What on earth did I think I was doing going for 11C.

:-(

I thought it would be useful to see where we all are in last month's table instead of trying to find April's thread once it's un-stickied.  So here it is.

Met Office Hadley        10.2c.    Anomaly      0.3c.    Provisional  to 7th.

Metcheck                     9.98c    Anomaly     -1.42c.

Netweather                 10.77c.  Anomaly     -0.54c.

Clevedon Weather        11.5c.   Anomaly     -2.5c.

My Mean                      11.0c.  Anomaly       0.9c.     

Met Office Hadley            10.2c.     Anomaly    0.1c.    Provisional to 8th.

Metcheck                        10.20c.   Anomaly   -1.20c.

Netweather                     10.82c.   Anomaly   -0.49c.

Clevedon Weather           11.7c.     Anomaly   -1.07c.

My   Mean                       11.0c.    Anomaly    0.9c.

Met Office Hadley        10.3c.       Anomaly       0.2c.     Provisional to  9th.

Metcheck                    10.19c      Anomaly      -1.21c.  

Netweather                 10.9c.      Anomaly       -0.41c.

Clevedon Weather        11.6c      Anomaly       -1.8c

My    Mean                  11.2c      Anomaly         1.1c.

Met Office Hadley       10.4c.      Anomaly     0.2c.  Provisional to  10th.

Metcheck                   10.55c.    Anomaly    -0.85c.

Netweather    ERROR ON DATABASE 

Clevedon Weather       11.9c.    Anomaly      1.5c.

My    Mean                 11.3c.    Anomaly       1.2c. 

Netweather  11.1c... Anomaly     -0.21c.  

Met Office Hadley      10.8.        Anomaly      0.6c.  provisional to 11th

Metcheck                  10.8c.      Anomaly      -0.55c.

Netweather               11.51c.    Anomaly       0.21c.

Clevedon Weather       12.1c.     Anomaly      -1.3c.

My  Mean                  11.6c.      Anomaly      1.5c.           

Met Office Hadley           11.0c.   Anomaly    0.6c.  Provisional to 12th.

Metcheck                       10.90c.  Anomaly    -0.51c.

Netweather                    11.59c.  Anomaly     0.29c.

Clevedon Weather          12.0c.    Anomaly    -1.4c.

My Mean                11.7c.    Anomaly     1.6c.    

OK so you would expect it to be warmer second half of the month, but currently my mean for the month is running at ~ 9.5 c, around 1.5c below normal. Both March and April were 0.7c below normal and looking at the charts for the next ten days, it looks like it is going to be a cool spring here.

Main reason I'm suffering badly is the predominace of westerly winds off the cold sea and poor daytime maxima. Normally by now we've had a couple of weeks of easterlies in spring with pleasantly warm days.

The end of April model signal for the second half of the month looks to be well wide of the mark this time around, which is somehow unsurprising.

Having said that, JMA did make a last minute turnaround for week 4, suddenly suggesting that high pressure would dominate west and northwest of the UK again... if only I had gone against forecasting lore and placed total faith in that change of emphasis 

Only a rather improbable final-week heatwave can save them.

I went for 11C - wasn't concentrating - but I might end up closer than I thought somehow.

Met Office Hadley       10.9c.      Anomaly      0.5c. Provisional   to   13th.

Metcheck                   10.85c.    Anomaly      -0.56c.

Netweather                11.6.       Anomaly       0.3c.

Clevedon Weather      11.8c.     Anomaly       -1.3c.

My Mean                    11.8c.     Anomaly      1.7c.

I went for 12.34, which was my gut instinct and it's looking like I'm only going to be near that because I'll be in Corfu for a week, as from tomorrow.   

Here's hoping you all get some warm sunshine too and that my gut instinct was right, for the sake of my position in the competition as well.  We're only half way through the month and the output has been known to do a U-turn.  Fingers crossed!

I'd be happy with a toasty 13.9C too! Oh, wait...

Met Office Hadley         10.8c.     Anomaly      0.3c.  Provisional to 14th.

Metcheck                     10.68c.   Anomaly     -0.72c.

Netweather                 11.42c.    Anomaly      0.13c.

Clevedon Weather       11.9c.      Anomaly     -1.5c.

My   Mean                   11.6c.     Anomaly      1.5c.

8.4C (-1.7C) at about halfway through.
This will take some catching up as there's nothing very warm in the outlook next week at least.

Unlike in the south every month here this year has been at or below below recent averages.

The CET is currently just about bang on average when using the 1971-2000 figures according to my calculations. However, the next 10 days look rather chilly. We may see something a little warmer in the last few days of the month but at the moment there is a good chance the CET will finish below 11C (as it did in both 2010 and 2013)

Looking ahead to June the pattern matching suggests a fairly good chance of a warmish month.

If we look at years since 1950 with an April CET of around 9-9.5C and a May CET between 10.7C and 11.5C we have the following matches with their June CET figures and July/Aug CET means

Year      June CET     Jul/Aug CET

1957      15.2C          15.9C
1963      14.9C          14.8C
1980      13.8C          15.3C
1993      15.0C          14.9C
1995      14.3C          18.9C
1997      14.1C          17.8C
2005      15.5C          16.6C
2010      15.2C          16.2C

71-00     14.1C          16.3C

So maybe a fairly warm June but July and August could be disappointing on these figures. 1995 and 1997 stand out as being a bit different. In these years the June CET was only average but July and August were very warm. So maybe we should be hoping for an average rather than a warm June.

The only year in the above list that was in a similar phase of the ONI index (i.e. moving towards a moderate El Nino event) was 1993. In 1993 we were also in a very similar phase of the solar cycle as we are now - i.e. heading down towards a solar minimum.

So I think it is worth keeping an eye in the coming months on whether this year shapes up in a similar way to 1993. The second half of 1993 was particularly cold with a mean CET of just 10.1C (compared to the 1971-2000 figure of 11.5C). We had 5 consecutive months from July to November where the CET was more than 0.5C below the 1971-2000 mean. So after the record breaking warmth of 2014 maybe 2015 will revert to being a rather chilly year. If the rest of 2015 saw temperatures similar to 1993 the CET for 2015 would come in at just 9.2C.

Good gracious - and I went for a CET of 11C. I thought about  a week later I had gone way too low. :-)

Met Office Hadley           10.9c.   Anomaly        0.3c.     Provisional   to 16th.

Met Office Hadley      10.8c.    Anomaly   0.2c.  Provisional to 17th.

10.8c with a possible slight warming towards end of month. Looks possible I will be pretty close with 11c this month! Makes a change - as I'm normally way out!