al78

In Absence of True Seasons I've noticed something similar with Charlwood at times which seems to be a dull spot in SE England, so much so that it can occasionally be seen on the Met Office monthly anomaly maps.

Press release from Met Office about February and winter 2023/4 overall. Says what we all know, very mild and wet, especially wet in the southern half of the UK. Warmest February on record for England and Wales WWW.METOFFICE.GOV.UK England and Wales had their respective warmest Februarys on record according to provisional Met Office statistics in what was a mild and wet month for many. March has started off with a wet day here in Horsham.

Metwatch Worked in 1976 so why not try it?

Cheshire Freeze That is what blackout curtains/blinds are for.

swebby I disagree 2023 was a relatively quiet hurricane season, it was the most active hurricane season since reliable records began for a moderate to strong El Nino season. The extremely warm tropical Atlantic SSTs offset the normally high vertical wind shear associated with El Nino events (by that I mean those SSTs acted to perturb the Walker circulation in the opposite manner to which an El Nino does).

In Absence of True Seasons I predict this spring there will be Azores ridging across the southern half of the UK with low pressure systems barrelling across Scotland for much of the second half of the season. My prediction is based on Murphy's law of hillwalking holidays where my plan to raise money by walking 100 km and climbing 10000 m over the course of nine days in Torridon and Western Ross will be met with frequent/persistent rain and no views from the Munro summits.

Sun Chaser This February has been characterised by mostly modest amounts of daily rain but with a lot of wet days combined with a couple of days with much higher rainfall accumulations so the rainfall has been quite spread out through the month. February 2020 (I think though I could be wrong) was characterised by two named storms on consecutive weekends which in combination dropped a lot of rain across the UK followed by a very wet second half.

SunSean Southerly displaced jet stream. What I find remarkable is this wet south dry north of the UK setup has largely been in place for a full year now.

East Lancs Rain No it is not an overreaction. Heatwaves are deadly and extreme events that can kill a lot of people, and in a warming climate it is logical that they will get worse and/or more frequent. Even in the benign UK they can cause a lot of excess deaths largely because buildings are not designed for being comfortable in heat and the general health of the UK population is awful. Excess mortality during heat-periods - Office for National Statistics WWW.ONS.GOV.UK Joint analytical article between the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) on deaths during heat-periods in 2022. Heatwaves WWW.WHO.INT . Nearly 62,000 people died from record-breaking heat in Europe last summer. It’s a lesson for the US, too | CNN EDITION.CNN.COM Nearly 62,000 people died heat-related deaths last year during Europe’s hottest summer on record, a new study has found — more heartbreaking evidence that heat is a silent killer, and its victims are vastly...

East Lancs Rain The south east's weather is overhyped. Horsham has the same mean annual rainfall as Manchester. The last few years we have been plagued with locked in weather patterns bringing either prolonged heat and drought or weeks of cloud and rain. At least with northern England, Wales and Scotland there are superb ranges of hills/mountains for hiking during periods of settled weather, SE England can't manage any ground much above 300 meters.

East Lancs Rain I live in a semi which cannot have cavity wall insulation due to having a timber frame. It takes a while during a warm/hot summer spell to get uncomfortable indoors but it happens at least once every year these days when it is high 20's/30+C for a week or two at a time. South facing windows don't help and there is only so much I can do to keep the heat out, with a 10C temperature difference between outside and inside it is going to seep in even if I close curtains during the day. Opening windows during the day lets the hot air in, and opening them in the evening helps with a couple of degrees cooling but not if it is dead still outside (e.g. underneath the middle of an anticyclone). If temperatures stay elevated overnight it is virtually impossible to get a good nights sleep; I have a choice between a restless night because I am too hot or a restless night because of thoughtless people outside making a racket either very late or very early. As winter approaches I start by putting a hoodie on over my normal clothes which improves my resiliance to the decreasing temperature, so I don't have to put the heating on until well into November, maybe December if it is very mild.

markyo "We are not for obvious reasons..." One being because we are rubbish. It is expected that severe winter weather will cause disruption and hardship but a couple of inches of snow causing significant problems is poor, that is not unusual at least once or twice during a normal UK winter. Even on trains in recent days I have had to strip down to a T-shirt because the heating has been ridiculous, it is like we struggle to do anything properly in the UK, symptomatic of a half arsed, can't be bothered, that'll do, suck it up and deal with it national attitude. I don't know what Norwegian houses are like in 30C temperatures but I know UK ones aren't good either, nor are UK houses good at holding heat in during the winter. UK housing stock is generally poor overall. Most buildings in the UK are unpleasant environments without air con in 30+C temperatures. People who have high tolerance to heat won't appreciate this but it is one reason why health conditions and demand for NHS treatment rises during heatwaves, because there is no escape from the heat if your body finds it difficult to tolerate.

