Jump to content
Problems logging in? ×
Snow?
Local
Radar
Cold?

Thundery wintry showers

Site forecast team
  • Posts

    15,708
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    30

Thundery wintry showers last won the day on November 12 2012

Thundery wintry showers had the most liked content!

3 Followers

About Thundery wintry showers

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Interests
    Weather (of course!), chess, music, computer gaming, social events, football, tenpin bowling, environmental issues
  • Weather Preferences
    Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.

Recent Profile Visitors

84,502 profile views

Thundery wintry showers's Achievements

Accomplished

Accomplished (12/14)

  • Twenty years in Rare
  • Week One Done
  • One Month Later
  • Five years in
  • Ten years in

Recent Badges

5.9k

Reputation

  1. Warm, dry and dull is quite a rare combination in May but taking the country as a whole May 1999 managed it, as did 2022 as others have mentioned earlier. Probably the most extreme case of a dull but very dry May was that of 1991, although on that occasion temperatures were near average rather than warm. In May 1991, high pressure was centred over southern and/or western Britain through the month which resulted in very dry weather - most areas had no more than 10 mm of rain - but cloud kept coming in from the North Sea and/or the North Atlantic. Some regions had one of their dullest Mays on record as well as one of the driest.
  2. I think the cloud and rain is largely a consequence of anomalous synoptic setups - we've often had the jet stream coming across Britain, sandwiched between blocking highs over Greenland and south-western Europe, bringing wet weather and warmth, especially to the south, assisted by the high SSTs in the eastern North Atlantic. This did indeed set in starting around mid-March last year. I'm not sure if these setups are likely to become more frequent with climate change, but one thing that is highly likely is that, because warmer air can hold more moisture, as the climate warms, heavy rain events and associated flooding will tend to get more extreme. Also, with increased evapotranspiration, we can expect droughts to become more extreme too. I agree with Reef regarding hot continental air getting hotter as the continents warm faster than the oceans. In particular, north Africa has warmed at at least twice the global average rate in summer, which has contributed to extreme hot days warming faster than the summer mean temperature.
  3. Just revisited this thread and saw my earlier post about 2022 being a candidate for "forgettable years". When I look back, I think for me it quite comfortably broke out of that category in the end. As well as the record breaking July heatwave and hot sunny spell in August, thundery spells in September and October (the third week of October had exceptionally widespread thunderstorms for the time of year) and the cold first half of December stick out. Also, in the England E & NE region it ended up being the sunniest year on record, helped by sunny months in January (which exceeded 100 hours in the England E & NE series!), March and April as well as the summer. August 2022 was comfortably the sunniest August since the famously hot dry sunny one in 1995. October was also very sunny despite the very wet second half. I will probably end up remembering 2023 for the 2nd week March snow, the hot and sunny June, thunderstorms in the first half of July, the record breaking heatwave and thundery breakdown of early September and the rain and flooding late in the year, but if anything I reckon that I will end up seeing 2023 as less memorable for weather than 2022 was. Overall, as far as forgettable years I don't think any of the 2020s years so far can really challenge 2002 or perhaps 2011, but in our warming climate there is an ongoing issue with the increasing loss of notable cold/snow events reducing the overall variety in our climate.
  4. There is some regional variation around this - I would probably assess these summers differently if I'd been in one of the flood-affected areas in 2007 - but I spent that run of wet summers from 2007 to 2012 in the England E and NE region (between Tyne & Wear, the Vale of York and Norwich) and 2012 sticks out for me as the worst of those summers. June 2012 was almost relentlessly dull and wet, as was most of July and the second half of August. I remember quite enjoying the back end of July 2012 and the first half of August, which had some warm sunshine and some thundery downpours, but that was it. Also, June 2012 saw a stream of deep, autumnal depressions that seemed to coincide with every weekend. My birthday (22nd) was a grey, wet, windy, autumnal day. I didn't get the warm sunny start to June 2007 as I was living near the east coast then, where it was grey with a lot of low cloud off the North Sea, but the eastern coastal regions that were very dull in June had near average sunshine in the wet July and then quite a dry and sunny August with average temperatures. But I doubt that the summers of 2007 or 2012 would be able to compete with the summer of 1912, particularly in north-east England where Durham failed to reach 100 hours of sunshine in each of the three summer months. For the UK as a whole, August 1912 was comfortably the coolest, wettest and dullest August on record. It was substantially duller even than August 2008, and that's saying a lot.
