Arctic Hare

From a purely weather/nature point of view it was superb. Sitting out in the garden, clear blue skies all day. The next day, sitting out in the garden, clear blue skies all day. The next day... I'm not sure I can ever remember a sequence like it. With the vast reduction in flights, not even contrails to break up the blue. Ravens and even a red kite coming close to my house, pretty much unheard of in normal times. Deer openly grazing at midday in the nearby fields. The daily exercise walk, never needing to carry an umbrella or wear a coat. Obviously not a period I ever want to repeat in terms of the restrictions. But in weather terms, bring it on this spring! Given we currently seem to be trying to out-dull the Faroes and Lima, the change would seem even more startling than it did in 2020!

A mild morning here in N Worcs, but also dreary and grey. It's raining on and off, and the radar shows *far* more showery rain heading our way in the next few hours than any of the forecasts I saw predicted. Most of them had a completely dry morning. I've said this so often I'm a stuck record, but there is ever more clearly a systemic problem with under-forecasting rain at very short notice. It happens again and again and again, and I don't think it's just a case of not noticing when the error is the other way. I think it's that the error rarely *is* the other way.

In a shock that nobody could possibly have foreseen, the consistently "dry morning" forecast for here has turned out to be wrong. It's raining.

A little confusing having this thread for 40 °C being revived *and* a separate but heavily overlapping thread about the prospects of 43 °C!

Hmm, I'm caught in two minds here. On the one hand we keep getting warm records or near-records and the current sea temperatures are pretty much off the charts. On the other hand it just keeps raining and we'd need an actual dry spell to get up to 2022 values. So I'll split the difference a bit, but still keep things on the high end: 37.7 °C on 1st August. Not *quite* hitting 100 °F but still very hot. I would *prefer* we don't reach that tbh! I know we don't have to guess the place, but for the sake of it, St James's Park in London.

No hate here. While it's not my favourite kind of spring weather, offer me a cold *but dry* period along the lines of April 2021 and I'd take it quite happily.

Surprisingly perhaps, *not* a total washout here! It certainly was in the morning, but by lunchtime it was dry and - get this - the sun was out! Didn't last and I got soaked walking back from the shops about 2:30 pm, but it's dry again now. You wouldn't call it a *nice* day, but not totally disastrous. Also, though it's not of much import with so little sun, 14 °C today, so feeling much milder than yesterday.

sundog I strongly suspect at least some of those responses are bots, and these days probably with some kind of AI element added. Look what happens every time the Met Office tweets about a record high temperature, such as the Scottish 19.9 °C in January - there's nearly always a proportion of the results where the poster *at best* doesn't understand the science and quite often clearly hasn't read the tweet at all. A lot of what's said is stuff that's trivially disprovable (eg "You never post about cold records I wonder why!!!!!!!!") but of course many people on social media are incredibly gullible and just see what they want to see. Don't get me wrong, I *do* think a lot of people are still too complacent and fondly imagine other people can do all the work of mitigation and anything that involves them changing their lifestyles even a tiny bit is unacceptable. I wonder whether all the flooding this winter is just starting to change that, though, since it's a very visible thing and an impact that hits a substantial number of people and (if you're directly affected) can be very expensive. The tipping point (to coin a phrase!) is that people are starting to realise that doing nothing and expecting India or the US or whoever to do all the work *won't* mean people in the UK not having to pay anything. There's obviously a lot of politics around all this, so I'll be careful what I say - though tbh in a democracy, any kind of proposed change that requires public opinion to be onside is *inherently* political...

Snowshine Even"daylight" is pushing it when there's low cloud all day every day (or so it seems) and I'm still needing to put the light on at 4pm... I do fear for some of our outdoor attractions if it's like this all through the Easter school holidays.

NEVES SCREAMER Let's be honest, though, even if it is 16 °C it won't feel like it because the chance of rain getting in the way and preventing any fully nice days at all is about 99.99999%...

Honestly, the MetO short outlook (Tue-Thu) forecast for the W Mids reads like it was thrown together at random: "Dry but mostly cloudy on Tuesday with light winds. thicker cloud and rain arriving on Wednesday and Thursday, with strengthening winds and a chance of some rain at times." Yes, I would have thought that thicker cloud and rain arriving *would* mean a chance of some rain at times... (Also, a further kick in the teeth as 12 hours ago this part of the forecast had Wed/Thu mostly dry with some brightness...)

Grey and grotty here as well. Went out for lunch today, but definitely didn't feel like going for a nice walk by the river afterwards!

What I'd call a "usable" day today, I guess. No exciting weather, and once again precious little sunshine, but it didn't feel nearly as cold. 8.8 °C max so certainly nothing special there, but as long as you were sensibly dressed for the conditions it was fine. Sunday looks a bit on the grim side, but otherwise an acceptable if dull (in both senses) week of weather ahead. Was nice in Worcester today to see the racecourse and cricket ground showing grass rather than flood water!

raz.org.rain That's the concern. Yes, of course I know pattern matching is not a reliable method of prediction. But it would be yet another kick in the teeth to have a "summer" like 2012! I would frankly happily put up with a cold March to avoid that.

