al78

Not for me, that ridiculous spell was too hot and dry, again just put the nail in the coffin for my allotment. Weather like that should have been in July, not September.

If those are the only two options then B.

Yep, was hoping for some sunny weather today which is what we are often told is an advantage of cold air masses but no, it was another lights on all day gloom-fest five degrees colder than it has been. Perhaps it was punishment for the nice weather yesterday.

Living in lowland southern England cold rain/sleet is the default in so called winter cold spells. It takes an event with a double figure yearly return period to bring significant snow here, where significant means anything that goes crunch under your feet, not the two inches that lasts a few hours before thawing but is just enough to disrupt our knackered rail network.

That was expected given Ciaran was never forecast to bring significant impacts north of the M4, and models trended towards a more southerly track of the storm as the lead time decreased bringing the damaging winds over the Channel islands and northern France.

A beautiful day in W Sussex today before the anti weekday job regime of clag and hours of rain arrives tomorrow. I don't get how a handful of people are claiming autumn hasn't been that wet when every month of the season has seen above average rainfall at a national level, and even on a regional scale, the only areas that have seen below average rainfall are parts of Scotland, characteristic of a southerly displaced jet stream aiming low pressure systems like a cannon at England and Wales.

Similar in SE England, I was expecting to get rained on during the commute but escaped it apart from a brief spell of rain when on the train. Evidently the rain shield didn't progress as far north as predicted which I am grateful for.

August was around average for rainfall according to the HadUKP charts with some small regional variation. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/charts/hadukp_daily_plots.html Since August we have been largely locked into a pattern of wet southern half of UK, dry Scotland (the first week of September excepted), characteristic of northern blocking and a southerly displaced jet stream steering low pressure systems across central and southern England. Babet was a bit unusual in that the storm looped back to the north and stalled dumping a lot of rain over NE Scotland.

And late May through much of June.

Going by the Met Office extended outlook it doesn't look likely in the near future, they have even mentioned that this (late Nov-early Dec) is often one of the wettest times of the year, and there is nothing to suggest that this won't continue to be the case. Quite breezy outside but the heavy overcast first thing this morning has largely broken up with sunny intervals now.

A weekend of big contrasts with Saturday sunny and frosty then Sunday back to dull and damp with occasional rain. Another spell of rain coming through thankfully overnight and it looks to be mostly a nice day tomorrow here in Sussex.

Both are brought in by low pressure weather systems which we've had an abundance of over the last two months.

No-one expects wall-to-wall sunshine and warm temperatures at this time of year; however, it would be nice to have a break from the incessant unsettled weather that has plagued the UK for nearly two months straight. The UK's weather this year seems to have been a succession of sick jokes as far as I'm concerned. November has started off wetter than average which if it continues would make it three consecutive wetter than average months. It is rare that every month in a season has an anomaly in the same direction. Most of the country is saturated and is primed for a major flood event should another Babet-like low come in. We really could do with a big anticyclone over the UK for a week or more to give things a chance to dry out a bit and get the currently elevated river levels back to near normal.

It's not all about you and your very specific location. Other people have been impacted by severe weather this month, and forecast 80-90 mph gusts along exposed coastlines is certainly something worth warning about, as is the possibility of 60-70 mph gusts inland when the trees are still in leaf. To add to that there is high uncertainty in the potential impact from Ciaran because the swathe of very strong winds is aligned parallel with the English and French coastlines and is forecast to thread a needle along the Channel. Only a small northward shift in the track would bring very strong winds inland over populated areas in southern England. To add to the issues of wind, there is yet more significant rain expected with Ciaran, 30-40mm widely across the south with up to 60 mm possible locally. With the soil saturated after weeks of wet weather it won't take much to generate yet more flooding in places.

I have been up early this morning with the EuroTempest team issuing a European alert for this storm.

I'm not sure it is just long dry periods, I reckon it is a trend for more frequent blocked weather patterns where the UK finds itself stuck under a ridge (July 2022, February 2023) or a trough (March, July, October 2023). I don't know if there exists a quantitative index for measuring the persistence of the weather but if there is, I would be interested in looking at the trend over the last 30 or so years.

Oh joy after periodic rain today it looks to be wet for almost all the daylight hours tomorrow. Got a bit more stuff to shift onto my new allotment so will have to dress like I am going on a wet hike in the Scottish highlands, which I haven't had to do yet despite the semi-permanent UK low over the last six or seven weeks.

I work in Farringdon twice a week and on those days when I am coming home, I'd say at least 80% of the passengers on the train get off at my town (Horsham) which amounts to at least a couple of hundred people (it seems that on the London to Portsmouth/Southampton rail route Horsham is the primary commuter town). Oddly enough the station is not busy at all when I am there at 7:40 am so when are all these people travelling in the morning? In addition Horsham town seems to be rammed all day Friday and most of the weekend so I'm not sure what the popular working hours are locally, or whether much of the town has a classic day job.

Nature responds to forcings, cause and effect, it doesn't "catch up" nor does it try to compensate for anything. When it deviates significantly from normal is when problems occur.

I am moving plots on my allotment site this weekend and have to move stuff out of my shed and move the water butts, so could have done without a wet weekend. As it happens the forecast rain here is looking much less than it was earlier in the week, so with any luck won't have to dress as though I am climbing a mountain in the Scottish highlands just to do a simple outdoor job without getting soaked.

I had the heating on for half an hour on a couple of the cooler days earlier this month, but otherwise it has been much too mild to have it on. It won't be going on until well into November given the continuation of the relentless unsettled weather predicted out to the middle of the month at least with little properly cool conditions beyond a very occasional fleeting northerly ahead of an equally fleeting ridge. Yes that is one good thing about this time of year, apart from the run-up to Christmas, it will be months before we get any sleep depriving temperatures again.

I have just watched a YouTube clip which had Brian Norcross (an expert at NHC) and one suggestion he had regarding the extreme rapid intensification is a trough in the jet stream that was positioned in a perfect place to vent the top of the hurricane, but far enough away so that it didn't impose strong vertical wind shear over the core. The models completely failed to pick up this perfect coupling of the upper level winds and the storm. Its compact size and warm SSTs also assisted in the intensification.

I think it should be more resiliant to those temperatures than it currently is, given that 30+C happens somewhere in the country in all but the very worst summers, so it is part of the climatology. I agree in general that resiliance to weather extremes or even modest departures from climatology in the UK is dreadful, which is partly due to infrastructure being stretched to its limits with no slack in the systems to absorb the effects of anomalies. If a rail line or airport is running at 99% capacity on a normal day, it is no great surprise that an icy/snowy spell is going to cause delays and cancellations purely due to the implementation of safety measures required to operate vehicles in conditions of reduced traction.

Smog from widespread burning of coal may have contributed to that. You have been lucky. It has been raining on and off all day in Horsham apart from a brief sunny spell this afternoon.

The other issue is that bus drivers are not going to want to drive in hazardous weather conditions, and bus companies might be reluctant to send their drivers and vehicles out if there is an elevated risk they could be swept off the road or involved in a weather-related accident. If the advice is don't travel, is it reasonable to demand drivers take buses out on the roads? What is needed is for people to accept that very occasionally adverse weather conditions sometimes happen which cause major problems for the transport network, and if such weather is forecast in advance (which it was), make alternative plans if you can. The UK is not the only country where the weather can cause major disruption.