having to endure this ghastly extension of Winter right up until summer.

sorepaw1 I don't follow that logic. You've acknowledged that our weather patterns are a world away from what you experienced growing up. Surely that would strengthen the evidence of the effects of climate change?

In Absence of True Seasons Looks like we are getting a repeat of last year's weather but worse than last year's. What decent weather there will be, it's going to be in the west and we here in the east will get cold cloudy weather for the foreseeable. There are zero signs it's gonna change in May. People insisting something's gotta give, well it ain't this rubbish weather, apparently

MP-R the high was centred over western Ireland so here in the east and over much of mainland UK in fact, we were on the eastern edge of the high, where pressure was lower. Not to mention an onshore breeze off the North Sea. You can have cold upper air temperatures too and brilliant sunshine, so long as pressure is high enough to kill off cloud formation and also not having an onshore breeze dragging in low cloud.

danm I think even more so we need warmer upper air. Pressure was around 1025-1030mb over the weekend but central England eastwards saw a lot of infill after clear starts. Brilliant sunshine here in the West Country though.

0z deterministic runs, out to Thu 2 May (day 7) Start of May doesn't look too bad for the northeast and Scotland then? 0z ensemble means, out to Fri 10 May (day 15) GEFS still doesn't want that easterly! Later on it's still just the same story of Atlantic ridging with us looking to be on the cold side of it.

tricol I don’t think it could be much worse for this time of year. It’s rained almost every day, it’s below average temperature wise and it’s frosty of a night time. Only thing that would make it worse is high winds.

richie3846 Yeah its a tough one. I've done my best with my sunshine tables to factor in any notable adjustments (Heathrow/Charlwood) but making them a touch lower than necessary so that I don't have to adjust small under estimating like from places like Shoeburyness, Odiham etc (otherwise I'd have to adjust all 60 stations which would take forever lol) & so I've got as accurate as a comparison between stations as I can get. It may not be absolutely 100% accurate but gives you a rough guide at what places are doing better than others so I hope it helps some people at least!

Cold start to the day at 3c . Currently 5c with a snow shower over the Cairngorms to the south of us More Arctic skies to the north over the Firth Small snow showers to the NE ovet the North Sea . Super afternoon yesterday so decided to try some gardening bipt ground was rock hard after all the winter rain so will need to be all forked before sowing anything. Made a start yesterday.

SunSean Agree. We basically skip Spring in such set-ups (Spring here meaning something actually different, more useable and more pleasant than the winter weather prior), and get a 2-month minimum extension of December-like dross. Exactly the same as last year. I wouldn't be surprised if most of May is cool and cloudy and then out of nowhere we get the week-long heatwave in June with zero transition or steady shift to summery weather. Sure, May *might* be better, but the start of it certainly won't be, and by that point, we've wasted away most of Spring already. May is the final third of Spring and the latter half sort of bleeds into summer anyway (or it should, at least), so the time for high Spring is well past. Getting 17c-20c days in May isn't some grand feat or sign of a major pattern shift tbh. It's very expected weather in May especially for the SE. Such days I expected here and there during April too.

Well a proper sunny morning! Shame it won’t last though…

Walked out with Sophie and she was excited. Look mummy pure blue sky. That's how rare it is here ... Even my child notices!

Dare i watch the GFS 06Z "But...but...but the SSW will be different this time guys!" There's no other way around it- SSW = Sudden Spring Wrecker. We don't get a Spring if we get an SSW. The earliest we can expect ANY kind of settled sunny weather would be late May now but it's still a roll of the dice depending on all this crap northern blocking nonsense so we may just get the dullest year ever, time will tell!

richie3846 Heathrow's adjusted values don't represent every station though so you have to be careful. Heathrow & Charlwood are underestimating sunshine figures by quite a bit but other locations such as Manston, Brize Norton etc probably only underestimate by a tiny fraction. The easiest way to figure how much of a deficit at certain stations, for me at least (and even that isn't 100% accurate) is to check values on the ensoleillement map on Meteociel when there has been wall to wall sunshine, particularly in Summer months & you can see which places are worse than others for sunshine reporting. Herstmonceux is by far the worst reporter as they only record something silly, like 11.6 hours of sun on a perfectly clear day, while Heathrow & Charlwood would get about 14.2, Shoeburyness 14.7 max & places like Manston, Brize Norton 15.1. It's way more complicated & very annoying that stations don't adjust themselves! I try to keep it as fair as I can in my sunshine tables by not adjusting the ones that only need miniscule adjustments & then adjusting a bit less than necessary, other stations like Heathrow & Charlwood & it seems to more or less work out about right- but still not 100% accurate of course!

....And there is it the classical HP over Greenland that spreads northwards up to the arctic, another completely useless spring month coming?

55.0 hrs of sunshine here in the first 24 days of April, 56% of average. It's still possible it could be the dullest April on record ( since 2000) as April 2000 recorded 75.5 hrs and currently holds the record.

Yes, ground slightly damp. Temp down to 1.8°C in the night. Currently 3.3°C .

They really should release the actual figures. The raw numbers that are displayed on their own website plus others like meteociel and weather online are wrong and misleading. Still don’t understand why they don’t, considering they show the actual ranges on the anomaly maps.

raz.org.rain Not in summer though. Most deserts will still be 25-30c overnight. They can often get frost in winter. Las Vegas has a record low of -13c, which is the same as Heathrow. Albuquerque has colder average minimums that London from October until early April, (including an average January low of -3.1c which is colder than any part of the UK) and a record low of -27c. On the other hand, some desert climates are always warm, eg Djibouti has an average low of 21c in January and 31c in July.

