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Evening thunder

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Everything posted by Evening thunder

  1. This has to be one of the dullest/most extended dull spells I remember, especially going into Spring. I was on holiday the one cold sunnier week in January, and since returning it has felt almost eternally grey and damp with just the odd day with a bit of sun. All of last week basically seemed grey, except the odd sunny interval yesterday. Once again today, it's cloudy from dawn while most of the country is getting a sunny start. At least winter 2014 had more PM/RPM air and sunshine between the lows. Might see a few sunny intervals tomorrow but not getting my hopes up too high. Similar weather just seems to go on and on: Haven't really had those first 'it feels like spring' days due to cloud/wind/dampness, but at the same time, plant growth seems more advanced than I can remember at this time of year due to endless mild and lack of frosts.
  2. This private station actually reached 20.5C today: https://www.wunderground.com/dashboard/pws/IWESTERR3 Obviously not official and can't be sure it's accurate, but it's a Davis VP2 and there was very strong wind gusts with the foehn (up to 81mph at one point!), so doubt it was over-reading much unless the sensor is not calibrated correctly.
  3. This weather is good for one thing at least: Source: https://grid.iamkate.com/
  4. Thankfully here we've had a fair bit of sunshine and showers type weather recently which don't mind, some nice cloudscapes/CB's as well as blue sky between. The next few days look the same here. It's when it turns dull and damp for days which I don't like. Yesterday was cloudy all day with rain in the morning, but was pretty interesting seeing some of the biggest waves I've seen on the south coast (from a safe distance). The river was high enough to flood parts of the floodplain, but not high enough to flood property as far as I know. Incidentally that's the first time the river got near flood levels this Autumn. October was wet here but not exceptional with no major individual falls of rain.
  5. I think the Met Office have done a very good job really. They identified the main threat areas a few days ago, and the amber warnings still reflect where has had/will get the strongest winds pretty well. Maybe some parts of the amber warnings may only have 'yellow' impacts, but it's a likelihood vs impact matrix, and the warning was not at the top of the likelihood scale. They issue the warnings and guidance, it's up to the relevant authorities to decide what to do with it. They also have to make a call, they can't just say one thing to all the authorities then change it every model run. Yesterday there were still some options further north, and you can't risk cancelling warnings and risk the low centre taking the northern option in the models, even 20-50 miles further north would have been different. Each shift, you can count the number of people that are actually responsible for issuing the warnings etc, and various additional briefings/tasks that come with severe weather, on one hand, and they still have to do everything else such as analysis charts, pages of internal/external guidance, modified fields, etc. Of course many aspects of our media sensationalise and focus on the worst bits, so barely even mention that many inland southern areas won't see much of note, and that winds will fall light most of the night and early morning even here in Devon. A bit annoying because I expect lots of 'what was the fuss about', 'they got it wrong again', despite the fact that what's happened was the forecast for days (the low centre just a touch further south than the average of model runs from a few days ago).
  6. It's funny how this part of Devon seems to get less strong storms than north and west France, and even the SE coast of England. Only Eunice hit the south full on recently (though with amber not red warning here due to a little shelter from Dartmoor etc), otherwise they always seem to have taken the worst winds north of here, or south into the Channel/France over my meteorological memory covering the last couple of decades. Edit: I guess 2014 saw a couple notable events which I wasn't here for (although the sea state/number of storms was the most exceptional, Wales saw a stronger wind event). Perhaps a good thing with trees still pretty leafy, don't want to lose too many..
  7. So two summer like days coming up when I'm doing 12 hour shifts so can't even enjoy the evening, and then it's back to this in time for my leave! I try not to complain too much, and don't think we've had a truly poor summer overall (a couple months yes) in my location since 2015 or before that 2012, but this July and August is crap!
  8. Scientific consensus that human emissions are causing warming is at like 99.9%... Something like 28 out of 88,000 papers are somewhat or entirely skeptical. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2966 or 100% reported here https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0270467619886266 Are you one of the people that seem to have nothing better to do than clog up the Met Office twitter feed?
