Leaderboard

For those in the UK this summer, I think that is a good enough signal, at that range, based on the increasingly likely potential evolution of tropical and extra tropical forcing driving the atmosphere and the equally increasing likelihood of stratospheric downwelling of the troposphere losing its stubborn grip on the hemispheric pattern. Its very much a mid latitude Azores ridging pattern and not a top down arctic heights ridging pattern - such as has dogged much of Europe for quite some time. That makes a lot of sense in my view - with every indication of tropical convection remaining active and edging the rossby wavelength a little eastwards and keeping an amplified profile - BUT at the same time as Nina-esque forcing and residual stratospheric instability wane (and by dint of that the former also stops perpetuating the other). If we see cloudiness and thunderstorm activity increase once again across the Western and central Pacific heading into the latter part of May and into early June, and as the ferrel cell gains its early seasonal supremacy, then look for sub tropical ridge extensions to increasingly drive the jet stream further north and west , displacing the trough somewhat accordingly. Angular momentum is poised quite nicely at present (NB: heading at present into the 'wane' part of the tropical>extra tropical cycle which means AAM is falling back, temporarily, and retaining the trough solution across NW Europe into the medium term). However, the next upturn c/o renewed eastward propagating tropical convection, should see the extra tropical Global Wind Oscillation, a phase plot depiction of hemispheric wind-flow, re-orbit towards a higher amplitude Phase 4 (the signal for mid latitude ridging in tandem with a more stable stratosphere than Spring to date) Again taken at face value and subject to usual caveats as added, but according to plausibility as outlined above - an average. sometimes warm pattern looks indicated from that seasonal outlook for many N and NW parts of Europe with some good fine spells. It doesn't smack of plume generated heat and with relatively low humidity probable - but many would very happily settle for that I would think this summer as restrictions ease and it is quite some improvement on the awful Spring conditions many have been enduring. It does look a potentially hot set-up for those of us further south in Europe on the southern flank of ridging with a lot of heat building in situ - and heatwave territory. Mediterranean heatwave territory takes on another level to UK/NW Europe standards and it is as well, should that scenario verify, that procedures are already in place, as per the the annual calendar, to make sure large clearance of tinder box undergrowth is undertaken ahead of the heat building to reduce fire risks.

What’s that saying again?.. “there are 2 seasons in Scotland, winter and June” ?... It snows more often than not in May but this current weather is definitely at the more extreme end. 6 inches and heavy snow as I left and a tricky a9 commute, standstill on the Daviot south Yesterday was white and snowy and the last few days in general have had showers accompanying the cold. Aye, very impressive 2021 now give us some

Slightly shocked when I looked out of the window this morning. That'll teach me to take my eye of the weather.

Looking at the radar most of the precip has skirted here so far, amazing to see the snow pics and I bet there's not been many snow warnings covering a large part of Scotland in May @Mr Frost called it @damianslaw even the Met O calling it "quite unusual"

The trough broke up quite a bit as it into this area but we have had a few flakes. The main line of precipitation just now on the radar is heading down through Western Perthshire where the traffic cams are showing heavier precipitation. Rannoch for example.

Farming press starting to carry stories of seriously delayed crops across the whole of UK and Europe especially soft fruit even in tunnels. Cereal crops will have to complete their growth stages in 90 days so reducing potential yields. Lambing outside in hilly areas usually delayed purposefully till May for warmer weather is going badly too. All of this is going to lead to less production so prices will rise.Mrs Northernlights says prices in the supermarkets are already rising.A perfect storm along with the virus and exporting and importing paperwork delays.

Caught a heavy hail shower yesterday while in Port Glasgow, had to shelter in the Garage as I was working outside. My mate who works out on the Golf course, which is quite high up, said they were getting marble size hail and was about an inch deep over the whole course. got 2 big claps of thunder after this shower but missed them on the video.

Definitely May.....,be!

On the plus side, the GEFS 0z mean still looks better beyond mid month and there’s a few juicy perturbations, however, essentially it’s a very mixed outlook and especially in the short / medium term it’s unsettled..but..at least the Gfs 0z op shows we will be losing the polar / arctic chill very soon with days and nights becoming milder, much closer to average and we are probably looking at a mixture of warm sunny spells and showers, some heavy and thundery plus occasional longer periods of rain...good growing weather?...hey at least there’s a positive spin there..come on guys I’m trying!..very trying ? ️ ? ⛈

Steady snow falling here! Even settling on some surfaces! 6th May

Cold and wet this morning at 4c with a few slushy deposits left from a fall of snow in the middle of the night when it was white.Snow still remaining above 600feet round about. Just hope we see some better weather soon.

Snowing at Straiton and it’s lying

Heavy wet snow here! Winter continues!