  5. I didn't post in here yesterday, but it snowed for a good 4-5 hours here in downhill Lincoln yesterday, but not much of it settled - I had around 60% cover of slushy snow which melted by mid-afternoon. It was clear that it settled far more readily in uphill Lincoln - I can see to the west of the Cathedral from my north-facing windows and the roof tops around there were white from around 11am to 4pm. It was a similar story on 9-10 March 2023. I'm guessing that these sort of marginal frontal setups would have delivered a full snow cover to downhill Lincoln as well until about 10-20 years ago. Still, I got more than I expected, as I thought there was a chance of it just being sleety here. I can relate to Reef's frustrations, I certainly disliked these setups when I was living up in Cleadon in Tyne and Wear in the 1990s and 2000s, invariably it would be grey, raw and sleety there while Newcastle would have a wet slushy dusting and Durham would have a dumping of snow - although in today's warmer climate these setups sometimes fail to deliver much even in Durham. My parents up in Knaresborough had a few centimetres from this event although it struggled to settle on concrete surfaces - all gone by dawn this morning though.
  6. As I mentioned in the other thread on autumn seasons I spent most of this decade in eastern England, mostly in Tyne & Wear, Leeds or Norwich. 2000 - Autumn. Yes, it was remarkable meteorologically but not in an enjoyable way. Summer was a contender but was saved by a pretty good August. 2001 - Summer, disappointingly cloudy in the North East. Autumn was a contender but was saved by the memorable northerly of 8/9 November. 2002 - Summer. Not a very interesting year generally, but the other seasons had their moments, I don't remember the summer having many. 2003 - Winter 02/03. I enjoyed every season that year, but December 2002 was extremely dull, making winter the least good season. 2004 - Autumn. October was dull and wet, November mild, dull and dry. 2005 - Winter 04/05. I remember it being the first winter of my life when northerly and easterly winds frequently failed to come to much. 2006 - Autumn, relentlessly warm, it just didn't feel right to me. Winter was a contender but the late December 2005 easterly saved it. 2007 - Winter 06/07 (relentlessly mild). Summer was a contender, but my area had a pretty decent August, and the wet June & July had a high frequency of thunder. 2008 - Summer. Not much of a contest really, August in particular was a cloudfest. 2009 - Autumn. Again not much of a contest.
  7. @Earthshine I was in Exeter in 2019 too, I remember that rain-to-snow event on 31 January and the snow still lying for much of the day on 1 February. I remember February being remarkably sunny. I remember that spell of mild sunny weather around the 14th and seeing the forecast models showing high pressure and southerlies for the back end of the month and thinking that it could well also bring plenty of sunshine, and I wasn't disappointed on that front. That said, I remember being disappointed locally by the constant breeze off the English Channel which meant that Exeter was constantly getting 12-14C which isn't out of the ordinary for Exeter, rather than the higher temperatures further inland.
  8. I've lived in various parts of the country but for most of the 2000s I was in eastern England, either Tyneside, Leeds or Norwich. Overall it would probably be: 2000 - Winter. I didn't particularly enjoy any season that year, but winter 1999/2000 at least had plenty of sunshine. August was pretty enjoyable but in eastern England it was outweighed by that very cold and grey July. 2001 - Winter again, due to the post-Christmas snowy spell and plenty of sunshine and some snow in January & February, although spring was also a contender thanks to a snowy March and a fine May. 2002 - Spring. The warm sunny weather of late March & April was one of the few memorable events that year. 2003 - Summer, although the spring ran it very close. 2004 - Winter. It was a fairly mild one overall, but despite that the northerlies were pretty snowy. 2005 - Summer. Had it not been for the cool grey second half of July I would have regarded this as a very good summer. Two notable thunderstorms, 19 June and 31 August. Autumn 2005 had its moments and its contrasts and ran it quite close. 2006 - Summer, mainly because of the first 12 days of June and then that July, both of which felt like proper continental summer weather. 2007 - Spring, mainly because of the March and April. 2008 - Spring, I enjoyed most of March and first half of April (sun, showers, snow, and even some thunder) and the warm sunny first half of May. 2009 - Winter. I spent the early part of 2009 in Exeter and was very surprised to get a couple of snowfalls there in February. I also quite enjoyed the summer that year, but not as much as the winter.