  9. Last summer featured a poorer spell late June/early July as well I believe. Of course no telling what will happen afterwards this year, factors are different (e.g. El Nino, SSTs) Speaking of the SST's around the UK, the anomalies must in part be due to the persistent high pressure near the north of the UK in recent weeks with plenty of sunshine warming the surface layers, and little wind meaning reduced mixing of the warmer surface layer with colder water below. If the model output comes off with fairly deep low pressures near the north of the UK, I'd expect the anomalies to reduce but probably remain somewhat positive.
  10. Agreed there... A more continental climate there, I guess the 'Baltic' phrase wasn't coined from their summers Agreed with you in that respect, I prefer sunny crisp days (although perhaps not -10C 850s and hard frost in May) as sunshine is more important for mood. It just made me think of April 2021, which I didn't think was too bad as it was quite sunny despite loads of frosts (and I've noticed a few others say that recently). However, in this thread it certainly didn't sound ok at the time, people were moaning just as much as now. As for this weekend, and combined with 2012, the weather really doesn't seem to be a royalist..
  11. Not been a great spring, or March especislly down here especially sunshine wise, but then Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were decent here with plenty of sunshine. Also I remember that the Easter weekend was Decent. Forecast isn't great but Tuesday and Wednesday showed cloudy on the apps and turned out mostly sunny, so maybe they are over-estimating cloud on some days going forward. Well, maybe sometimes, but at the moment they have -10C 850hpa temps and nighttime temps well below freezing Imagine the moaning in here if we had that in May
  12. Typical timing.. 4 crisp frosty mornings while travelling to work last week, and 5 days with decent amounts of sunshine, followed by cloudy nothing weather on both days this weekend (a common theme of many recent weekend days), before it is forecast to be sunny again on Monday and Tuesday.
  13. Do the GFS ensembles have an issue with under-estimating ocean modification? I've never seen a northerly that cold in the archives but have seen a few examples in the ensembles. Also, I don't know of any archive chart examples a westerly with 850hpa temps approaching -15C, yet we had an ensemble member the other day showing -16C 850's on a westerly. Even the often cited cold zonality of January 1984 didn't quite manage to pull in the -10C 850hpa isotherm from the west. I've noticed over the last couple of years that there have been various ensemble charts showing westerlies/northerlies with 850hpa temps colder than any actual examples I know of. Although I would love to see a NNW wind with -15C - -20C 850's coming down the Irish Sea with the streamer of intense snow showers it would create hitting the SW.. just not that week because it's the first week since 2020 I've been abroad (which increases the chances of it happening!)
  14. I'm not enthusiastic about an easterly that looks not cold enough for much interest and could well just be grey and chilly. In fact I'd prefer the current weather pattern to continue tbh. Every day in the last week has had sunshine here, and many have had decent amounts. Rain bands have often cleared early morning, and we have had some good skies from shower/cumulonimbus clouds (with lightning in places, though none here). No major issues with flooding despite being a wet month (which was needed for water resources). I prefer a blustery day with sunshine and shower clouds like yesterday than anticyclonic gloom or a grey easterly (even if work stopped me enjoying it much). There's hints an easterly could get cold enough for interest but that's out in la-la-land.
  15. This is something that would probably surprise many, but this is not necessarily the case. In the SW, it's only been in November that reservoirs have showed any significant uptick overall, and this is still minor for the 4 large reservoirs. This graph is up to the 13th November and is slightly biased by including Burrator, which has reached 100% because it is a smaller reservoir on a larger catchment. Many show a more modest increase like Colliford, the largest reservoir in Cornwall and the 2nd largestin the SW, which was still only 18.5% full on the 13th. September was wetter than average for much of Devon and Cornwall, and October near average according to Met Office maps (meaning 150mm for each month over upland areas such as Bodmin Moor where Colliford is), yet the large reservoirs continued to fall until later in October even if the rate slowed. One reason for this is that after dry weather, much of the rainfall is absorbed by soil/dry peat of the moorlands rather than generating streamflow that feeds reservoirs, and percolating to groundwater. So 'effective' (streamflow generating) rainfall is much lower until the soil moisture deficit is reduced. The other factor is the four large reservoirs in the SW are large reservoirs in small catchments. Basically they need a winter of rainfall to refill (note Colliford did not refill to capacity last winter after only dropping to ~60%. This year it dropped to ~15%...). This is perhaps a flaw in design (although it would be hard to have reservoirs in larger river catchments here without flooding significant areas of productive land/settlements). Therefore, while the current pattern is helping, if we get a drier than average winter (increased likelihood in latest Met Office contingency planners forecast), there may well be water usage restrictions next year in the SW. Spring/summer would then have to do something like a 2012 to avert water shortages, as it's much harder to get significant reservoir level increases in summer due to lower rainfall averages, and much higher evapotranspiration (and therefore much lower 'effective' rainfall).
