Evening thunder

This was posted in this thread earlier, and I saw the median age of confirmed cases in Italy was 65.. suggests many milder cases in the younger have been missed (and maybe the elderly too), so a much lower overall fatality rate, though of course some will be yet to die. I don't remember reactions anything like this over swine flu.. I guess it had a lower death rate especially for the elderly, but it still infected 0.7-1.4 billion people and killed 150,000-575,000. Not saying they are comparable or we shouldn't be reacting like we are, just an observation. Though I have a feeling some of the elderly may struggle to lock themselves away for months. A few will probably be like 'ah well I'm ill/don't have long left anyway so sod it, I'm going out for my walks' and if there's a lock-down of the general population, and if it's required for several months/over a year, I expect some of the younger generation will be like 'sod it I'm not having no life for a year over what will basically be a cough for me'

So I'm not an expert but in my head the UK idea makes some sort of sense. Surely it would be better to allow more cases in summer when the NHS has more capacity to deal with it, than try to lock it down and have it explode next winter if we then come out of that lockdown. What are Spain, Italy, (and even China etc) going to do when they try to return to anything resembling normal? Surely Spain's lockdown won't really last only 15 days? Maybe they are just trying to flatten their curve more aggressively to then manage it better over summer, rather than try to actually eradicate the disease, and maybe the UK should be taking more drastic measures to try and flatten our curve to the desired extent.. no doubt it will be overwhelmed whatever happens.. However in my mind maybe there's two choices.. try to slow the outbreak but 'allow' some cases.. or remain on lockdown for most of a year/18 month period until a vaccine is both ready, produced in enough volume and then administered to the majority of the population? (short of something else changing with the disease). I probably haven't got that completely right because I'm not an epidemiologist.. however I can't see everyone in the UK (or indeed Spain/Italy), complying with not leaving their house except for food/work for that long. and I hope the work you are meant to do in Spain/Italy is just essential work because I'm much more likely to catch it in an office environment (or even self-isolating in a shared house) than out on a countryside walk by myself!

If that median age of 65 is for all the confirmed cases, it suggests to me (as well as other things) that there are many more undetected (mostly mild) cases, but that also means the death rate is much lower and more inline with that reported from other countries?

Reading 1050.1hPa here.. tried to calibrate it the best I can to Exeter Airport's Met Office site etc.. which was also reading 1050.1hPa at midnight. Kind of ironic that it has also turned cloudy! Wasn't on the forecast and we are/were heading for the coldest night of winter at least so far

A lovely couple of days at last. Kind of funny though, record breaking pressure here at 1050.1hPa, heading for the coldest night of the winter so far, but it has still managed to turn cloudy!

At work there's plenty of daffodils flowering, but they're are an early variety so I guess you could say they are not really a sign of spring if they usually flower in winter.

It's drizzled all decade so far... Very inspiring:

I think Australia's wildfire situation is more serious than a maximum of 9.4C. Although they still wrote a significant article on it. I wonder if increased smog is sometimes causing lower maxima there. Edit: it's Wikipedia but apparently that is suspected to be the case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi#Air_pollution (bottom of first paragraph on air pollution)

Not as bad as feared this week, some brightness yesterday, and today the low cloud has broken up more to give proper sunny spells. Areas more in the lee of high ground had clear blue skies yesterday and it seems much of England has this afternoon. A temp of around 10C and a light breeze so it's quite a pleasant day really.

Well, time for a moan on my part. Looks like my least favourite weather from an interest POV.. cloudy and boring. Maybe slightly better than persistent rain that we've had a lot of. However a unique factor, but as I kitesurf I could usually make the most of mild winter conditions.. You would expect at least a breeze with such mild temps in winter. One reason I wasn't feeling as 'disappointed' with the outlook as I may have in the past. Nope... Not even going to be enough wind down here. Looked like there could have been, but it's going to manage the fine balance between there being enough wind, or the high being overhead and maybe giving some crisp sunny weather. So we will basically get the worst of both worlds for several days on end. So I won't be able to do that during these holidays either (I could have tomorrow if we weren't visiting family in Birmingham). That's after most weekends in Autumn seemed to see the wind die or become unsuitable after about 4 good days in the working week, and also often feature gloom or persistent rain at weekends Also looks about right for the wind to come back on the 2nd Jan when I go back to work. Really can't win... Roll on April.

Forgot to post but had some thunder and lightning on Sunday evening with several flashes and one close CG. Heavy rain and a bit of hail but nearby Sidmouth had the roads go white with hail. 2 evenings of thunder in a row with one loud flash bang and a more distant flash/rumble on Saturday evening. Heavy rain this afternoon, the river is the highest it's been this Autumn/winter.. but still not really flooding, no single large falls in the catchment just very frequent moderate falls of rain. Forecast maps suggested rain coming back in tonight but looking at the radar that's quite far out for here.. a load is going to Cornwall or even further west, and a load going east. So the river will probably be 'uninteresting' and going down again by dawn.

