Metwatch

Second half of this April has been quite devoid of anything thundery as high pressure has had a greater influence to our west, the next few days doesn't catch my eye either. However going into May does appear a bit more interesting. Looks like a trough is modelled across various outputs to collapse down into the Bay of Biscay. As a result much warmer air comes in via central Europe, then to Germany and that eventually arriving here via an easterly mid next week, a sort of modified plume I guess. Difficult to say how thundery things would be and where the boundary between cooler and warmer air sets up, but would expect something to pop up from this pattern. Interesting to see how this evolves in the coming days.

As the weather has been "non-existent" recently, i've been searching around for various meteorological articles on past weather events both locally and nationally in my spare time. Below is pretty much everything I have found for the Midlands, plus the odd widespread event such as the Beast from the East. Some events found range from the winter of 1947, winter of 1981-82 in areas of the Midlands, late 2010 snowfall, to various severe thunderstorm events such as 28th June 2012, the July 2005 Birmingham tornado, and more recently the thunderstorms last June. Happy reading! Snow Birmingham on 28 January 2004.pdf SNOWSTORMS, 23–26 APRIL 1981.pdf winter of 1947 in Halesowen West Midlands.pdf Beast from the east 2018 historical precedents and perspective.pdf Beast from the east 2018 cold pool and snowfall.pdf winter of 2009 2010 compared prev winters.pdf late 2010 cold and snow.pdf heavy wet snowfall on 28 December 2020.pdf winter of 1981 1982 in Tenbury Wells.pdf Late June 1995 cold front reaches Birmingham.pdf 2 thunderstorms Birmingham summer 1994.pdf August 1996 flood event Ashow Warwickshire.pdf Four SW Birmingham flood events 1998 2000.pdf july 2005 birmingham tornado.pdf Thunderstorms 11 June 2023.pdf supercells 28 June 2012.pdf Snowfall of 18 December 2010 south Midlands.pdf hailstorm Leicestershire 20 July 2021.pdf

1972 had a terribly cold June with a CET of 11.8C, colder than most Mays these days, couldn't imagine a repeat of it these days! 1977, 1978 and 1979 are all clustered quite similarily, quite cool but not that wet, however for England it appears that summer 1979 is quite a bit drier than 1978 and 1977. 1977 did also have a very cool June. 1978 had quite a cool July. Reanalysis for summers '77 '78 and '79 is interesting to see, all involving high pressure often placed to the west of the UK, so fairly dry but not that warm. Similar to 1913 but high pressure was closer hence that summer being much drier. Can also see why summer 1979 is the driest and warmest for England out of the three.

Addicks Fan 1981 Some stuff on 1993 here

The summer of 1913 is one of the very few summers in modern records that was both quite cool while also being dry, and much drier than 1981, 1979 or 1977. However it was also fairly dull. England had about 465 hours of sunshine, 90 hours below the 1981-2010 mean. It came after a horrific summer of 1912, and before that the classic summer of 1911. The pattern behind this summer is due to high pressure very frequently situated just to the west of the British Isles, so conditions would often be quite dry, but also cool and not very sunny as the flow is often from the northwest, north or north east. CET of the 3 months: June: 14.3C July: 14.6C August: 15.2C Combined: 14.7C (84th coldest, around 1.5C higher than the coldest summers) England Wales rainfall: June: 39.9mm July: 32.6mm August: 41.9m Combined: 114.4mm (9th driest summer in the EWP series, driest is 1995 with 67mm. For the central - eastern England region (HadCEP), the summer had 88.6mm which is the 7th driest since records began in 1873. For the Midlands there was 93.3mm, the 6th driest since 1836. Brief summaries by Trevor Harley: June: Wet in NW Scotland but fine, dry, and warm elsewhere It was very dry in Southern England. 88F was recorded (about 31C) at Wantage (Oxon.) on the 17th. July: On the 10th lightning during a severe thunderstorm in London killed a 3-year-old boy. There were 15 hours of heavy rain in the London area on St Swithin's Day (15th): after this, there was rain on only 9 of the 40 following days. In Scotland it was one of the driest Julys of the century. Across the country it was the driest month of the year. August: Very dry overall, if cool and cloudy. There were thunderstorms in Yorkshire on the 30th, and the 31st was very wet. The end of May however was quite warm with most of central and southern England reaching 26-27C for a few days and did have some severe thunderstorms though. "On the 27th thunderstorms with damaging hail swept across the Midlands and East Anglia. 60mm hailstones in Castle Hedington (Essex) hurt people and killed rabbits." Some graphs via RoostWeather of the summer here in Coventry with data going back to 1911. Only a handful of days climbing above 25C, and many nights generally on the cool side. The warmest spells were at the start and end of August. Mean max of 20.1C, mean min of 10.6C. To compare, Today's typical summer mean max is about 21.1C, with the mean min at 11.9C. Only 19 days with rainfall above 1mm, and 55 dry days for this summer in Coventry! @LetItSnow! @Cheshire Freeze @markyo I think you guys would have liked this summer a lot