Really cold today. I was in Ludlow and it felt like mid-winter. No sunshine at all, unless you count the very occasional glimpse of a pale disc behind the clouds! MetO regional text forecast (and the hourly icons for Ludlow, for the little those are worth) suggested it would feel pleasant in the afternoon. Er... no. Not even close. At least it didn't rain!

Certain people elsewhere getting excited over the possibility of an easterly. They're welcome to it and I won't criticise anyone for their weather preferences. But although E'lies are usually fairly *dry* this far west, and tbf that's the important thing, I really am not going to get excited about them in March! Ready for spring now, not winter-after-winter, thanks!

Another decent day today. I could get used to this! Though annoyingly, if unsurprisingly, tomorrow's forecast now seems to have considerably more in the way of scattered (possibly heavy) showers than the forecast for the same day had 24 hours ago...

A very springlike day here in N Worcs. Lots of sunshine (yes, really!), light winds, no rain, birds singing... oh, I've missed these benign conditions so much. Exciting it isn't, but right now it's balm for the soul.

Gonna be an unpopular choice, but I'd vote for thunderstorms. Yes they're exciting and can be truly spectacular, but of those three choices they're also by far the most likely to end up causing expensive damage! Though it depends what "scorching sun" really means. If it's days on end of 28 °C, then bring it on. If we're talking July 2022-style 40 °C then maybe less so. Snow is now so rare in these parts that I find it a more exciting weather type than storms anyway.

Fen Wolf Like I said, at least as things stand I *couldn't* just up sticks and emigrate, regardless of what my wishes may be. I really don't *want* to leave the UK for good anyway - I have too many people and things here that I wouldn't want to be that far away from. Weather isn't everything to me, and I'd rather endure the rain with/near to those people/things than sit in the sun hundreds or thousands of miles away from them. As for finding peace, there's plenty here in the UK that I enjoy, and I think having varied interests is always helpful in that regard.

Now this? This is weather I can get behind! Starting out chilly with fog, then as I walked through town to the sound of the church bells, the sun was starting to break through. By the time I reached Kidderminster an hour later, it was blazing early March sunshine. An enormous contrast from yesterday and I don't think I'm imagining it when I say you could see it on people's faces. If we could just have a week of this, rather than merely the odd day here and there between rainy periods, I think it would help enormously.

The title of this thread? Yeah. As someone who for various reasons (which I won't go into here, but nothing I've done wrong!) simply cannot consider the "leave the country and live somewhere else" option all the people suggesting that are pointless to people like me. We need to find ways to deal with this wetness *in the UK*, or much better to have our hopes for an *extended* dry period (not totally rainless, but clearly below average for maybe six months on the trot) come to pass. Unfortunately the trend over recent years here has been clear to anyone who looks at the river: rainfall events capable of causing significant flooding are getting more and more common. This winter we've had five, the most I can ever remember. The dullness has just made it worse as even when it stops raining nothing dries out. (The saturated ground is a big part of that of course, but so is the lack of sun, especially as days get longer and the sun gets stronger.) I am lucky enough not to have serious mental conditions made worse by the weather, but in much less severe way the gloomy damp weather going on and on and on, plus the stress of flooding and its knock-on effects to my town and its people, is certainly making me feel more unhappy and down than I normally would over winter. So if there *is* going to be a flip, let's have it. And let's have a big one!

Have a horrendously poor quality photo from the bus at Kinlet, just north of Bewdley on the way to Bridgnorth. (Turns out I'm not going to Ludlow after all, so no Clee Hill trip.) At least I can now say I've seen lying snow in daylight, even if it did have to wait for meteorological spring!

Yeah, that's true, *but* it doesn't feel that way when it's gloomy and raining all day. By April the sun is so strong that 15 °C and sunny feels outright warm (out of the wind, at least) whereas 15 °C and raining feels a lot colder. Plus though this doesn't apply to your comment, many people still cite daily CET numbers which effectively equate the importance of daytime maxes and night-time mins, something that just isn't the case for most people's everyday lives. It makes a certain amount of difference, but a *lot* of families come to Bewdley from places like Dudley. In the Easter holidays if it's sunny and reasonably warm the town car parks can be chocka by mid-morning, especially on a day like Easter Monday. It definitely isn't quiet when the weather's good, regardless of angling close season or not!

Even though my preferences don't really match yours, I sympathise a lot with that. My own favourite season is spring for its contrasts: traditionally April could see 20+ °C warmth, lying snow, thunderstorms, gales, hail, you name it. Often several of those in the space of one day! Now it seems to be in a rut most of the time, increasingly (or so it feels) a gloomy and wet rut which is disastrous for my own town and its heavily tourism-based economy. Flooding is by far the biggest cause of weather-related stress here, way ahead of cold, heat, wind or even snow. I really like spring, but maybe I should say "what spring used to be" as days on end of rain just make me endure the season rather than enjoy it. So as I say, I sympathise with your own disappointment about winter.