Scotland/Alba weather discussion - March 2021 onwards

[Hawesy]

The May misery continues. After just 3mm of rainfall in April, the May total is standing at 135mm or 276% of the May average (Leuchars figures). Oh and it’s also been cold with below average sunshine. Is it June yet? 

[Mr Frost]

1 hour ago, Hawesy said:

The May misery continues. After just 3mm of rainfall in April, the May total is standing at 135mm or 276% of the May average (Leuchars figures). Oh and it’s also been cold with below average sunshine. Is it June yet? 

Woeful isn’t it? 

This was the rainfall amount anomaly up until 18/05. 
Will be interesting to see the final statistics at month end.  
Current total here is roughly 95% of the May average.

 

Below average (temperatures) month is also guaranteed now.

This sums it all up! 

Scotland sets ‘shocking and unusual’ weather record

NEWS.STV.TV

---

Temperatures across the country fail to rise above 20C by this stage of May for first time in nearly 40 years.

We (Scotland) have not officially registered 20C this year! Last time that happened was…1983!

Good news is we finally have some decent weather ahead - especially Thursday to Sunday. (West/Central parts warmer/sunnier throughout this period - extending elsewhere through the weekend)
Only downside at the moment is the threat of rain/drizzle on Friday for a wee while.

20C should finally be reached on Sunday - Glasgow/Moray looks a good shout on current output. 

So a decent final few days of May at least! 
I don’t think we will forget Spring 2021 in a hurry - especially April! 

Hopefully everyone enjoys some warmth/sunshine later in the week/weekend - it’s about wibbleing time! 

Oh and lovely picture @chemikal - love Ben Lomond…from a distance! Been up on the summit twice - never again though as it’s easily the busiest Munro in all of Scotland! Reminded me of walking up/down Argyle Street (Glasgow city centre) - heaving with people! 

All the best! 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Mr Frost

[Norrance]

Rain hasn't stopped all day. Steady and occasionally heavy particularly overnight. Wind has died a bit and has changed to a Westerly but still chilly and another sub double figure May day coming up unless something changes in the next few hours. Max so far today was 9.3C.  

Edited May 24, 2021 by Norrance
Sp

[Quinach]

Another vile day to add to the endless list for this spring.

Heavy rain off and on all day thanks to that low pressure pirouetting over us.

That I suppose allowed the winds to remain light, max of 9.0c.

Even the garden seems to think the summer is not happening, its fast forwarded to autumn with the appearance of mushrooms in part of the lawn - another first as never seen these appear except in October.

The warm up at the end of the week cannot come soon enough.

[Northernlights]

Another damp cool day (9c Max) but tried to brighten up in the afternoon . So doing a bit of paperwork and swapping passwords onto a new laptop. Trying to load new programmes for cattle records and  accounts excruciatingly slow (5 Hours) with our high speed broadband down copper wires in the country. Have resorted to SRUC sending me a USB stick with the livestock record programme on it and phoning Australia in the morning about the accounting programme which has lost  a complete year. Being a grumpy old farmer I miss a CD rom to put on programmes. Technology moves on.

Edited May 24, 2021 by Northernlights

[Kirkcaldy Weather]

Really heavy rain with 20mm between midnight and half 5 this morning, 23.19mm total today. 

[NUT]

Radar starting to perk up maybe can break the grumbly streak today (weekend maybe looking lovely.........)?

[Sunshineandshowers84]

Well from EK I can see aggressive looking sky to my north east. Judging by radar it will be the showers over North Lanarkshire/Falkirk areas.

[Quinach]

A much better day.

Damp to start with but the rain stayed off after 9am.

Overcast with just the briefest of sunny intervals.

Light winds in general, max of 12c.

The weather is always fascinating, whilst we shiver elsewhere temperature records are being broken almost daily...

 

 

[NUT]

Already a lot warmer than yesterday (not any brighter mind) and still a risk of a few showers today things should start kicking in fully from tomorrow

[Norrance]

Mikder here too but with steady rain now rather than patchy light showers dying out as forecast. 12.9C.

[Northernlights]

Another wet morning but slowly getting milder at 11c first thing.  New bull arrived yesterday meet Marvin.

[Methuselah]

33 minutes ago, Northernlights said:

Another wet morning but slowly getting milder at 11c first thing.  New bull arrived yesterday meet Marvin.

As a farmer, NL, can you answer me one question: Why on earth does the UK need to import lamb & mutton from Australia? Where's the environmental sense in that?