Getting a bit fed up of the weather this Autumn. Lot of dull/damp and coldish days. Nothing much 'interesting', just loads of days with slight/moderate rainfall amounts, and persistent light-moderate rain. On a personal note, I've got into kitesurfing this year and every weekend recently seems to have no/unfavourable wind, despite good conditions most of the week. This weekend, the wind dies about 6am Saturday and comes back 6pm Sunday! We're not even going to get any nice weather to compensate.. just yet another dull/damp day with light-moderate rain. Autumn can be the best time for water and wind sports and the sea is not especially cold yet, so many people want to make the most of it before several colder months arrive, so I'm not keen on weeks taken up by air temperatures that are normal for January. I've hardly been able to get out anyway.. part of a solution may be to not work 8:30-5 I guess. Anyway while it was nice to see a few frosts just about hold on until dawn here, I'm not sure I like extended 'cold' in Autumn and the type of charts that many in the MOD thread go mad about from about Mid October with undercutting lows when they just give the above conditions here. ECM shows another undercutting low giving yet more damp, useless weather next weekend so probably near the mark.

-3.2C the overnight low and a nice frost lasted long enough to see it before it got rained on (starting at -1.3C). Cold air layer is still hanging on in the valley here. Just crept above freezing to 0.2C and moderate rain is falling. we've had 1.2mm of rain so everything is wet but with 'wet frost' lingering on some surfaces such as cars and the grass in the fields.

I have kind of liked this Autumn so far from the high pressure and sunny days we had in mid September, and then the contrast to very unsettled conditions with showers and some heavy rain. It felt more like a classic Autumn progression than the 'lingering nothingness' we can seem to get. Days like this weekend with its lingering front and dull weather with light/moderate rain are a bit tedious though. Sunshine amounts are a bit low at times and I think some areas further north have done worse with lingering fronts and persistent rain.

Can't complain about the weather over the last 6 weeks here. Not as great as last year but consistently warm, fairly sunny, and it hasn't rained on many days since the 20th June. 22 consecutive dry days up to the 18th July (last July was wetter with a couple more rain days funnily enough). Only 1 day since the 23rd June didn't reach 20C, and only 3 didn't reach 21C. The average here is only just above 21C. It does look like deteriorating now but at least we had a solid 6 week period here, although perhaps not much in it for the weather enthusiast apart from one elevated storm as the main heat of the plume was east of here.

Yes it can be interesting how it varies across the country. We only had 2 maxima of 25.9C here.. (partly due to the onshore wind and the main heat of the plume going to our east anyway). Since then we've had warm and mostly sunny days here this weekend with maxima of 24.1C yesterday and 23.7C so far today (NW offshore breeze). July has been notably dry so far with 11.4mm of rain and just 2 days with any significant rain.. there was 22 days with none at all to the 17th. Fairly sunny too here. So basically a pleasant summer's month with lots of nice weather but quite homogeneous temps, not the contrast/interest of record breaking heat and then a 15-20C temp drop. Though we did get an elevated thunderstorm from the plume. Some spots right on the south coast of Devon and Cornwall (and possibly Dorset) probably haven't seen any max temp drop at all.

Many of these are personal stations rather than official stations (unless you change the filters). My own AWS uploads to there, it's a bit like the Met Office version of Weather Underground. The consistency with this station over the years doesn't look great.. (linking to where I saw a post on another forum rather than just copying the image) http://www.ukweatherworld.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/121929-temperature-watch-thursday-25th-july-2019-uk-all-time-record-falls-cambridge-botanical-gardens-387c/page__view__findpost__p__1089124  As they say.. doesn't look good around 2008! But what others say is true.. if we eliminate all stations for some possible reason how many will we have left? I guess nothing but grass for say 100m around a station often isn't representative of the landscape either.. If Stevenson screens over-read slightly in light winds, then in actual light wind weather they will over-read anyway rather than give the true air temperature? Just shows how hard getting true air temperature readings is especially without aspiration. I guess all we can do is have a certain standard and say that's that. Whether or not I think Cambridge Botanic Gardens should fit that standard on Thursday with the bare soil and shelter from trees to the SE.. I'm not sure. On Wednesday the bare soil looks like it was downwind, but with shelter the air was possibly eddying/wafting around that area sometimes passing over the bare soil and then the Stevenson screen.. but I'm not an expert in how much affect this might have.

Ah well, one day one of these runs that actually bring very hot temps to this part of the country may verify.... rather than just the eastern half of the country as modelled this week, and last summer too in the only plume of 15-20C uppers, and in 2015 when it was 24C here but 36C in London. Also all of the near continent sees record/near record heat again.. while Scandinavia, Shannon in Ireland, Aviemore in Scotland broke records last summer but my hottest days scraped 30C under 13-14C 850s. Not complaining about the great summer but it didn't really match the temps seen in the SW in 76, 83, 90, 03, 06 etc. Harder to achieve here I know but last summer and now this summer there have seen quite a few model runs bringing temps of 33-35C here (e.g. the ECM had two runs of 20C+ 850's and a slack E/NE flow at the surface here with raw maxima 33C, 36C in Somerset), it just hasn't happened. 23-25C my likely temps this week. Should be pleasant at least, though something will probably happen such as the North coast of Norway getting a hotter temperature than I've recorded for decades again.

