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My thoughts are backed up by the Meto update today though. It would be wrong for me to say something other than what is shown when taking all models and ensembles as a percentage likelihood and that is why I was not surprised by the update from UKMO today.

Evening All ........................................... Tonight Relatively mild, cooler further inland. Between 6-10c, May speaking average. Dry until the early hours, when a band of rain sweeps east engulfing the whole of our region Spiralling depression, incoming from the Atlantic. Windy ol night to our West, will be breezy here as well. ........................................... Tomorrow Saturday Starting on a wet note, heavy persistent rain inbound for most of the day. ........................................... Maxima for Saturday 16-18c a muggy day - note the continent starting to warm up. This bodes well for later on. CAPE looks very limited tomorrow a bid downgrade from GFS 12z Ireland still in with a chance Reminds me of last Winter, the chase for Cold was always on the Horizon The forecast mentioned Thundery showers, well on that bases of ^ Looks unlikely ........................................... (Website went extremely buggy) Saturday Evening Quite tight isobars, therefore some strong gusts, coast will bear the brunt of the Strong winds Nothing damaging, but certainly windy nonetheless ^ Very reminiscent of Winter 2013/2014... Depressions galore. ........................................... Enjoy your weekend

Caught this bad boy moving just to my south. I'm just north of the city.

THERE IS A RISK OF THUNDERSTORMS FORECAST Synopsis A large low pressure system/area of low geopotential heights covers the NE Atlantic and N Sea, with a broad belt of upper westerlies covering northern Europe, with a 100knt+ westerly jet lying across southern Britain. A wave in this jet stream will move quickly east across central and northern Britain today, bringing a risk of heavy showers and thunderstorms here today. ... N IRELAND, SCOTLAND, N ENGLAND, N WALES, MIDLANDS, LINCS, E ANGLIA ... Well modified polar maritime airmass, to the north of the jet stream over southern Britain, will be readily unstable this morning bringing heavy showers west to east accompanied by hail and isolated lightning. Probabilities of thundestorms increasing through the day across the above areas as surface temperatures rise in response to sunny spells and approaching wave increases forced ascent of moist maritime airmass. Close proximity of jet stream over N Wales, N England through to E Anglia will see strongest vertical shear here, with any storms forming here likely organising into fast-moving multicell or bowing line segments capable of producing hail up to 1 to 2cm in diameter along with squally strong wind gusts and torrential rainfall leading to localised flooding. Increasing low-level shear indicated with approach of wave suggests the odd isolated short-lived tornado can't be ruled out too. Full forecast can be found here: http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=convective;sess=

After yesterday's disappointment, which I half expected, I am not going to go into detail today. However, although GFS is showing less CAPE than for yesterday the WRF are more on-board today and the fact that we may actually get some sunshine means that CAPE is more likely to be realised. Any chances are earlier on in the day with a ridge killing off any showers from the west, restricting chances to the far east of the country by the afternoon. Once more, where storms develop, they could become organised and bring with them the risk of reasonable sized hail, gusty winds and tornadoes. Rather than post multiple charts I will just post my thoughts on today's risk area. The yellow area is for general heavy showers and the slight risk of a weak thunderstorm up to around 12-2pm before showers start dying out from the west. The red area is where any stronger storms are likely up to around 3-5pm with Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire at the highest risk of all.

Well until the main models get some sort of conformity and grip regarding the upper air anomaly we will continue to see this changing surface analysis. The last two runs of the GFS is a good example of just one model. So regarding the UK for the next weekend I'm joining JH on the fence.

I can see rising columns to my north and south. The most frustrating thing is my view to the west is completely blocked. I need to get to higher ground, which in Norfolk is a problem. To the north: To the south:

Getting darker, but I don't hold high hopes. Temps have taken a small tumble.

Really cool here in Chislehurst man! Peace to all.

Morning all... And 'BIG' all!....To fellow weather peeps in the Wales/SW threads Lets start by saying, i hope we have some interesting times ahead this Summer, i'm sure the SW will have Bragging rights when it comes to how much sun we have I remember last year, Blizzy kept popping into the Midlands thread saying how lovely it was in Falmouth (wall to wall) when we had cloud cover Looking forward to reaching the magical 25c mark, then on to 30c and yes some good old thunder & lightning!! Love a good break down me! then back on to wall to wall Sunshine.. Happy Days After early showers... expecting more showers as the day progresses...Currently 12.9 c.