If there's one food-animal we have in plentiful supply, here, it's sheep!

Edited May 26, 2021 by Ed Stone

[Northernlights]

11 minutes ago, Ed Stone said:

As a farmer, NL, can you answer me one question: Why on earth does the UK need to import lamb & mutton from Australia? Where's the environmental sense in that?

If there's one food-animal we have in plentiful supply, here, it's sheep!

No environmental sense and no economic sense either.

Sheep trade here is at record high levels just now the opposite of what was supposed to happen after Brexit not before time when just a couple of years ago old breeding ewes were worth a pound or less. World population not getting any less and we are onlly just 60% self sufficient  in most farm commodities except sheep where we are sometimes just over 100%. Thousands of cattle and sheep were disposed of last autumn fearing the worst from Brexit and so far it hasn"t happened with domestic prices going up . Milk is struggling because of reduced demand and pressure from the supermarkets but it  can"t go on forever as they have lost all their eastern european milking staff and our now advertising for UK folk to do the milking a bit of a forlorn hope . Poultry and pigs with their  quick breeding cycles are more plentiful on the home market so prices easier there. A tough winter coming up with college advisors already saying forage/grain crops are compromised with the very cold and now wet spring

 

On the Farming Forum the other night I stirred the pot by saying that our politicians just wanted cheap food to keep the masses happy .An Aussie farmer replied say we couldn"t afford their lamb or beef  plus cost of shipping as it was trading just now at record highs and they had plenty of outlets in China and SE Aisia. Britain is pretty friendless in the world right now even the Americans won"t do a trade deal until they see the direction of travel in N  Ireland so personally I am not to bothered about trade deals and more concerned about the effects the weather will have especially on the world grain markets.

[Methuselah]

12 minutes ago, Northernlights said:

No environmental sense and no economic sense either.

Sheep trade here is at record high levels just now the opposite of what was supposed to happen after Brexit not before time when just a couple of years ago old breeding ewes were worth a pound or less. World population not getting any less and we are onlly just 60% self sufficient  in most farm commodities except sheep where we are sometimes just over 100%. Thousands of cattle and sheep were disposed of last autumn fearing the worst from Brexit and so far it hasn"t happened with domestic prices going up . Milk is struggling because of reduced demand and pressure from the supermarkets but it  can"t go on forever as they have lost all their eastern european milking staff and our now advertising for UK folk to do the milking a bit of a forlorn hope . Poultry and pigs with their  quick breeding cycles are more plentiful on the home market so prices easier there. A tough winter coming up with college advisors already saying forage/grain crops are compromised with the very cold and now wet spring

 

On the Farming Forum the other night I stirred the pot by saying that our politicians just wanted cheap food to keep the masses happy .An Aussie farmer replied say we couldn"t afford their lamb or beef  plus cost of shipping as it was trading just now at record highs and they had plenty of outlets in China and SE Aisia. Britain is pretty friendless in the world right now even the Americans won"t do a trade deal until they see the direction of travel in N  Ireland so personally I am not to bothered about trade deals and more concerned about the effects the weather will have especially on the world grain markets.

Thanks NL, I do wonder (sometimes!) if the whole world's going mad: we have more sheep than people, I think, and yet we still import their meat from here, there and everywhere . . . so, why the heck is sheep meat so bloody expensive? Sometimes (well, most if the time, to be honest!) I think we're being run by imbeciles?

Edited May 26, 2021 by Ed Stone

[Northernlights]

2 hours ago, Ed Stone said:

Thanks NL, I do wonder (sometimes!) if the whole world's going mad: we have more sheep than people, I think, and yet we still import their meat from here, there and everywhere . . . so, why the heck is sheep meat so bloody expensive? Sometimes (well, most if the time, to be honest!) I think we're being run by imbeciles?

Too many middlemen  adding their mark up after sheep go to abbatoirs run mostly in this country by  a monopoly from Ireland in the first instance. Then you have the butchery done either in a factory or in independant butchers shops where a lot of cost is added. (Never seen a poor butcher yet same as farmers?)The proportion of the total sale value going back to the farmer is fairly small.Thats the reason for an explosion in farm shops selling direct to the public retaining more of the value on farm.An auctioneer told me last years first  lockdown resulted in a huge demand for better cuts for home cooking and barbecues and that helped the live trade and sheep and cattle have been  very scarce ever since and after this terrible spring will be short again with reports that knackery lorries are picking up around fifty dead lambs/farm from some of the higher areas inland from me where there is absolutely no spring grass as yet with forage supplies exhausted now.