Morning from Kent, some snow on webcam on high ground even though we're well past normal Snow Season down South.

Gosh, Winter 2021/22 has sure started early for some of you guys

A very brief look out of the window at 05:30 this morning confirmed that the forecast light snow was indeed falling, and was enough to cover the cars completely and even a patchy covering on the ground. Not a significant event but interesting all the same. Temperature has climbed to 7.3deg.C up from a minimum of -2.6deg.C at 02:57, humidity is 74%, wind 2 to 4mph northwesterly, pressure is 1006.6hPa steady, there's been 0.6mm of rain equivalent today and cloud cover is 8/8.

A thousand apologies, Don . . . But, when one gets to my age, next winter is too far ahead!

As much as I love snow,,,,come on it’s May let’s have some warmth now please!!!!

The low pressure system later tonight through the morning will be further south to what I previously thought was likely, but rain moving into the southwest of England in a few hours but the majority of it remaining over the English channel and into northern France, this rain also probably moves along other southern coastal counties further east though during the morning, some cloud around to the north of this with an area of showery rain looking to develop during the morning over north Wales into the Midlands, which could fall as sleet or snow on high ground at first, turning to rain before moving southeast during the early afternoon. Looking at the low pressure system for Saturday again, windy for many and much of the rain heavy for a few hours.. widely 10-20mm accumulating including the far southeast of England, particularly wet for south Wales, still likely to be snow on some high ground of Scotland for a time though possibly the highest ground of Wales and northern England too briefly. The rain continues on sunday morning for some western parts especially Wales where altogether from saturday 50-80mm accumulating locally. Ahead of this wet weather some heavy showers with the chance of thunder possibly developing later on sunday for central and more especially eastern parts.. showers likely for northern Ireland and Scotland some heavy with one or two thunderstorms possible. Temperatures rising on saturday but becoming much warmer for southern and particularly eastern England on sunday, they will probably reach between 17-20c in sunny spells, possibly locally upto 22c. Another look at early next week it will turn cooler again in the east but not as cold as this week. heavy showers around on monday but probably in particular for Scotland and more especially northern Ireland again where there is more likely to be a few thunderstorms bringing hail, strong winds and locally torrential rain. Heavy showers developing quite widely though for other places, except the southeast where there will probably be few. This weather looking likely to continue on tuesday with further heavy showers around but the wettest weather looks to be more for the northwest instead of the south with low pressure from this weekend still around.. perhaps the wettest weather shifting to central and southern areas by wednesday with showers and the possibility of longer spells of rain most likely here. Showers will probably be around for much of the uk aswell though but sunshine at times. The outlook for later next week seems similar more emphasis on lows moving right over the uk, particularly western, central and southern parts of England keeping it unsettled but probably remaining less cold than this week.

A few pics from the roads in Highland Perthshire this morning. Here the showers have died away now and looking like another relatively cool night to come. Looking warmer from Sunday though only back to where we should be at this time of year.

Snow covered mountains emerging from the heavy snow this morning to the north across the Firth. Cawdor hills hidden under cloud and snow this morning. Cows getting a nibble again today but field in foreground having been grazed showing the purple tipping caused by the cold. I know Sundays weather is looking better.

Insane hail storm here with thunder & lightening everything white!

Seventy second air frost at -2.4C. Covering of snow very early doors, but all gone by 8.30am, was fun going to vote as even the village lower down than me had white cars, grass and roofs.

Reminiscing this morning when looking at the depth of snow on the Cawdor hills Remember back in 1975 while at agri college in Aberdeen visiting a hill sheep farm at the end of May up at Tomintoul. Thay had had a big blizzard a few days before and while most of the fields were visible the dykes were buried in drifts so about 4 feet depth. Most of the lambs were a month old and a few had to be dug out of the drifts but losses were not too bad. BLACKFACE SHEEP ARE HARDY WARRIORS. This was followed on the 1st of June by snow showers coming in off the North Sea as we sat exams on the sixth floor of the Agri Building 10 days later I was home making hay at 28c with cloudless skies. It never rained for the rest of the summer and we made tons of hay. Oh for a repeat.

Indeed, NL: bugger all's growing down here, either! And that's without all the damage that'll inevitably be caused by 'the other thing'!

Captured in Canada by Neil Zeller, who's up for going to Canada now?

Soft hail and sleet at 2.5C here from that band so expect snow many places away from the coast, especially with elevation to see snow. You certainly look after your cows. On their beds before tea, well almost spoiling them. 00:50 - now very heavy wet snow.

Good news for gardeners: Frost-free from this weekend - Plus some more rain WWW.NETWEATHER.TV Some good news for gardeners and farmers alike, it looks like most will see the back of the frosts that have been a feature of many nights since late March from this weekend. While it stays unsettled with further rain or... Rejoice gardeners and growers. we are back in the game. No more damaging frosts, (hopefully) and warming up tad with much needed rain in between sunnier breaks...... ps Nice garden NF...is it yours?

