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This video captures the day after the actual summer solstice.

Good Morning all I thought i would be nice to have a model thread looking for the first signs of warmth as we fast approach spring, For those who are a bit fed up flogging dead horses in the winter model thread this room is for those who wish to hang out on the dark side and partake in a bit of anti winter talk. PS its not a winter is over moan thread but for serious discussion & views on the next few months weather prospects. Enjoy LO

Just a thought: IF ONLY the Earth rotated on its axis at half its current speed (i.e there were just 183 48-hour days each year) Britain would have much more extreme weather. For starters the long, long days of Summer would get hot given clear skies but clear nights (with a 16-hour period without the Sun) would get colder. The slow rotation of the Earth would have other implications in that the NE and SE Trade winds in low latitudes would be less affected by the Coriolis Effect and would come in more directly from north and south respectively; the easterly component of Trade Winds would be swamped by the stronger heating/cooling of land-masses on a diurnal basis crating stronger sea-breezes with westerly (as well as easterly) components. Hence the need for Westerlies in higher-latitudes to counterbalance tropical and polar easterlies (to satisfy Conservation of Angular Momentum laws) would be much-reduced and so blocking-highs with cold north or north-east winds would be much more frequent in the winter-half-year in the latitudes covered by Britain: Depressions would often be confined to the North Atlantic and they may still be intense but small in area of extent; it would more often be the case that blocking highs in the Arctic would entrench cold over Europe so that moisture would only come up against very cold air leading to snow over Britain, France and Norway. This set-up would lead to frequent frigid NE winds, clear skies and extremely low-temperatures occurring during the 32-hour long winter nights, occasional snowfalls would lead to a covering of snow reflecting away the weak sunshine during 16-hour winter days so they would still be very cold. The Arctic would be a bit less cold than nowadays in winter owing to the more-persistent loss of cold airmasses (compared to nowadays) but clear skies with 48-hour darkness each day would counterract this to some extent by strengthening radiative heat loss. For Britain, persistent NE winds from the Russian Arctic would still lead to the North Sea freezing over and clear still nights would lead to widespread minima below -40C (-50C in parts of Scotland). Both day and night would be below -20C across the entire country in December and January. Spring would warm slowly with prevailiing icy NE winds maintaining the reflective snow-cover and the frozen North Sea would only slowly thaw and warm up: Typical April conditions would be long nights falling to -25C in Manchester and -30C in the upper Dee Valley in Aberdeenshire with longer sunny days but with icy NE winds reaching 5C in Manchester and -5C in the upper Dee Valley (Aberdeenshire), so the snow would thaw very slowly from the lowlands (freezing at night largely undoing this). The subtropical high would form further north in summer because a strong subtropical jet would then struggle to form south of 50N; this would guarantee more fine and sunny weather in summer with the very long sunny days getting really hot but the still long hours of night getting cold and causing ground-frost in southern Britain. Hot days above 30C would be widespread but close to the North Sea (which would still be cold after being frozen hard in winter) sea breezes would ensure maxima above 15C were a rarity in places like Bridlington and Berwick on Tweed. Minima below 0C would be common in the Peak District, the Yorkshire Dales and in much of Scotland and permafrost would be extensive across the North Pennines and much of inland Scotland. Rain would be unknown in the summer months and savage-drought would be the normal state of affairs over Britain. The change of the radiation balance to negative in September would be associated with less wind and rain but more high-pressure from Arctic Scandinavia: Hard night frosts would return with avengeance with more than 24 hours uninterrupted strong radiation cooling on clear nights with icy NE airstreams; temperatures below -10C would occur at times almost anywhere. Long sunny days of almost 24 hours would be 15 to 20C with light NE winds across the English Midlands, much colder in Scotland and NE England though. October with weaker sun and even longer nights would bring days (as well as nights) below freezing point though occasional depressions pushing into the west would yield occasional snowfalls as milder Atlantic air pushes against cold air over Britain [the North Atlantic would not be so mild; cold airmasses from the Arctic would cross it more frequently whilst warm air from south of 45N will rarely reach it because the subtropical high-pressure belt would be forming much further north- as such the North Atlantic Drift would no longer bring warm surface waters from the Gulf of Mexico]. So October would get very cold quickly with snow-cover established over the whole of Britain (not a lot though because cyclonic activity would be infrequent); nights below -30C would occur on the stillest very-long nights following more direct Arctic blasts in Scotland and parts of northern England by the end (the 15th) of October. And so another long brutal winter would set in across Britain; by November the North Sea would have frozen over entirely........ Now, if only we could find a way of halving the Earth's rate of rotation!!!