Thundery wintry showers

Frustrating here in Lincoln, that second cell was passing to the east but had it stayed electrified, it would have been close enough to be able to hear the thunder, at least faintly, and maybe see the odd flash of lightning from the east-facing view from my balcony. However, it lost its electrification just before it came within range.

Some showers are sprouting up in Lincolnshire at the moment, and these are set to intensify and head northwards into Yorkshire overnight. There's no guarantee that these will widely become electrified - the chances are certainly lower than tomorrow afternoon/evening - but the UKV model remains quite insistent on growing some intense showers by around 2am. That's a bit late, so many of us may sleep through them even if we get them, but there's a possibility of some of us getting some thunder overnight even prior to the main helping tomorrow afternoon/evening. I'm also keeping an eye on the convective prospects for my birthday this coming Thursday, as there are some very high convective available potential energy (CAPE) values consistently showing on the GFS and ECMWF for that day, though one caveat is that the pressure is being modelled slightly higher with each run, so I'm trying not to build my hopes up regarding getting significant convection on my birthday as it could be that we end up with the high pressure being too strong. But again, the potential is there.

Judging by the Met Office lightning data, Glasgow got quite a substantial thunderstorm today, which doesn't happen that often. Here in Lincoln there's a chance of some thundery activity over the weekend (Saturday evening/night, Sunday evening), and there's even a chance of some thundery showers showing up on my birthday (22nd) according to GFS and ECMWF, though that's a long way off and subject to change.

I have so far, I've had a couple of sharp showers but the electrified ones have been to the north and south so far. Seen plenty of good clouds about though. (Edit: that's just today though, I've had two thunder days in the past week).

Yes, it's pretty rare to get 4 in a row. I've had 4 in a row just once, ironically when I was living in Cleadon in Tyne and Wear (as they don't normally get as many storms up there), on 1 to 4 July 2007. I remember coming close and getting 3 thunder days out of 4 a couple of times when I was living in Norwich (in April 2008 and July 2009) and it's happened here in Lincoln a few times recently (May 2021, July 2021 and September 2022).

Here are a few pictures from last Friday's convection. I'm yet to have an overhead storm here (I was away for the one on 10 April) but I heard a number of distant rumbles on last Friday and this Tuesday, and saw some distant lightning as well.

Cumulonimbus cells have been almost stationary to the west of Lincoln for the past two hours, but haven't produced any thunder (they're near enough such that if there was thunder I would hear faint rumbles). Somewhere just to the west has clearly had a lot of rain so far today. I imagine it being one of those days where if I was on the Tyne and Wear coast I would be in a frustrating no-convection zone, with convection going up a fair way to the west and low cloud rolling in from the North Sea. Here in Lincoln there's no no-convection zone in sight, but the main convection is definitely a bit to the west.

1919 is another candidate: cold winter and early spring, warm May and June, cold July, warm spell late August/early September, cold snap late September with snow for some, very cold October and November with record breaking low temperatures in the second week of November, and then a mild and wet December.

I remember reading in Philip Eden's 1990s Telegraph articles that it has historically been common to get dry and sunny but cool Junes, but rare to get that combination in July and August. It's been masked by the recent warming trend in the UK climate, but the Junes of 2008, 2009 and 2015 were all dry and sunny but cool in many areas of the UK, relative to the 1991-2020 average. A further nuance though is that it's rare to get cooler than average Junes that are very dry, but plenty of very dry Junes have had a close to average temperature, e.g. 1925, 1975, 1995 and 1996. As for the original question, although I wasn't around then, the first two years that sprung to mind were 1912 and 1954. 1912 had a dry sunny April, but was especially dull in the summer months. 1954 was a bit less dull but had less in the way of sunny spells in the spring. Both years had notoriously cool dull wet summers. In more recent times, for me it's a close call between 1985 and 2012 (despite the memorably warm and sunny spell at the end of March 2012 and the switch-around in early April). I remember the weather being almost relentlessly dull and wet from mid-April until the end of August, apart from a week of warm sunny weather at the end of May and a brighter spell with some settled interludes and some showers and thunderstorms in late July/early August.

My memories of some mild and dry winter months are skewed towards the cloudy days. For example, in February 1998, January 2000 and March 2000, I mainly remember spells of dull dry weather in the Tyne and Wear area, but statistically they were all sunnier than average (and substantially so in the case of January 2000). The opposite sometimes happens with cold cloudy winter months, e.g. November 1993 and December 1995 were statistically very dull near the north-east coast of England, but I mainly remember the cold bright spells from those months. I often used to think of October 1994 as a very sunny month, mainly because of that very fine spell from the 10th to 14th. It was indeed a very sunny month in parts of the south, but in Tyneside, where I was, sunshine was only a little above average overall. I also used to be guilty of mixing up the Octobers of 1994 and 1995 (e.g. I recalled a TV forecast saying that October 1994 was one of the driest and warmest Octobers on record in the north-east region, but it was actually October 1995). I tend not to get skewed memories of more recent months so much, but July 2015 is one that sticks out, I remember the warm and thundery spells in the first third of the month and have largely forgot about how cool the rest of the month was, so it always seems warmer to me than the statistics show.

