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At the moment, part of southern Finland has received more than 30 cm of new snow and more is coming all the time, it was already 0 cm. Last night/evening it rained a lot of supercooled water. I can't remember the last time I saw this late in the year.

Addicks Fan 1981 I wouldn't be at all surprised if Tams got sick of having her missives unfairly dissected, if not ridiculed; not by you, of course, but by those who should know better.

MisfitDog3 Cooler spring weather is fine and pleasant if its also accompanied by plenty of sunshine and plenty of dry, crisp weather. April 2021 was a great example of this. This Spring is certainly not that! I don't think I've seen any frosts in my area this entire Spring, and as for sunshine, we're on another below-average month (no surprises there), with above average rainfall also (again, no surprises). It's just more of the same dull, drizzly fare we've had for months now, but with a bit more daylight hour. Reality is though, approaching the half-way point of the year and getting days with with colder max / high temps than nearly the entirety of Winter just gone, is genuinely laughable.

0z deterministic runs, out to Tue 30 Apr (day 7) 0z ensemble means, out to Wed 8 May (day 15) It is as yet far from clear that the ridging activity that is evident from the Azores high in the first week of May is going to reach the shores of Britain... it currently seems that more ensemble members are going for it pushing up unhelpfully to our west instead... We have now entered the four month period of the year with the best solar input... my frustration levels rapidly increase if we don't see favourable synoptic patterns during this precious time!

A bit cloudier than forecast but at least it's remaining dry this side of the Pennines for the next few days, although it's now back to feeling bitterly cold under the overcast skies in the NEly wind. Hoping that some-time over the next few weeks the first of the Spanish Plume's brings some warmer temps and thunderstorm potential.

The first chink of daylight starting to appear when I got up at 4.45 this morning so even though the weather might still think it’s winter, summer is definitely on its way. just hope it doesn’t forget to bring its mates sunny, dry and warm with it.

Meanwhile over in the NE it feels like Winter again thanks to a strong northerly wind pegging temperatures to 7.5c whilst accompanied by a few light rain showers and the briefest of sunny intervals. Back lawn still barely growing and thus has still to get the first cut of the year, and its May a week tomorrow!

What a crackerjack of a day it is. A few puffy clouds nothing major. Pretty warm too. Lovely jubbly!

The amount of times over the past few months there’s been “signs of a change in a couple of weeks”! If only I were a betting man…….

Yes, pleasant blue sky dry start, 6.8°C 8am. I'm still putting my heating on first thing to take out the early morning chill, is everybody else getting by with any heating on yet?

Not very often we see a low pressure system romp so triumphantly west from Scandinavia through the UK and Ireland to the Atlantic, as here on the 12z UKMO but there are some very intricate handovers of pockets of low heights that drive the whole process and give it some considerable elegance. The first pocket drops south to join the Scandinavian low at day 2, deepening it. The second drops out of the trough at the tip of Greenland at day 3, joining the melee at day 4 and drawing the system west over the UK and Ireland for the weekend. Thanks A third pocket drops southeast via the same route at day 6, pulling the system west out over the Atlantic. Looks like an “atmospheric” weekend awaits to round off this very mixed April, ripe for savoury evening treats washed down with a sumptuous glass or three of your favourite ale or wine. The late spring fitness effort can wait until some suitable conditions are laid on. And from there, let’s grab all the potential silver linings. Though not seemingly immediately on offer, there are at least some emerging signs that this remarkable retrogression, as a part of wider adjustments occurring within the generally very static hemispheric pattern, might eventually lead to sufficiently consistent heights building over the near continent to bring us a better chance of some warmer interludes as May progresses.

Decent enough April day from the off though quite cool in the breeze

Addicks Fan 1981 to be fair, teleconnections analysts were given a lot of hell back in winter. I wouldn't be surprised if they're not interested in coming back.

Patchy cloud here too. Feels ok when sun is out but a cool Northerly breeze in the shade. 11C but feels colder.

No it isn't. It didn't even happen in 2013, let alone mixed bags like 2016. Yellow/brown grass means it's been hot and dry for a prolonged period. 2018 was the first time it happened since 2006. You'd probably have to go down to southern France for it to be a normal or expected occurence. Yellowed grass is the hallmark of a very hot and dry summer here, only climate deniers in my experience seem to think it should be a normal occurence. It honestly seems like you think a normal summer in the SE should be like southern France. I think you may be operating at about 50 years ahead of schedule.