  16. If we get a few wet days I don't think we can complain too much after this summer Although some fronts/troughs would likely be involved, it could be quite a convective showery set up anyway rather than days of drizzle and no sun. Not without interest (for those interested in showers/thunderstorm potential) as the low slowly fills over warm seas: I'm kind of looking forward to it if it does pan out like that.
  17. I updated to the new spoon design back at the start of 2021, it seems a touch high but at least I get more consistent readings now compared to my manual gauge, which I could never seem to get with the old tipping mechanism for some reason.
  18. Had some sort of dust devil/vortex feature go over here earlier. There was suddenly a strong southerly wind blowing through my window and I thought that's odd, a sudden unexpected (and strong) sea breeze. I Looked outside, by which time it changed to a westerly/northerly, while up the road the church flag was still blowing strongly from the S/SE (which a few seconds later swung 180 degrees to a northerly). My station registered a gust of 26 mph despite an average wind speed of 4 mph. It caused a pressure dip too:
  19. It could be because for the last few months, there seems to have been something wrong with the Met Office automated location forecasts in parts of the SW (so maybe also Wales/various places near the coast), in the 3-7 day range. The forecast for Exeter has been showing just 23C at times for the peak of this upcoming spell. No way is that correct, it looks like getting above 30C. It seems to have improved a bit now (27C), although Sunday is showing 'Extreme heat warning' and 22C My location closer to the south coast has been forecast 28-29C which is more reasonable. Even for Taunton, well away from coasts where the GFS shows ~35C, and ECM ~32C, the Met Office forecast only shows 27C-28C. It used to be decent until a few months ago when something changed and now the forecast for Exeter is always too low after day 2, in sunny/warm weather. You'd think they would notice or could fix it since they are based there lol.
  20. Haha yeah it used to be good, but something changed a few months ago and now it always under-predicts Exeter's temperatures in sunny summer conditions. I've been thinking the same, I only got 30.7C then, and agree some areas near the south coast (including my area and Exeter) may see higher temps this time, as well as this spell lasting longer.
  21. Lovely day, 24-25C and no cloud again with a sea breeze. I see the Met Office forecasts for Exeter are still broken Apparently only going to be 23C later this week... while my location closer to the sea is forecast 29C, and right on the coast forecast 26C. Don't they notice it or can't they fix it? They're based there lol
  22. Completely agree, been saying that for years, before the nearby new town of Cranbrook (hailed as being green/environmentally friendly) was built near Exeter, but nope... nothing about solar panels on all the new roofs. Not sure why but as you say, probably vested interests and it eats into developers profits... even though it's a small amount of the cost of the properly. I wish this government was truly serious about being green/climate change... but their actual policies suggest otherwise Heard roof aesthetics suggested as one excuse before.. well roofs (especially new builds) are hardly natural and don't often 'look nice' anyway! and it's better than in fields.
  23. Looks like a 4 day spell of cloudy and possibly drizzly weather coming to the SW just as I'm showing international friends around Devon and Cornwall
  24. They're all Met Office sites and checked by the Met Office against the same standards after potential new records
  25. Yeah, three separate regions list 39.9C as the highest max so I think it's just an automated system which doesn't allow/filters out values >39.9C, perhaps designed to limit erroneous values appearing. Compared to:
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