Blessed Weather

Hit the nail on the head there seaside. Feldberg has the university town of Freiburg, with a population 240,000, just 40 mins away by car. The resort gets very busy on the weekends with local skiers. It'd be wonderful to live near a resort and be able to do that!

A lovely sunny start for most of the Region this morning - clearest in the east but thickening cloud in the west. Unfortunately for local gardeners and allotment holders, given the cold air mass we're under, the result has been an extensive ground frost as overnight temps fell to 2.4C. Satellite this morning: https://www.sat24.com/en-gb/country/gb The occluded front just to our west not making much progress during the day, with areas near the east coast maybe holding on the clear skies all day. GFS cloud cover forecast: 08.00 23.00 https://www.meteociel.fr/modeles/gfs/royaume-uni/nebulosite/3h.htm

You have to admire the small resorts around Europe who have the flexibility to make decisions about opening and closing based on current snow conditions. The small resort of Feldberg, Black Forest, Germany, 1,450m asl, that I've skied several times, was well and truly shut last Sunday 14th April. One week later with arctic air and heavy snow on the northerly wind and bingo, they're open again for skiing this weekend. Webcam stills of the nursery slope: 14th 20th

Spectromat Below is a link to a Met Office blog about the heatwaves of summer of 2022 and the role of the wavenumber 5 pattern. https://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2022/07/19/summer-2022-a-historic-season-for-northern-hemisphere-heatwaves/

Quite some squall line passing thru atm. Horizontal heavy rain and hail in the very gusty wind. 09.55

March 2024 Overall for the Region a warmer and duller month compared with the long-term (1991-2020) average. Nevertheless, within that there was a mix of colder, frosty days to start the month, some pleasantly warm weather around the 20th, and even a few thunderstorms thrown in at various times. There was a real north/south split across the Region with regard rainfall amounts, with parts of Norfolk seeing only 50% of normal rainfall as rainbands fizzled out moving north, whilst parts of Kent and Surrey experienced more than double the normal average. UK extremes during the month were: Coldest: Benson, Oxfordshire, -4.6C on the 3rd. Warmest: Charlwood, Surrey, 18.8C on the 20th. Windiest: Needles, IoW, 81mph on the 1st and 28th. Zooming in on East Anglia stats: 4th warmest March on record (+1.8°C) Slightly wetter than average (111%) Duller than average (82%) This is the 2nd warmest start to the year on record (behind 1990, data back to 1884). Chart and EA stats courtesy of Dan Holley, Weatherquest. X @danholley_

carinthian Hi carinthian, I hope you're well. Yes, the Copernicus Climate Change Service report confirms that Europe has been mild this winter, and guess what? Yep, the Alps suffered the biggest anomaly versus the longer term average: "During the boreal winter of 2023/2024, there was a striking contrast across Europe. Above-average temperatures occurred over most of the continent, with the largest anomalies over the Alps and in southeast Europe." Source: https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-february-2024 I was lucky to go skiing to the French Alps twice over the season and can confirm that pistes below around 1,800m have been frequently impacted by milder spells and periods of rain. Lots of snow to be had higher up, but as you say, the pisting teams have done a great job over the season keeping lower pistes open. Unfortunately the future looks bleak for lower level resorts, which is a great shame as it's the lower resorts that are usually the prettiest, with their beautiful buildings and delightful skiing through the trees.

Wow! And there were skiers on some of those chairs! Cervinia, Italy, on the 30th March. What a nightmare.

Enjoying lovely weather here in Val Cenis, French Alps. Typical Spring conditions with the best skiing in the morning but very slushy on lower slopes by the afternoon. There's a suitable approach to the conditions - get on the slopes early for a long morning's skiing and then sit on the restaurant terrace enjoying a long lunch and beers in the sun. View up to the end of the valley where in the summer you can drive up and over the col into Val D'Isere: Lots of snow at the top: La Fema restaurant terrace, lunchtime today:

Regional stats for February 2024 just posted over in the Records & Stats thread. All in all a remarkable month with records tumbling.

February 2024 It doesn't come as any surprise to see the stats for February 2024 which confirm the month was thoroughly wet, often mild (e.g. see previous post with Santon Downham reaching 18C on the 15th), and with below average sunshine amounts. All in all a notable month with several records for the Region broken. Met Office anomaly charts: For East Anglia it was the wettest and mildest February on record whilst for the SE & Central England it was the mildest and 2nd wettest on record. Furthermore, for East Anglia it was also the wettest October to February period on record and the 2nd warmest winter on record. Whilst most locations across the Region saw over 100mm (4 inches) of rain during the month, there were many locations in the southern counties, namely Hampshire, W & E Sussex and Kent, that recorded over 200mm (8 inches) of rain. Wettest official station was at Plumpton, East Sussex, at 283mm (over 11 inches). Sources: Met Office: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/uk-actual-and-anomaly-maps Dan Holley, Weatherquest, X @danholley_ Dan Harris, Roost Weather, X @RoostWeather

Please folks - I've just had two mugs of morning tea whilst editing and/or removing posts that were clearly breaking forum guidelines and had been reported. This topic has the potential to bring about strong opinions on either side of the climate change argument; if the thread is going to work we need to keep discussions respectful and free of personal digs please. Thanks.

John Stevens Lovely pics John, thanks for sharing. Looks like a gem of a resort.

Dreadful morning. Our Region is somewhere underneath that lot on the radar at 07.05 this morning. The three triangles show where Hastings (South coast), Hadleigh (Suffolk) and Sea Palling (Norfolk coast) are located. Some of this morning's hi-res models have upped the rainfall amounts before this lot clears later today to around 25 mm (an inch). No sign of a decent dry spell to let the saturated ground dry out; lots more rain later this coming week. 07.05 Arpege accum

Mike Poole Cheshire Freeze Thanks both - excellent summaries of events through December and into January. Imho Cheshire Freeze captures the essence of why the winter of 2023/24 will be remembered as one which promised much but failed to deliver: "I believe that had a decent split of the SPV occurred, we’d have locked in to a blocked regime that benefited the UK in terms of cold, aided by the MJO. I honestly believe it would have been a noteworthy spell." Sadly this sort of let-down allows some to question the value of teleconnections. But hey ho, onwards and upwards - the scientific community is steadily moving forward with research and analysis and every year we better understand how multiple teleconnections, all in various stages of waxing and waning, interact with each other. Forgetting what happened down here on the ground, it's been a very interesting season for events up in the stratosphere, with Canadian Warming, minor SSW, major SSW and (in 2 days time) a second major SSW. Atmospheric scientist Dr Amy Butler rightfully excited by the prospect of 2 major SSW events in back-to-back months: "Pretty psyched about the possibility of a double #SSW year! Last one was in 2010 though the situation was a bit different because one was in late March and barely qualified. Other double #SSW years were 98/99, 87/88, 70/71, and 65/66. Fingers crossed it pans out this year!" https://x.com/DrAHButler/status/1755649856985567435?s=20