Pretty much at my wit's end tbh. It's like living inside a tupperware box dripping with condensation. We haven't had a 'Spring' this year, and it looks like it'll be well into May before we see anything remotely settled, sunny and warm. So that's 2 years on the trot, because 2023 was also effectively Springless until very far into May (the end of May for me in the SE). If its somehow possible, 2024 is actually panning out even worse than 2023, which is actually quite impressive considering the bar for last Spring and last year in general is so low, its buried 10 feet into the dirt. 2023-24 has been a real eye-opener for me about the realities of living in this climate in its current iteration - having to wait until nearly halfway into the year to obtain a few scraps of consistent sunshine, dryness and warmth, is just no way to live life, unless your sense of fulfilment solely comprises reaching a book whilst listening to the rain smack the window, watching TV with the lights on at 2pm in late April (because its so dark outside), and playing in puddles. Seeing as winter is more-or-less non-existent now, we spend 8-9 months of a year wallowing in the same dull, wet, depressing 8/9c-13/14c conditions, waiting for the May to Sept period to land and potentially deliver something more uplifting. I say 'potential', because during that 3-4 month period, dry, sunny and warm weather only occurs a few weeks in total (if that). Indeed, a big chunk of that May-Sept period can very easily be dross too, but at least the grey lasts longer and the rain is warmer, eh. It's honestly no wonder that people of the British Isles became such avid seafarers, and that their seafaring was generally focused towards places with sunny, tropical, colourful climates. A desire to seek colours other than grey undoubtedly seeped into the national psyche. A pessimistic post, admittedly, but I'm utterly defeated seeing as my health issues are going to be worse a second-year running due to the weather conditions, regardless of how many Vitamin D tablets I pop.

B87 You're right about grass browning/yellowing off in summer. It's not "nonsense". Especially for SE and Southern England. It's happened nearly every year I can remember since my young childhood. Playing in the local parks with my friends during school summer holidays...the grass would always be a bit "straw like" come late July / early August. It bounces back near immediately after summer. Perfectly normal and signs of an actual summer season. Last summer was the only year in my life where grass in my garden and local area has basically zero yellowing. Which, obviously, is indicative of the type of high summer we had (or lack thereof).

In Absence of True Seasons Indeed. April 2010 and 2017 also had a lot of cool but dry and often bright conditions that were better than the cool/dull/wet alternative. Looking through recent runs, it doesn't seem to matter which direction the weather is coming from, 'trough' is the word for this country. Very stubborn cyclonic conditions in these parts with varying degrees of cool or warmer. Not unheard of at this time of year but very disappointing and definitely not helping the yearning for something more seasonal. I'm taking a trip to southern Spain in the first full week of May so expect models to pick up on high pressure moving into the UK during that time...

Perfect summer - 3 months of around 23-27°C every day, above average sunshine throughout, frequent thunderstorms and the occasional heavy frontal rainfall event. Of course, it won’t happen

I just hope we don't have an absence of a happy middle ground between this dross and the inevitable "Unpleasant 35C+ from nowhere heatwave" that we will inevitably get in the summer.

Bats32 This Spring reminds me of what Spring was in the 70's and 80's. There was an expectation that cooler weather and frost risks could continue right into May. Personally, I love it but there are obviously other views out there. The pattern looks to be somewhat stuck. It makes it interesting in terms of seeing where it goes from here and the models appear to be struggling with that.

Horror show pattern into early May on tonight’s GFS 18z…. takes one back to 2007-2012. The N Atlantic/Greenland blocking is difficult to shake off in spring with polar vortex out the picture.

Weather Enthusiast91 If the grass isn't totally brown and dead in the summer, then we will have had too much rain.

Cambrian is that techspeak for ‘more rain dear, get that logburner lit’?

Bats32 yep lovely, it's felt warm in the sun Don't look at the GFS for Saturday though... 3-5c with cold rain and sleet

One of those occasions which is most likely to occur in the second half of Spring than any other time of year, when much of Cumbria sees the best English conditions, Wales, N Ireland and West Scotland often the same. Thanks to the influence of high pressure to the west, we received virtually nil traces of rain from the warm front, it was all to our east, and today we have sat in a dry spot, albeit cloudy, but also quite bright, high level cloud, no wind and pleasant temps close to 14 degrees. Always say mid April to late June best time to visit Lake District!

The only year I can recall in the last 10 or so year where grass stayed green was in 2021 here, even last year it browed off in may/ June.

a bit of sun here too but very cold northerly wind too, Spring barley slow to emerge. No real grass growth but will probably put cattle out this coming week end and feed them outside. Currently 8c after 3c early morning Really depressing weather.

Rain All Night I think @Tamaraneeds to shed some light here for what is going on at this stage, we need to know coherently on the goings on and that.

Sick to the back teeth of this endless carp weather. Unbelievable how poor it’s been fir so long. Agghhhh

Pauski Colleagues in Finland have sent pics of snow covered gardens, looks great

B87 We ended up on 1682 hours and similarly, June was responsible for the biggest uplift as it was 62 hours above normal. Strangely, January was the second largest positive anomaly with 103 hours against the average of 61 hours. SunSeanI'd just do the corrections backwards, so the older figures are corrected to match the current automatic recorders!

AWD Always 10 days away! Be lucky if we even get a decent September at this rate.