Markus03 I don't want winter all the time but at the same time I don't want semi-permanent autumn. It has been wet for over a year now save the very occasional dry spell. Every time I look forward to the weekend to continue preparing my allotment by breaking up the soil and getting some nettle roots out it rains, and rains, and rains again, and everywhere is soaking wet. I am not digging heavy clay soil in these conditions, but even when a drier period moves in it is going to take a good month to dry out the ground unless we get a March 2012 setup with warm sunny conditions. I appreciate the nuisance factor with lying snow and don't get why people rave about it when it is nearly always a near nothing event at low levels except during the coldest of cold spells and unless you happen to live in the 5% of the country where the most severe conditions are experienced (i.e. nowhere where I have ever lived). The UK is very bad at dealing with even modest deviations from normal and combined with saturated transport networks with no available slack, it often takes little to cause disruptive delays or have your social events cancelled because people don't want to go out or it's deemed too hazardous. That is not enjoyable at all as far as I'm concerned. At least in Scandinavia they can cope with snow and ice because it is part of their climatology. When I went to Lillehammer in February people were driving around normally and the trains were running, like a damp winter day in the UK.

East Lancs Rain Yes, but from the point of view of allotment cultivation, rain once a week.

SunnyG Freezes will always happen very occasionally, even with climate change the northern continents and Arctic will still be very cold and there will be the potential for cold air masses to be advected across the UK, but the freezes will be less severe compared to decades ago. December 2010 with a negative CET is an example of what happens when optimal synoptics are present. Same thing with poor summers, a blocked weather pattern causing a southerly displaced jet stream (e.g. July 2023) will result in persistent unsettled and coolish conditions. If anything, my perception is blocked weather patterns are becoming more common, unfortunately that means sometimes we get the ideal conditions for winter freeze in July or vice versa.

I remember Atlantic 252 Over the last 10 years, the average May maximum temperature has been above average relative to the 1991-2020 climatology across much or all of the country in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023.

baddie I doubt there is any significant link between May and June conditions. Last year we had some good weather in the second half of May after a changeable first half and June was the hottest on record, with much of the month dry here in Sussex. In 2012 the jet shifted over the UK as April arrived and it was the full April to June period that was soaking wet. 2020 was just trolling weather which had the best weather during the most restrictive COVID lockdowns, once they were eased the rains returned just in time for summer, although SE England (in great contrast to 2021) was drier relative to local climatology than most of the rest of the UK.

For some reason I am now unable to quote properly. The SSW happened but it wasn't a particularly strong one and an SSW does not guarentee cold weather for the UK. All it means is there is a higher probability than normal of a slowdown in the westerlies, which increases the chance of blocking. Where the blocks form dictates the weather in the UK, amongst other things going on.

Whether it is more likely to snow at Easter of Christmas depends on when Easter is. True if Easter is in March, not true if Easter is in April.

SunnyG I'd be interested to know what is more likely, an early September heatwave or an early March freeze. We have had both in the last decade or so.

Asher Frost is good for breaking up compacted heavy clay. Just before the January cold snap I dug over half the plot with a fork, breaking up the compacted soil into big clods. The freezing overnight temperatures that followed have helped shatter those clods so the soil should be much easier to cultivate when the time comes to start sowing/planting.

Markus03 That has been happening throughout my memorable life (since the late 1980's). It is the done thing in winter from my observation for cold spells to have a couple of inches of snow which is gone the next day, or cold but bone dry, or cold with a couple of inches of snow and the cold hangs on, but zero precipitation until the inevitable mild spell arrives. Much of my memory of historical winters is clouded by windstorms which the 1990's delivered plenty of. When it comes to cold winters, the period between 2008 and 2011 stand out, plus the freezing March of 2013, but the coldest periods were exceptional (i.e. 2010, coldest December for over 100 years, March 2013 coldest since the 60's), not the norm, and certainly not something anyone in the UK should expect to see almost every winter, and even in those exceptional cold spells, the snow depths were rarely anything to get excited about (even December 2010 didn't see more than six inches of snow in Horsham and only then for a very short time before it thawed due to a milder interlude). I have made good progress on my new allotment during the cold dry spell in January and have half of it dug over, I'm now hoping for an end to this every other day has to be wet regime so I can break up the compacted soil on the other half and get a clump of nettles dug out.

markyo As far as a Beast from the East is concerned, when I have been looking at temperature anomalies over the neighbouring continent, there seems most of the time a lack of cold air to tap into, so any easterly winds would probably bring claggy drizzly crap (i.e. the usual let down following the hype). What we need is a big anticyclone right over the UK for a couple of weeks. 2023 was the fourth wettest year on record and 2024 has started as 2023 ended, wet, there has been almost a complete absence of decent settled spells since the ridiculous September heatwave, hence why the ground is saturated and the rivers are frequently elevated. We are currently only one stalled low pressure system away from widespread destructive flooding.

Best to stick to the subject of the thread and avoid discussion on climate change, then we don't have to deal with all the denialist tripe.

It has been a good cold spell for me, some sunshine and no hazardous icy conditions so I don't need to dress as though I am about to hike up Ben Nevis anytime I want to go outside for more than five minutes. It has been snowless here in Horsham apart from a very light dusting last week that lasted a few hours but with the amount of disruption on the trains (and not just strike action) over the last three years I will happily do without another excuse for delays/cancellations in addition to fault with the signalling system and staff shortages.