Hillbilly is right if we're going by the Central England Tempertature series. The 1961-1990 average CET for April was just 7.9C, and for the 20th century it was 8.1C, but over 1991-2020 it was 9.0C. At 8.8C, April 1980 was certainly warm for its time, but a little short of the latest 30-year average. The Met Office UK series gives similar results - April 1980 at 7.7C was the second warmest of the 1980s but cooler than most recent Aprils. April 2012 incidentally was widely the second or third coolest April since 1989.

I can see this April having some cool north and east winds, but it increasingly looks like starting off on the warm side. Probably quite a dry month. So I'll go for 9.1C and 27.8mm.

I know of quite a few people who have tried electric cars and have had relatively few problems with their vehicles, though they often report teething problems with lack of infrastructure, lack of charging points, and relatively limited range (though the range of EVs is increasing). I also agree that the pollution ratio relative to traditional internal combustion engines has scope to improve considerably from the current "3 to 1" as we shift more and more of our electricity generation towards renewables. The environmental costs of building new electric vehicles will remain an issue (though there is again scope to reduce that by shifting more towards renewable energy sources and recycling parts for the construction), which suggests (as has been mentioned in a couple of articles above) that we also need to seriously look into ways of electrifying current petrol driven vehicles, to reduce the extent to which we have to mass produce new ones. I have more than a suspicion that the Government's plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 is an attempt to try and incentivise pushing EV technologies forward ("necessity is the mother of invention", as they say). I won't be surprised if when it comes to the time they end up pushing the measure back another 5-10 years, but on general grounds I support the measure as a way of giving the automotive industry a "kick up the backside" to stimulate faster progress.

My understanding is that electric vehicles are considerably less polluting than traditional internal combustion engines, but that they're not yet close to producing net zero emissions (considering the cost of building the vehicle as well as producing the electricity). The "3x less CO2 emitted" figure in Hairy Celt's link is similar to the figures that I've seen elsewhere. In the long run EVs have considerable potential to be part of the solution, but in order to achieve net zero emissions and use energy sustainably we will have to cut down on our overall use of cars. While I don't think the future of transportation has to be as grim as SnowBear suggested, we could end up in that kind of position if we mismanage things enough. As well as the usual suggestion of leaning more upon walking, cycling and public transport, I see plenty of scope for us to shift away from relying on cars for private transport and using smaller EVs more often, e.g. e-bikes, motorcycles, scooters and mopeds. These typically consume less fuel and also take up less road space (particularly useful in densely populated urban areas) and would still provide many of the freedoms that are traditionally associated with cars. I can certainly see long distance journeys becoming fewer and further between and more public transport centric though. But there's a serious "joker in the pack" here in the form of automation. I'm increasingly hearing about a strong push to automate away driving, and I see plenty of scope for this to be extended to all forms of transportation other than walking and maybe cycling on safety and efficiency grounds. I've had people tell me that this should be great for me because with my visual impairment it could make me more mobile, but I have various concerns about it. I see Nineteen Eighty-Four type elements to it, I have issues with removing the human element of driving and riding, and I also fear possible scenarios where self-driving cars increase car dependency and cyclists and pedestrians become the main human source of risk on our roads and become viewed as menaces who thwart the otherwise safe AI-powered vehicles. All in all, I see plenty of opportunities towards moving towards a sustainable transport system, with EVs as part of the solution but not the solution, which will give many of us at least as good a quality of life as we have now, but the pessimist in me also sees plenty of scope for things to go downhill and suspects that we'll probably screw things up.

I'd still have to say my favourite spring was that of 1995 with its contrasting episodes and switch-arounds. Here's a selection of charts from that spring to illustrate the point: I also agree with Weather-history regarding May 1997, it was particularly varied and it felt like we got some of almost everything. April 1997 let that spring as a whole down for me though because, while warm and very dry, it wasn't particularly sunny in Tyneside. Spring 2020 was of course remarkable for being by far the sunniest on record, but it loses points for lack of variety. Other standouts include 2003, 2008, 2018. I quite enjoyed 2021 as well. Least favourite? There are several contenders but it's hard to see further than 1996 really, in view of how relentlessly cold, grey and drizzly that March was in particular.

A localised shower of graupel followed by snow in Lincoln, the graupel produced a slight dusting on the ground, though the subsequent snow hasn't settled.

A couple of rain and sleet showers in Lincoln this afternoon, with the temperature falling from around 7.5C to 3.5C, and the latest one at around 18:40pm was more like sleety snow, with flakes clearly coming down.