SunSean If I remember correctly its in the 6-11% range, with an average of around 10% - which was the initial correction applied, but it is a bit more specific now. Basically, the newer Kipp and Zonen automatic sensors have a standard WMO threshold of 120 Wm-2, but the older Campbell stokes manual recorders burned the measuring paper at anywhere from 106-285 Wm-2 (A. Kerr and R. Tabony: 'Comparison of sunshine recorded by Campbell-Stokes and automatic sensors' (Weather, April 2004, vol. 59,90-95).

And still it is raining! and the wind up again. The spinning on a coin is what is driving me mad, there’s no possibility of consistency in temperature. No one expects consistency in weather. Rain, sun, wind from one day to another in this country is a given, but is it too much to expect at this time of year some levelling out of temperature? Yes, May next week! Am resorting to reading the model threads to see when the jet stream might feel like shifting….am I losing my sanity?

B87 What a load of nonsense

CryoraptorA303 Yellow grass then. That is a standard thing that happens in any normal summer. April 2023 was sunnier than April 2024 here.

Judah Cohen seems to think this pattern will continue into May. SSWs late on in winter ruin Spring .... https://twitter.com/judah47/status/1782473673397461151?t=9IgWvA73rtFq1HhZtX4HGA&s=19

B87 That seems a bit extreme to me... I don't think we should want to go right to the opposite extreme, just a change to something a bit more normal. The damage this would cause to nature after already enduring one ridiculous extreme would be huge. stainesbloke Zurich has had snow on multiple days now, some of it even settled for a while. Why couldn't this have happened in February? Bloody El Niño. As for continued unsettledness, this is still quite the change from the constant Atlantic lows we were getting, so progress is progress. Breaking the habit is the first step towards something better. I get people's pessimism at the moment, I really do, everything is going to and we still aren't seeing any truly warm weather in the near future, but the situation is now a lot better than what it was in March, at least down here. This April has also imo far surpassed last year, I'm seeing the Sun more or less every day now, the trees have bloomed and we've had a handful of warm days. Last April was completely dull, grey and rainy aside from all of a few days at the end of the month. Things are on the up.

Evening all. Great deal of uncertainty at the moment about the way forward, but thought it might be worth throwing the 12z ECM meteogram in. After a continuation of the current pattern for the next few days we get the wind into more of a southerly quadrant by day 5 or so, which looks to lift temperatures above average. Unfortunately this is accompanied by a fair bit of rain, and in particular next weekend looks like another horror show to add to the list so far this year - very wet and temperatures near average held back by the rain. Beyond that into early May possibly somewhat less wet and warmer, but plenty of options on the table. There are a few warm outliers getting the temperature quite widely into the low 20s, but equally plenty of near to slightly below average scenarios. The key difficulty in the current scenario seems to be getting that combination of warm and dry. Most of the warmer options tend to be somewhat south-westerly and therefore it's unlikely we'll avoid rain for very long. And the options that do have more high pressure influence seem to position the high out to our west as we've seen recently, which is unlikely to produce anything notably warm.

Looked at the radar this morn and it looked like it would clear by lunch but NO, its kept on drizzling/raining all afternoon and through this evening, log burner lit again and its a week away from May, really starting to 'grind my gears' now....

Dull, cold, grey and miserable. Me and the weather both.

What a miserable day on the NY moors. Despite the forecast of rain heading away south late morning, it continued to rain for most of the day and non-too warm either. Still raining on and off until recently. Can we hope for a drier day tomorrow? I certainly hope so. Edit - one thing that has not been a problem today is the wind, but it seems to be blowing up a bit now, which will not be a bad thing if it blows the main area of rain away..

NUT Lovely evening, very mild and late spring like.

I'm very capable of reading graphs thank you and my comment still stands. The solid black line is only a 10 year running mean and is too short. The dashed line is a more appropriate long term average that is still increasing on almost all the graphs you posted.

One word... YUCK!

Another poor days weather, rain never really that heavy but the wet periods were certainly longer than the dry bits in between and a raw feel to things just to rub it in even more. the decent couple of days over the weekend are a distant memory now and I’m glad I managed to get the grass cut as I doubt it will be dry enough over the next 5 days. We may have just been spoilt over the last few years with decent springs and even last year which was a bit iffy had its dry, sunny and warm periods but this one really takes crappyness to a whole new level. nowt we can do about it though and selfishly, at least it is a countrywide crappyness rather than us looking on enviously while the decent weather is hogging other parts.

It's a lot better outside today than was originally forecast with a high of 13'c, and thankfully the cold winds from the north have somewhat abated.

Got a pleasant shock when by chance I spotted this tawny owl just a few feet away from me this morning. I nearly walked passed it

Been a better day so far for sunshine than yesterday, max 13.3°C, doesn't look like the Lake District did so well. Stunning walk, the canal was really busy with walkers, everybody enjoying a dry Sunday. Proper spaceship Lenticulars too.