Morning all, Woke up to wall to wall sunshine in Barnehurst, get to work and it's cloudy and really quite windy out there. I'm full of cold so roll on 4.30pm where I can go home and get some rest! Have a good day SR

Sneaks in *waves* raining Here Sneaks back out

I'd take a warm, wet summer in all honesty- as long as it wasn't incessantly wet......given the wet winter 2013/14 it surely increases the chances of a (cold) dry winter The -QBO should, in theory, give this a helping hand also. All fits together very nicely with the potentially developing el Nino. From Paul Hudson's blog posted on the ENSO thread... ''Research suggests that the main impact is more likely to be felt in winter, causing colder, drier conditions in Northern Europe, and wetter, milder winters through southern Europe and the Mediterranean.During the last El Nino of 2009/2010, the winter across northern Europe, including the UK was exceptionally cold'' Then again when does the weather ever follow the form guide!

From the acle straight. Cell to the north. Convection still present, surface temps still pretty hot. Edit: now under a moderate convective shower at present in Norwich NR2 lol

They missed Ipswich. Curses! Aww, so sorry, Jax . Sad indeed. Poor little thing.

Off to Norway on a cruise so I may finally see some snow after all!

I'm no expert by any stretch but there is a lot of large cumulus building here, some big-ish tops that seem like they're trying to rise. Only getting a few mins of sun here and there though. Anyone seen anything interesting?

GFS 06z goes from high pressure to a northerly in 24 hours GEM on the other hand goes for very warm and humid conditions instead of a northerly The met office continue to suggest a breakdown through the latter part of next weekend and into the following week with more unsettled and cooler conditions arriving similar to what GFS and ECM are showing

GFS 6z once again looking good. The 0z brought cooler uppers down from the northeast next week whereas the 6z has things turning warmer sooner with high pressure centred over SW England next Thursday. It may not last all that long but some summery conditions are approaching. An almost perfect position of high pressure for warmth and light winds.

I expect a better sounding update from the met office based on the latest model runs, yesterday's was disappointing compared to the previous day, today's should be more summery again...fingers crossed :-)

Yes a few more days of unsettled weather to come before a noticeable improvement by mid week seems likely based on the latest runs. Looking at the fax for Monday we can see the weekend's low, now approaching, will have cleared through and we are left with a showery westerly but we can see the next low waiting in the wings to come through on Tuesday.Last nights fax for Tuesday had this one moving in but the overnight runs now hold it back in the Atlantic to allow pressure to build towards the UK. Monday The Azores high then builds in nicely across the UK bringing us all some warmer and sunnier conditions which should last into the weekend. Next Saturdays mean output of the ECM/GFS Op runs show a solid UK High. so we should get at least a few days of decent weather from the middle of next week into the weekend.

No worries, once I've got my horrendous exam out of the way this afternoon and completed drowning my sorrows this evening, I'll put a more comprehensive explanation into the learners area, and how each trigger can act as such

Bright sunshine but breezy here this morning with just some cumulus floating around. From Nick's forecast and the charts I have seen I look to be in a decent spot today with being just north of the upper jet stream and within the risk area. I may head slightly east more towards Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire shortly anyhow as I would think anything that does develop would have more chance of being thundery further east.

This is more like it from UKMO it started its move to ECM yesterday afternoon and this morning its fully on board now with all of the UK becoming settled and pleasantly warm high teens to low 20's is more than good enough for me its only late May after all ECM and UKMO now pretty much in agreement at t144 So after some uncertainty it looks like ECM was on the money after all

Good morning all Im spoilt for choice, as IOW is in both 4 & 5 Im in 4, or is it 5, im confused, bit like the weather, cant make up its mind what to do Damp cloudy Showers Temp at 11.9c and rising Pressure 1010.9mb (rising 0.8mb.hr) Humidity 92%

Me too... in Korea.

Its great that I am now in the same region whether I am in Falmouth or at home in the Midlands. Cheers to the South West portion of the country. :lol:

Still looking good for chase day 1 Ian's heading out to the USA today so that'll be the full quota of staff members out there, then the first guests are arriving on Friday prior to the first official day of the chase on Saturday. Sunday is likely to be the first chase day.. For the 4 chase virgins on the team it could be a jaw dropping start!!

No, due to mass public persuation the regionals were opened but changed

^^^ I agree with the retrogression doubt. There is a cluster going with that scenario in the GEFS but it is only about 25%-33%. The spread at D10 sums it up: Lots of uncertainty...again. ECM shows us a much flatter pattern in week 2 this morning but with the jet towards N.Scotland not a bad run for the south with mostly settled conditions from D6-D9, before the pattern sinks south. However the last three runs have had different solutions and I suspect that there remains a lot of spread in the ECM ensembles as well. GEM remains similar to the ECM but with the initial pressure rise not so far north so more unsettled earlier and again by D8 the jets slips south to cover the whole UK by D9. As the London ens show a pressure rise is seemingly incoming but transient in nature and how it breaks down to yet be clarified:

ECMWF & GFS are both showing some nice settled weather towards the end of next week. Still lots of uncertainty being 6/7 days out..