Can't really complain from a pleasant weather point of view here. Today will be the 20th consecutive maxima above 20C. Ok it's cloudy this morning and we've had the odd mostly cloudy day but I've averaged 8 hours of sun a day this July so far (probably closer to 9 in reality as my sensor misses early sun).

I guess the problem is that the near-surface air on Thursday isn't coming from the continent. (3pm average wind speed - gusts considerably higher as is the wind speed further above the ground). Only on Friday does it show hints of coming from the continent from southern areas, but that has only been the case for a few hours so it is possibly still air that has entered the English Channel via the North Sea.

Maybe we need to look at this from a different angle. Perhaps the atmospheric temps below 850mb are similar to the examples Quicksilver1989 posted above, but the difference here is the exceptional temperatures advected above this? In the Skew T chart posted by knocker, anywhere below about the 850mb level is included in the 'modified' layer. I guess 1.5km atmosphere may be a lot to warm through one or two days of sun (especially when the brisk E wind means the air will have crossed the UK from west to east in less time than this), when you consider 850mb is a level chosen because it is not effected significantly by diurnal heating of the earth's surface. In my mind perhaps the strong 'cap' from the exceptionally high 850hpa temps actually makes the modified layer/inversion more 'robust' and harder to mix out via normal vertical mixing of the atmosphere? So although usually you can add about 15C to the 850hpa level temps in sunny weather away from windward coasts, this is not always true, and perhaps becomes more likely to not be true when the temperature of the ocean surrounding us that heavily modifies the air above it, is actually below the 850hpa temps. I guess we may be unlucky with the dynamics of how this event evolves this time. Friday still looks pretty breezy/gusty I would like temps to be higher than predicted and believe they will at least be the usual few degrees above model predictions, I expect somewhere e.g. Somerset/Bristol will see 30C+ on Friday, and more widely on Saturday as the wind slackens off. I wonder if a Fhoen effect managed to pull down some of those high 850's whether we could see local hotspots somewhere like West Wales?

It seems a stronger/deeper undercut of cool air is modelled than sometimes occurs even with an easterly drift. Maybe also the higher 850's above this make the modified layer/inversion more 'robust' to the normal vertical mixing of the atmosphere that results in a more typical temperature profile? I do remember a few examples of lower maxes than the 850's suggest due to modified air bring brought in from the North Sea (e.g. 11th-12th July 2013, I had a max of just 19.3C and 20.9C under uppers of 12C and 15C (although some of that came via onshore wind from the channel)). A bit disappointing for the enthusiast.. it looked rather interesting with temps into the 30's and severe storm potential (Met Office thought so too), but it's evolved to be a few days of hazy mid level cloud as any storms will miss me, followed by unexceptional temps and no storm potential. Another example not to trust the models into the mid range. I still expect temperatures are being under-done by a few degrees though, and Saturday could get widely into the 30's east of my location.. It will still be very warm and breezy down here for a couple days which is one of my favourite weather types for pleasantness.

Actually the ECM is similar to the GFS in that it only gives low-mid 20's for most until Saturday when the surface flow slackens off. Before that fresh wind off the N Sea causes a layer of modified air to undercut the 850's which are being drawn up from the SE. Knocker and Man With Beard etc have posted charts about this showing why. Even the ICON shows it: As does the UKMO forecasts. I imagine the AGREPE would if it went beyond 6am. It seems to me that all models that have this surface flow actually agree on this? I expect temps are being under-done by the usual few degrees, so we'd see the high 20's at least cross the south and west, before more widely reaching the 30s at the weekend. I wonder what a fhoen effect in Wales or the SW could do though? However I can't just dismiss all these models as wrong just because of their very own 850hpa predictions. The models take account of all the variables far better than my head.

Not posted in a while, but we had a bit of thunder and lightning rumbling past us on Monday associated with this: It then flared up to the west as well in a line that looked impressive on radar. Close enough to hear some distant thunder, but it didn't look that visually impressive from this location. So far we've had 47.5mm this month. 22mm from Monday overnight into Tuesday. We're one of the driest locations around here though as all the convective downpours have avoided here. A weather station in the hills between Exeter and Dartmoor recorded over 50mm from downpours on Monday, with 131mm for the month so far.

Who knows what summer will be like overall.. we've had both good and poor summers after poor starts to June. Yes the next week or so looks poor but beyond that the models etc are unreliable (and some show an improvement anyway). The weather's not been too bad in my particular location, Friday morning was wet, otherwise mostly just some showers around but also a fair amount of usable weather good for outdoor exercise, and ok amounts of sun. Not much sun this afternoon but had thunder rumbling past instead. I can understand the frustration, I am guilty of it myself sometimes especially when looking at heat/storms on the near continent, but there's some over the top moaning and writing off going on. About as silly as writing off a winter because the first half of December was mild. We get temps 10C+ above average at times (e.g Easter, various times last year), so of course you should expect this to be balanced by below average temperatures in the long term (either 10C+ below average, or longer stretches of slightly below average weather), but it seems some don't.