[Methuselah]

29 minutes ago, Northernlights said:

Too many middlemen  adding their mark up after sheep go to abbatoirs run mostly in this country by  a monopoly from Ireland in the first instance. Then you have the butchery done either in a factory or in independant butchers shops where a lot of cost is added. (Never seen a poor butcher yet same as farmers?)The proportion of the total sale value going back to the farmer is fairly small.Thats the reason for an explosion in farm shops selling direct to the public retaining more of the value on farm.An auctioneer told me last years first  lockdown resulted in a huge demand for better cuts for home cooking and barbecues and that helped the live trade and sheep and cattle have been  very scarce ever since and after this terrible spring will be short again with reports that knackery lorries are picking up around fifty dead lambs/farm from some of the higher areas inland from me where there is absolutely no spring grass as yet with forage supplies exhausted now.

What confuses me is that, despite our having fields full of sheep and lambs, we still 'need' to import sheep-meat from the antipodes. And then, pay through the nose for it!

[Northernlights]

1 hour ago, Ed Stone said:

What confuses me is that, despite our having fields full of sheep and lambs, we still 'need' to import sheep-meat from the antipodes. And then, pay through the nose for it!

A lot of this is related to old connections through Commonwealth/Colonial days and also to supply the market outwith our breeding season troughs in late  autumn/winter. Lambing starting from Xmas onwards nowadays to May is helping to iron out these troughs

China too is helping to remove a lot of Austrailian /New Zealand Meat from the market just now and is now controlling a lot of inputs into agriculture and industry. They control the worlds fertiliser markets and are battling hard with the Americans to control other industrial inputs. Effectively there is a world economic war going on just now and the UK  in my opinion is a very small player in this now

[Quinach]

2 hours ago, Northernlights said:

China too is helping to remove a lot of Australian /New Zealand Meat from the market just now and is now controlling a lot of inputs into agriculture and industry. They control the worlds fertiliser markets and are battling hard with the Americans to control other industrial inputs. Effectively there is a world economic war going on just now and the UK  in my opinion is a very small player in this now

The west tends to look down on and are arrogant towards China - big mistake as they will be the leading superpower in the decades ahead.  The US is effectively bankrupt, with China even owning more USA debt than Japan (the thing to watch is how China is trying to usurp the Petrodollar system with the Yuan, remove that and the value of the dollar will plummet with the ramifications that has for the US economy).  China plays the long game in politics and economics, for example in O&G they will happily invest in areas in Africa that are off limits for western oil companies due to politics and/or perceived economic and HSE risk - also look at the Covid Vaccine programs worldwide and how China is helping the likes of Africa and Near-Asia whilst Western governments basically ignore them.  All down to building up favours as resources get rarer in the future.

Anyway, back to weather.

In that regard Aberdeenshire again excels in Permagloom™ productivity with another day of grey murk.  At least it was dry and a bit warmer with a max of 11.1c with light winds.

Landscape looking a bit greener now...

[Norrance]

After a wet morning it brightened up this afternoon with some sunny intervals. Milder too with a max of 15.7C and still 12.5C now so a mild night to come. Quite a colourful sky to the West now but not sure how it comes out in the photo.

[NUT]

Cloud's starting to clear should (eventually) be a crackerjack of a afternoon and the next few days after not looking too shabby either

[SW Saltire]

Cracker, 19c in the tropical South 

Edited May 27, 2021 by SW Saltire

[NUT]

Looked like we we're in for a crackerjack of a afternoon..........not quite worked out like that (the cloud been more stubborn than thought)

[Ravelin]

Took a while for the cloud to break up but in the end it hit a high of 18.9C according to the weather station just up the road. The bees certainly approved as I came home to find a swarm in one of the trees, the first this year. Quite a small one and easy enough to get to, so they are in a small hive now. Would rather not have any more, especially this weekend as we're off to Pitlochry with the motorhome, but I suspect it'll not be the last.

[Northernlights]

Dull dreich drizzly here first thing  this morning but mild at 14c. Trying to brighten up now at midday.  Update early pm it cleared to blue skies and 15c. Finally starting to dry up a bit.Loks as though weekend should be busy in the fields with sprayers and neep sowers. A lot of crops have  yellow waterlogged patches a bit of manganese/copper will help the colour . A herbicide to control the weeds should help to make them look a bit better as well.