Morning folks so what have we in store today I wonder. Just to get one thing out of the way. I won’t be making any speculations on how the QBO, PDO and El Nino affect the models performance. For a start the PDO has only just gone positive, the El Nino probably will not come to fruition until later in the year and I haven’t a clue on how the QBO affects the Tropospheric dynamics, if it does, and I’m not sure that anyone else does either. As noted the GFS has HP dominating the UK from Thursday through to Sunday. The high of around 1038mb is centred in the North Sea for the first three days but there is a major shift on Sunday and the centre has nipped across to the west of Ireland and by Monday is in the central Atlantic. Regarding the 500hPa anomaly. Very similar to the last run with the ridge smack over the UK (no surprise there) with a trough mid Atlantic and another ridge near the eastern seaboard of the States. Awaiting to see the ECM take on this later as the hare is still running.

Models at day 6 GFS still building heights in strongly UKMO looking a lot better now GEM the furthest south but still better than yesterday GFS ensemble So in all a good shift northwards of the high across the board so far, the second half of next week is starting to look pretty good. All eyes on the ECM. Retrogression still looks likely in week 2, but are the models overplaying this? Probably quite likely.

Errrrmmm - Respiratory infections need antibiotics fast Jax - get thee to a decent avian vet please!Piggies are the same as birds and can go downhill fast (My last piggie vet was also an extremely experienced avian vet and taught me a lot).I now have a stash of antibiotics/other drugs (actually a reasonable pharmacy!) and ring my vet (at all times of day or night) to get permisssion to dose the appropriate meds til I can get them into the vet for exam/sign off said meds. Hope Lady Jax cockatiel will recover.xxxxWeather wise - grey/dull/misty/rain all day - then coming back from Farnham 8pm tonight I saw the weather system clear and we ended up with clear skies and a beautiful sunset.

It still looks like warming up and settling down beyond the middle of next week, at least for the south of the uk. In the meantime it will remain unsettled with showers and longer spells of rain, some heavy with thunder but sunny periods too, temperatures sliding to just below average for a time but then recovering to just above by later next week. Nothing has changed really, the reliable timeframe is not so good but beyond looks much better the further south you are.

The latest QBO data has come in and shows that the +QBO is now well on the decline with last months reading coming in at 7.15 a decline from 11.72. So I would expect a transition to a weak -ve stage during June very much like 2009. Also i've been trying to find some information on the chase of phase state of the QBO as i'm sure i read on here once, possibly courtesy of GP that these phase changes have an impact upon the troposphere for a time and also that March 2013 was one example of that but again I can't find anything so not sure if its me going crazy or if I misread something at some point, don't know if anyone else knows? The PDO looks like its starting to turn more positive again judging by the latest SST anomalies and with the pacific looking more favourably towards a weak El Nino event this could help us possibly see the PDO remain positive for the summer which puts us in a much more favourable position to 2009 when the PDO was weakly negative throughout the majority of the summer. However we will have to see if this ENSO event really takes off in the next few weeks. So at the moment I still think a warm dry summer is likely for the UK especially if we can keep a positive PDO phase throughout.

I have to say reading some posts today takes me back to the winter periods over the last few years. Models are models, nothing more, the trick is picking the correct one, NOT one that gives what any of us hope for. The comment from NOAA is the most pertinent, for the states of course but it does have ramifications for us. IF the upper flow is flat then ridging is not the most favoured solution for this area. Currently, see this evening NOAA outputs for 6-10 and 8-14 days, show the 6-10 suggesting quite strongly upper ridging in the uUK area, but note this is the FIRST time it has shown this. By the 8-14 day chart and that ridge has gone, so I would treat any model/forecast suggesting any more than the odd day or two with ridging in charge with suspicion. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/500mb.php http://mp1.met.psu.edu/~fxg1/ECMWF_0z/hgtcomp.html

Hope we get some good ones, there were some fantastic displays last year. This from early on the 10th of June, seen from the garden, probably the best display I've seen:

No tsunami alert issued, thank goodness.

I've just merged together the Wales, Midlands and Southwest England weather discussions to form this new thread as per the discussions here: http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/80194-regional-threads-changes-for-summer/?p=2965003 This is region 4 on the map - there is some overlap so those close to the borders please feel free to post in the discussion which suits you best

I can only speak for this area, but out of Springs 2007, 2009 and 2011, every month other than May 2007 were all warmer, drier and sunnier than average, in some cases by a long way. Here, all three springs had more than 120% sunshine, less than 60% of normal rainfall and were more than 1.0C above average. To maintain that weather over three months shows how exceptional they were. Even the less notable springs in recent years had good months (e.g. May 2008, April 2010 and March 2012). Hence my original comment of how recent springs have altered expectations of what normal weather is.