18z NAM pretty much the same as the 12z just an absolutely classic look for a significant tornado outbreak across Kansas and Oklahoma. Soundings from Oklahoma Soundings from Kansas Only one major fail mode is really possible with this kind of setup, that being morning convection. Lets see what our cams show over the next 3 days. Here's the area forecast discussion from the national weather services local office in Wichita, Kansas "Saturday has the potential to bring significant severe weather to the area. Of course there is plenty of time for the forecast to change and there does remain some degree of uncertainty particularly in storm mode. A sfc low in the vicinity of SW KS is progged to deepen and move east/northeast potentially around central/south central KS by peak heating. Moderate to strong instability (2500-4000 J/kg) will combine with strong flow (60kts+ bulks shear), nicely curved hodographs/strong LL SRH, and strong 3CAPE (200j/kg). Any storm that can remain discrete or even semi-discrete in this type of environment will pose significant hazards from strong to potentially violent tornadoes, large to very large (2-3+ inch) hail, and damaging wind gusts." Wonder if a day 3 moderate will be issued, maybe not cause of morning convection but still a possibility.

We had a hail shower about 8.15 as i was driving to work, short and sharp, snow/sleet showers up at cropton forest first thing according to reports, it really needs to warm up, log burner lit again tonight with it being 2°c outside currently.

mike57 Yes, that's what I heard. We had a hail storm on the moors at 9am and it then stayed dry but bitterly cold until 3pm when it unexpectedly rained really hard. The sun came out later and it has actually been a nice evening, with the cold wind dropping right off on the NY coast. Alas, it seems we may be getting showers from a feature from the North Sea early tomorrow which may stick around until late morning. I do not normally say it, but I am actually glad that I shall be heading back to Cheshire later tomorrow.

carinthian now that is some snow, not the piddling amounts we have to put up with. It’s bad enough when wagon wheels and mars bars are affected by shrinkflation but these days it’s even snowfall.

Iceaxecrampon I know Keldas well, the bluebells are a treat. I remember visiting them in mid May 2020, north slopes and they were in bloom, whereas they were barely out same time 2021. Another fine day here, turning into a decent dry spell in the Lake District and we look best placed to see least rain in England in days ahead..As said this is the lakeland dry season, all quite normal to see eastern and south parts plagued by cloud this time of year whilst we bask in sunshine. Chilly frosty nights at present.

WillinGlossop Yes, its an impressive covering for so late but not a great fan of snowfall at this time of year. Just want some warm sunshine now but so much more appealing is a continental climate with its more extreme variety of weather. Hope you lot get some decent warmth and sunshine soon ? C

Keldas. Glenridding Yearly visit to see the Bluebells. But we’re a week or so too early The Legendary Lung buster start up to Helvellyn. If you know you know. For a change we descended. Classic Grizedale. Memories of Nethermost Pike ahead in full winter conditions many a time. St Sunday to the left. Chill N NE breeze. Decent in The Sun when it broke. A good day.

Imagine being someone who is overjoyed by grey & wet! Would it be something like this? Dean Gray, the drizzle lover- "This has been the BEST 14 months I have ever lived through on this planet!!!! This stunning spell that started in March 2023 with those utterly stunning grey slate skies & that tantalising rain hammering against my skin for days on end has left me in somewhat of a euphoric daze. We had a disgusting blip late May & June 2023 with that absolutely vile sunshine & worryingly dry conditions that could have brought forward extinction of the human race but I decided to take matters into my own hands. I drew a pentagram, got some candles, 100 dead Spring rabbits & a photo of the sun with a knife stomped through it on a dead tree trunk. I performed this sacrifice to Beelzebub & in return I begged him for the UK weather to be like March 2023 forever!!!" "My wish was granted. One of the greatest months in UK Summer history occurred with the utterly perfect July 2023 & August, despite a few annoying blips of filthy sun mid month, kept a mainly dull theme. The 1st half of September was absolutely unacceptable though & I thundered back over to Beelzebub in a hurricane of rage & demanded a return to the weather I WANT. ITS ALL ABOUT ME I screamed in his face. He told me I need to up my sacrifice & so Immediately I unclenched my fists & rushed off to gather the items for my next sacrifice. Upon digging up my expired grandparents & placing them onto the tree trunk surrounded once again by the pentagram & candles, topped with the sun photo, this time with FIVE knives through it, I anticipated my desire to come true." "The weather changed almost immediately after mid month & then I spat out my caramel latte when a few days of 25c & sun appeared in early October....REALLY!!!!!! I charged back over to Beelzebub but he stopped me in panic & exclaimed that the man over there was upset at the poor weather & also started a sacrifice to him & of course I ahem...ended his journey on earth there & then. Ever since, I've had it all my way hahahahaha. Grey, wet, grey, wet, grey, wet, it's all because of me! 2023 was meant to be the start of a Mediterranean climate in the UK but I alone managed to change it to a slightly warmer version of the Faroe Islands!!!" "Nowadays I just dance in the streets in my red lingerie in a blur of complete euphoric bliss just knowing, this is our climate forever now! If anyone even dares go to Beelzebub with a sacrifice to change things, there will be dire, DIRE consequences. You have been warned. I love my life!" Yes I was bored & yes I am weird

Stunning while waiting for my flight to Gatwick