A 500mb anomaly chart view this morning Thursday 6 May Ec=trough over uk towards s france with very slight ridge showingarounc 50n (hardly worth a mention), from the overall atlantic flow from beneath main trough s Greenland into s’ern Europe, very little flow for uk. Noaa=looks pretty similar to the ec chart, even to the suggestion of slight ridging well w of uk; some slight +ve heights azores region 120DM; little signal for this extending towards uk area; 10-14 chart is very similar to the 6-10 and shows more troughing than the one 2 days ago. Result=no signal yet to suggest we may be getting a change; current weather pattern looks set to continue with isolated days warmer and more settled. ECMWF/GFS DAY 8-10 MEAN 500MB HEIGHT COMPARISON WWW.METEO.PSU.EDU Climate Prediction Center - 6-10 Day 500mb Outlook WWW.CPC.NCEP.NOAA.GOV

Today's 00Z temperature ensembles: T850s to stay above 0C from Saturday; 2m temperatures clearly looking too low, a suspicion backed-up by just about every other forecast I can find . . . 15-16C?:

May snow last time I remember was 97 just before Labour won their first election in over a decade

Didn't have any snow here, tiny bit of sleety rain is all. Slight frost on cars this morning. The weather is very tame here.

There was a bit of scud And a later shower looked to be having a shot at developing a gust front Hail just before that VID_20210506_192557.mp4

What? Even in winter?! How dare you!

No, this is summer. The Atlantic is giving up, we're drifting back towards Europe. Bye bye!

Not trying at all mate. I love your positivity. This is a chart we havent seen for a while... winds from the south/ swest !

Got 2cm of snow here.

May 6th and we’ve got a covering of snow on the ground Certainly not the latest date it has happened but the latest for a long while.

A couple of screen shots from web cams this morning. I can see snow on the hills, but the light is bright and the snow does not really show up on my own photo. Yes it is May, winter is extended, doubt summer will be, I can't see myself sunbathing in November.

One of the thunderclaps from earlier, Lightning is 6 seconds in and thunder is 14 seconds in! thunder.mp4

A cold start to May here too but the main talking point locally is rainfall. After just 2.6mm of rain in April there has been 38.8mm so far in the first few days of May (Leuchars figures). Quite a turnaround. Cold last night, min was 1.7c here on the East Neuk coast.

I wonder if we will see a last minute warning go out!? Especially fairly modest high ground (100/150 meters and above) during rush hour further North. Very cold overnight also. I would much prefer warmth at this time of year but it’s hard to deny…this weather is very interesting (below average temperatures and settling snowfall to modest levels which sticks for more than a day!) and some of the cloudscapes/showers are very impressive.

Thats odd, i dont get that impression from the NOAA charts at all. To me they suggest that troughing will dominate the period 6-14 days, but we lose most of the arctic sourced air previous runs correctly identified for us over a week ago. My interpretation is that we are to expect pretty average conditions, showers or longer spells of rain mixed with sunnier brighter spells but crucially we lose the overnight frost risk and daytime maxs should be closer to the seasonal norm... maybe above at times/in places. Itll also not be as windy. Oh well, we will see..

I looked at the EC seasonal about 15 minutes back. Striking HP anomaly just to our west...which would suggest mundane summer fayre...pretty bland with the chance of some cooler incursions if troughing becomes stronger to our E and the HP ridges N at times (I suspect Icelandic/Greenland ridging may feature at times)

Today's convective snaps Didn't really have any showers directly impact here however a light flurry it was either snow or graupel but a first for me in May and at 11C! The timing of the first precip tomorrow morning here I expect around 10am either snow or hail then as that clears and instability builds thunder and hail widely again

I was in Glenurquhart, back in 1992, and we had sleet/wet snow, graupel in early June; but, two days' later it was 28C. And June 1975 speaks for itself: I was in MK back then . . . it was -1C on the Tuesday morning and +30 by the Friday afternoon!

Finally reached a max of 7c today in one of the longer spells of sunshine mid-afternoon. The day though dominated by impressive showers of snow/hail/sleet/rain. These contrasting with the intense sunshine making for some lovely cloudscapes. Bitterly cold in the strong northerly wind, this falling light here in the last hour or so. Temperature down to 3c so a frost I suspect. Honestly say its the first time I have seen snow falling here in May (lived here over a decade now). Met office teasing us with a comment of thunder tomorrow "across the south" of Grampian. Being on the boundary of the North and South, going to be another interesting weather day. Edit - nature continues irrespective, finally got a Hedgehog visit last night much to the kids delight.