I think its more to do with expectations being higher after a string of very warm (and dry) springs. Here for example the mean maximum for the first 7 days of May is only 13.9C but even with the first three cool days the mean so far this year is 14.7C. There hasn't really been any very warm days though so far this spring. Like 2009 its mostly a case of consistently warmer than normal without any real standout days. Indeed, the 18.2C we reached here a couple of days ago was actually the highest maximum of the year so far. Still, we're a long way off 1983, 1984, 1986 and 1988 which all failed to reach 20C before the second or third week in June!

I thought this sums up the day nicely

I've been banging on about the 'sleeping giant' since before 07' ( Antarctica was my 'pet' prior to the 07' events across the Arctic basin) so this is confirmation that I was no being unduly alarmist about the events unfolding there? The upland melt , measured by NASA, of the snow/ice up to a mile up the trans Antarctic range (behind Ross) really caught my eye as all you ever heard back then was denialists banter about a 'cooling interior'? The loss of West Antarctica also plays a part in the initial rapid melting of the east by opening up the channel between West and East and putting Ross in jeopardy ( an ice sheet the size of France and holding over 4ft of sea level rise). The uncorking of Wilkes, and the loss of the Roosevelt Island side of Ross, would give us near instant ( a decade?) multi feet sea level rise and badly impact the planets infrastructure ( all the global financial centres appear at risk along with all the oil terminals/ cargo ports) over a very short period. I believe that such potential demands we take serious the risks from Antarctica and not just play games with 'numbers' and rogue data points?

Nearly one week into May, the Great Lakes still have 16% ice cover. This is unprecedented!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/Rd1QCdXkjJ BY FAR... most ice on record for Lake Superior in early May. Still 10,600 sq. mi. of ice (33%). (cc: @BuzzFeedStorm) pic.twitter.com/Njpx79zZoy

An interesting article has just been published on the importance of ice drainage from the Wilkes Basin (Ice plug prevents irreversible discharge from East Antarctica): - http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2226.html It's an interesting area for sea ice.

Not on a daily basis. A daily extent anomaly (from 1981-2010 climatology) of 2.2 million square kms was recorded on 21 Dec 2007. See: http://www.cawcr.gov.au/staff/preid/seaice/gsfc_sh_extent_anom.html The current daily anomaly is 1.4 million square kms (see http://www.cawcr.gov.au/staff/preid/seaice/sea_ice_table_extent.html for the data).

I think you'll find that Antarctica has been ice free for most of it's history as a 'continent'. We have plenty of paleo data showing more 'recent' melt episodes and it appears (as today) that the West Antarctic Ice sheet (W.A.I.S.) is always the first to be deglaciated. It will be interesting to see how the channel/sound between the two parts of Antarctica is deglaciated as this will prove key to the release of the ice on the Trans Antarctic Mountains that flank the edge of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. This will involve a partial failure of the Ross embayment at the Roosevelt island end (the section with "my crack" on it). By the time we get to Jan the ice/snow on Ross will have melted enough to show the ice stream that feeds this side of the shelf and the amount of crevassing that this stream undergoes on it's journey from the mountains. If ,as with other shelfs/glaciers, the process includes warm water attack at the base of the shelf (Ross is grounded below sea level) then we can expect large and rapid failures as the ice is floated off and the grounding line moves 'inland'. Ross is the biggest 'buttress' on the planet and once it goes you can expect a 'mechanical collapse' of the ice it holds back and there after an acceleration of the E.A.I.S.'s 'drain glaciers' until a new equilibrium is reached. As a thought I have to ponder how much the pressure of the ice to the rear of Ross will actually facilitate the final collapse of Ross by bulldozing it off it's anchorage on the sea floor and allowing float off. I cannot be sure but I think I read somewhere that if 1/3 of the front of Ross failed then the tremendous pressure from the rear will 'snap' the rest of the shelf off the sea floor and allow the ocean underneath 'floating off' the majority of the shelf in one catastrophic collapse (as we saw with Larsen B only much ,much bigger. With Ross gone the Channel will be open to 'float off' (or partial 'float off'?) its ice working it's way across the sound towards Weddell. It would appear that the peninsula protects the Weddell sea from the worst of the Souther oceans storms so it may stay frozen until the channel has clear passage and 'chisels' it's way through Weddell to the southern oceans. Be aware that none of this requires the kind of hike in temps it will receive when the circumpolar winds/drift slacken back off when the Ozone issue is resolved. What we see around the peninsula (and studied at Wilkins) is a warm water intrusion that is working it's way towards Ross. It was Beyond Pine island suite last year so may be knocking on Ross's door this southern summer. I'm gonna be very interested to watch 'my crack' the next two melt seasons esp. now we have the Cryosat2 data (or will have shortly???).