  9. I spent the summers in two different locations - summer 2020 in Exeter and summer 2021 in Lincoln, so this will influence my perspective. In Exeter I remember June 2020 being warm and changeable with average amounts of sunshine, following the record breaking sunny spring. It felt like a novelty in early June when it turned cloudier. There were a couple of thunder-days around midmonth. There was a brief hot spell around the 22nd-25th, moderated by southerlies off the English Channel, but the thundery breakdown at the end that had been forecast by GFS until the day before it was meant to happen failed to materialise. July 2020 I remember being cool, mostly dry but rather dull. August had 4 thunder-days which is pretty high for a summer month in Exeter, it got up to around 30C during the heatwave, then rather ordinary weather followed but I remember an unexpected thunderstorm from a frontal system around the 27th. Summer 2021 in Lincoln was a mixed bag, but by May 2021, which produced 5 days with thunder, I was already finding out that Lincoln tends to get more thunderstorms than Exeter. June had a warm, dry, mainly sunny first half with one thunder-day on the 7th, but it was cooler and mainly cloudy in the second half. Overall though it was warmer, drier and sunnier than average. Then July was a particularly thundery month here, 7 days with thunder in total and some big thunderstorms on the 3rd and 4th. The first half was statistically somewhat dull but it didn't seem all that dull to me, probably because there tended to be a bit of sun on each day and I was excited by the frequent showery and thundery activity. The heatwave in the 3rd week saw plenty of sunshine, raising July's sunshine total close to the long-term normal, temperatures of up to 30C, a minor thundery breakdown on the 23rd and then more showers and thunder to end the month. August however felt like a "nothing" month, quite dry but very dull. I had high hopes of some sunshine from the anticyclonic spell in the last third of August, but after a day and a half of sunshine, North Sea stratocumulus spread inland and proved remarkably persistent. Overall, two mixed bags really, and like TheOgre it is clear that I got a mix of the northern and southern features of summer 2021, but I think I timed the move well as far as thunder frequency goes, because Exeter had quite a thundery summer by Exeter standards in 2020, but had very little thundery activity in 2021, when in July Lincoln seemed to be a magnet for thunderstorms early and late in the month.
  10. I can't think of many Januaries that I particularly enjoyed. I sometimes look back with interest on some Januaries that happened prior to me recording the weather (1993), and the list is quite long - 1952, 1955, 1958, 1959, 1963, 1968, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1984, 1985 and 1987. Talking of parallels between 1979 and 2010, I remember that during January and February 2010 I thought of winter 2009/10 as "the large teapot of discontent" (referring back to 19878/79's label as "the winter of discontent"), as there were political as well as meteorological similarities. As with Reef, I find it slim pickings, but there are three in quick succession that stand out as having been quite enjoyable for me - 2010, 2013 and 2015. 2010 and 2013 mainly for the snowy spells, and 2015 mainly for the dominance of polar maritime westerlies and north-westerlies.
  11. Since the 1940s it seems to me that there have been two periods in which cold Christmas-New Year periods were quite common: 1961-1970, and then 1992-2010. Between 1990 and 2010, December was the one month that bucked the general warming trend in the British climate and as a result we had a number of years when December was the coldest and snowiest month of the year. But outside of those periods, cold Christmas-New Year periods have been few and far between and the majority of cold spells have been concentrated in January and February. Since then, the nearest approach to a consistently cold Christmas-New Year period was arguably 2014, when for example at Waddington near Lincoln, Boxing Day was quite mild to begin with but snow accumulated that evening and stuck around until early on New Year's Day 2015.
  12. Snow gradually melting in Lincoln with the temperature having recently crept above 2C and some intermittent light rain/drizzle. Most surfaces are still snow covered because of the extent of accumulations last night, but I reckon most or all of it will be gone by tomorrow morning.
  13. It's been light rain and drizzle in Lincoln since early afternoon, with the temperature steady at around 1.5C but the dew point rose above freezing since around 9am which ruled out the possibility of further snow. As a result it's getting rather slushy and drip, drip, drip out there. But here are some photos of the snow this morning.
  14. Yes, a good 5cm or so accumulated overnight, I thought there was a chance of getting snow last night but I was only expecting a dusting at most, this was unexpected!
  15. Yes, I'm guessing that evaporative cooling mixed out the warmer air aloft that was causing the freezing rain at the beginning. Amazingly this is my first proper lying snow event in downhill Lincoln since I moved here in April 2021, I did have several mornings with slushy dustings in the winters of 2021/22 and 2022/23 but in each case I had to walk uphill to the Lincoln Cathedral area to see anything close to a full covering.
×
×
  • Create New...