It was around 4C at the University of Lincoln when the precipitation first started, now that it's got heavier it's dropped to 2.3C but the precipitation is still mostly rain.

Turning sleety in heavier bursts in Lincoln but it's mostly been light rain here.

I don't have specific memories of those Marches as I was too young, but I'm aware of quite a few snow events to draw attention to. 15-17 March 1985: a cyclonic episode with northerly and north-westerly winds. The 850hPa temperatures don't look remarkable but with low pressure around and troughs and fronts as well as showers, some areas had significant snowfalls. Waddington near Lincoln reported 17cm of lying snow on the 17th. A build of high pressure over Scandinavia followed, leading to more frontal snow on the 20th and 21st as milder air pushed in only slowly from the south-west. March 1986: Not a remarkably snowy month overall, but the 1st saw the back end of the February 1986 cold spell with a strong easterly flow in the south. Later that month, a deep depression on the 24th brought widespread snow on its northern flank, while on the 23rd and 25th, north-westerly winds brought widespread wintry showers, in a setup quite similar to that of early March 1995. March 1987: there were frontal snowfalls in the first week as continental air pushed in from the east and Atlantic systems kept colliding with it. Northerlies and north-westerlies then brought widespread snow showers between the 18th and 21st. I'm not aware of any specific snow events in March 1984 that stick out, but I know it was a very easterly month with snow flurries at times and a considerable shortage of sunshine in the east. But not all of these Marches were gloomy: the Marches of 1985 and 1986 were both generally sunnier than average despite being rather wet.

I remember spending it in Cleadon Village in Tyne and Wear and enjoying the frequent days of sunshine and wintry showers - hail was quite frequent and temperatures would often fluctuate significantly, but I remember being disappointed by the lack of sustained snow cover, as there was very little precipitation overnight due to the shelter from the Pennines. Snow sometimes accumulated during the heavier showers, but melted immediately in the sun afterwards. I remember a GMTV forecaster on the 2nd March 1995 excitedly saying, "And this evening, we'll see more snow coming in, not from the west, but from the south-west!", and thinking, "Wow, I don't normally think of westerly and south-westerly winds as snowy directions", but Tyneside was a little bit too far north to get anything from that system. It wasn't the only time that month either - just one week later 15 March 1995 also had snow showers from a westerly. I remember during my days at Lancaster University when I browsed the records from their Hazelrigg weather station, the records point to a similar scenario to what you described. The observer reported lying snow on 5 of the first 8 mornings of the month, with a maximum depth of 10cm on the 3rd, but with daytime maxima between 4 and 6C, the snow usually melted away during the day, except on the 3rd when the 10cm cover got trimmed to a 3cm one the next day. For the Lancaster area, the first 8 days of March 1995 probably constituted the snowiest spell of the 1990s outside of the winter of 1995/96 (when, unusually, Lancaster seemed to become a magnet for snow events, including the big one in early February '96).

I'm normally a bit of a "night owl" but I was up at 7am prompt this morning to get to Lincoln Cathedral before solar heating started to kick in, knowing that there would be more lying snow there. I also took a trek along the West Common, which also had more snow due to being out of the city.

I was at the University of East Anglia on the outskirts of Norwich from 2007 to 2011 and it was as if the Norwich climate flicked a switch with northerlies starting in January 2011. Until then, most seasons had at least one or two instances of significant lying snow off northerlies, often via snow showers off the North Sea. I had at least two per season while I was there, including substantial late November ones in 2008 and 2010, and countless examples in the winter of 2009/10. Yet since then, it's been rare for a northerly to give Norwich any advance on the odd slushy dusting that swiftly melts. Here in downhill Lincoln the scenes looked a lot like what Reef posted with plenty of snow falling but just a slushy coating on the grass. I got up earlier than usual this morning because I knew there would be more lying up near Lincoln Cathedral because of its extra 50m elevation, so I set off on a long walk uphill at 7:30am, taking advantage of a conveniently timed day off work, and sure enough, the grassy areas around the Cathedral had 70-80% snow cover at 9am this morning. Even in uphill Lincoln, though, it was largely gone by 11am.

Looks like conditions are becoming less marginal to the north of Yorkshire now as the Arctic air digs in - even South Shields at the coast is down to 2.4C with a strong and gusty onshore NE wind. Just seen a report of falling and lying snow from Middlesbrough in the north east thread.

I thought the dry slot over Lincoln was closing in, but it seems that the precipitation to the south keeps fizzling out before it gets here, so it could be a matter of hours rather than minutes before the dry slot shifts. Not missing out on lying snow at the moment, though, as if it's 2.2C in the dry with a gusty NE wind, it's unlikely to get down to the ~0.5C or so that is needed for snow to settle readily under precipitation.