Obviously taking these long period graphs with a pinch of salt as always, but the roman period apparantly may have been fairly warm, with then a cool down into the mid 1000s. If warming happened at the rate it's happening currently but 2000 years ago, it may have been even hotter than now.

Since it's turned cooler from mid month have noticed the tree foliage 'leafing out' has slowed down considerably. At one point start of last week, some trees like the sycamore we have in the garden or horse chestnut down the road from here were borderline ahead of mid April 2020 but not anymore now. Reminds me a bit more of April 2021. Following the very warm end of March that spring it turned colder through April and leafs coming out slowed down, then started to speed up again around this time now (19th - 25th April) as it turned a little warmer. I suppose this cooler weather is helping to prolong flowering though, and things like the bluebell display should last well into May.

I feel a 9.5 or even 9.6C finish is possible as the last 2-3 days will see a slight warmup. Given that I'd say the 3 entries highlighted below will have best combined as the EWP is looking to finish somewhere in the 85-95mm area with another dumping of rain forecast this weekend. The three 9.4C entries have all gone for an EWP of 110mm or higher. Pretty happy with my entry as well although have overestimated the rainfall a bit, that is the first time I have done so after underguessing many months. It would be quite interesting to plot 2 graphs, one for daily CET values, and the other for the running mean to better see a neat observed cooldown from mid month.

Similar to 2020, last year any yellowing observed was quite early in the warm season, as the driest part of the year was mid May to late June. Wherever managed to avoid most of the thunderstorms until later in June would have probably seen some stress on the grass, I remember there being a little around here, but wasn't that much and then had storms weekly from 11th June to early July keeping soils wetter. In the some areas in the east and south there was less than 25mm. With 2020, the most yellow the grass was at the end of May / very start of June following such a dry May, then the rest of summer wasn't that dry and kept everything more "lush" throughout the summer.

A brief discussion on the atmospheric river that brought a lot of rainfall for Scotland back in early October of last year. 6th to 8th october 2023 scotland floods.pdf

Quite a potent day by the looks of things with 2 papers published on this event. North York Moors Storms 19 Jun 2005.pdf Multiple large hail events 19 June 2005.pdf

Late April 1981 probably as exceptional as it gets for this part of spring. Certainly more extreme than today.

SunSean Hmm not sure, I find it's decently accurate, and matches with my own observations mostly. Yesterday and Saturday defintely felt like there was a good 7 to 9 ish hours of sunshine. I have compared with the RoostWeather website and there are usually 10-20 hour monthly difference between Steve's posts and on RoostWeather, maybe due to the way the data is coded or something not really sure, but to me that isn't really a large difference especially in the months with longer daylengths. Think we getting lucky is the best reason Another good way to estimate rough sunshine amounts in recent days is through this webcam website which has the Coventry Airport on it and that goes back every 10 minute intervals for the last 3 days: Wetter Webcam Coventry WWW.WEBCAM-4INSIDERS.COM Wetter Webcam: Coventry > West Midlands > England Ferien-Wetter für Städtereisen inklusive Diashow und Bildarchiv.

Temperatures struggling to climb much above 7C today, and the coldest 22nd April on record here is 7.9C in 1936. End of April 2020 had a notably chilly day as well of around 7.5C, on the 28th, so this is certainly around the bottom of climatology! Some good news though is that last week was both the first week to be drier than average, and sunnier than average since one of the weeks back in mid January here, so a marker improvement compared to earlier this month. Monthly sunshine total has climbed above 100 hours, but still another 45 to go to reach April average. By this point in April 2020 there had been 190 hours of sunshine.

Another gorgeous 9,5 hours of sunshine yesterday so that has managed to bring the monthly total to over 100 hours now. Still around 45 hours to reach April average but since the 11th of April there's now a marked improvement. Today likely to record 0 hours, but from tomorrow to the weekend looks to be decent again, might add another 20-30 hours to the total if we lucky enough. By this point in April 2020, there had been around 190 hours of sunshine. Last week was also the first week with more sunshine than average since mid January!