South coasters don't always get it our own way. The sea breeze ruins high max temps on those famous hot summer days. Check out the best we could manage on 3 August 1990, 10 August 2003 and 1st July 2015 for example- the temperature departure from the records set on those days means proper 'south coasters' might just as well have been taking readings on one of the forts in the Solent. We won't want to accept this, of course, and we are quite likely to produce some obscure data to prove we were as hot as Death Valley on those days but actually, we weren't so don't believe us.

I am, of course, only speaking for myself.

maybe in Bertie's little rural forest shack the southcoast is a cold place but meanwhile in the real world..

6th August 2003 

35.2C at thorney (rural) so likely warmer in the cities. Quite a few days above 30C in that heat wave.

No data records for Thorney in 1990 but Solent hit 31.5C, shorham also had several days in that August at 31C, and like most southcoast locations it had temperatures of at least 30C

during August 2003.

But another southcoast location Bournemouth hit 34.1C back in 1990.. But it only managed 31C in 2003.

Southampton top temperature 1990 was 35C, and 33C in 2003.

St Catherine's point which is basically stuck out in the solent even managed 27 in 1990 and 28.7C in 2003.

actually St Catherine's is stuck out in English Channel! 

In the winter it can be colder than many places up north as closer to the continent! 

Langdon Bay is a weird one.  On a clifftop on the corner of Kent that juts into the channel.  The weather station is then on a pole about 20 feet above the coastguard station, making it 400ft of massive exposure to the elements+ 20 foot extra for good measure.

Completely unrepresentative but that's the place the tv graphics and internet computers generate the max temps for - and so are almost always an underestimate by several degrees.  Really its very lazy and not good enough.

Langdon Bay is a woeful place to have an official station sited. Dover needs all the help it can get and using Langdon for their stats does not help their cause. If its 22c in Folkestone you can always guarantee Dover is recording 18-19c.

The Met Office can be absolutely rubbish. The number of stations that have closed over the past 20 years must be very high - Leeds Weather Centre closed in 2003 (reasons unknown), leaving one of the UK's biggest city without an official weather station of any kind. Church Fenton was the most reliable station for here after that - but now that's closed as well! 

The closest Met Office station to Leeds now, is Bingley, which is nearly 300m ASL while I'm at 85m ASL and Leeds city centre is about 20-50m ASL! Even Leeds Bradford Airport - which is an unofficial station - is around 210m ASL and might just be representative for the highest elevations of NW Leeds but certainly not for the majority of the city which is much lower down than that.  Certainly, comparing the temperatures at Church Fenton/Leeds WC/Leeds Bradford, the former two were almost always very similar, with Leeds WC being a bit warmer typically, while Leeds Bradford was substantially cooler than both throughout the year (but more so in summer - when Leeds WC and Church Fenton exceeded 34C on 3 August 1990, Leeds Bradford only reached 30C). Bearing in mind that urban heat islands usually have minimal to no impact on daytime temperatures, mostly or entirely nighttime temperatures.

It's a joke. Other countries have far superior station coverage. They also don't charge an arm and a leg for simple data.

Not being a met office station I don't trust LBA's data anyway. I only live a mile away and think there is something fishy about it. 

E.g using weatheronline climate robot average may max is currently:

15.6c Bingley 267m high on a moor top on the Pennines

16.4c here 10 miles to the east at 187m in a suburban location only 1 m from LBA

17.4c 20 miles further east Linton on ooze , 10m asl rural Vale of York. 

That seems perfect and fits rather well.

 Then you look at LBA  210m on hilltop rural, which states an average May max of 14.6 so far. Total rubbish

Yet another revolting horror show of a Saturday. Grey, raining and hideously windy. It's beyond awful. Supposed to be the best time of year and that is 3/3 of the weekend days I've spent here this month that are disgusting good for nothing disasters. Managed to get about an hour sun yesterday and that has been it for a week. What sort of hellhole is this when at the supposed sunniest time of year you can't get enough vitamin D from the sun to stay healthy? 

The most autumnal spring I can ever recall. It's been vile without a single decent weekend. An utter disaster. Seems that the godawful patterns that have become entrenched in summer since 2007 are now spreading into spring to make that season a write-off as well. At the moment 2016 is ahead of both 2011 and 2014 in the league of rotten years. It's been absolute hell with nothing going for it

I feel the same Ian about Southampton which is probably my nearest long-term weather station and, living only a few miles away from it in the 80s I collected data going back to the 1800s. The Mayflower Park site was unusual and produced some amazing (and disappointing) data; I helped take readings in the late 80s but they kept getting their sunshine recorder stolen. It was a great site as they took 30cm and 100cm soil temps too and in August 1995 the 24°C + at 30cm smashed the 1976 data completely. 

The weather centre that used to be in the High Street was the last to fall in 2000. Some odd recording device stuck on a spur somewhere in Southampton Water meant I never felt the same respect for So'ton weather again.

Are there two different Aberdeens?

Richard said it was grey & raining.

It was a bit dreich in the early morning but the vast majority of the day was dry, warm and sunny albeit it breezy. I guess it shows that it's not a good idea to write off an entire day at 9am. 

It started raining hard yesterday afternoon - a local football match had to be abandoned (Parish Cup since you ask👍) as the pitch flooded. Yet by late evening it was dry and calm - and that's the way it can be up here.
Locally the farmers going flat out - this has been a very dry Spring so far - clouds of dust show the machines moving around in the surrounding fields and farm tracks. It's certainly better than this time last year.

Yet another repellent Sunday. Dull and wet start to the day making 4/4 Sundays in this vile month to see rain

 
Like summer 2007 and 2012 all over again. Enduring crap weekend after crap weekend and before one has finished there's already signs in the model output that the next one will also be foul.

Hard to recall a worse outlook in May before. It's just incredulous. Looks like permacast all week again and surely must be heading towards the dullest second half of May ever recorded. Truly the most rancid spring I have ever endured. Hated every minute of it. From the hideous anticyclonic gloom of March to the cold, wet muck of April and now this grey, depressing May devoid of temperature extremes. The land of eternal autumn.

To get stats like these over such a prolonged period defies any sort of rational explanation:

2 1/2 years of these ridiculously poor and depressing weekends, with Saturday the most disgusting day by far, and rather than the long overdue improvement it's just getting worse and worse with Sunday becoming just as bad too

It didn't brighten up until afternoon so not really the vast majority of the day, and by then it was too late to consider going out for the day anywhere. Sun total was 6.7 hours so not even 50% of the possible, and given the dismal outlook it could be that not a single day in the second half of the month manages more sunshine than cloud which is just shocking for May

Below are maximum temperatures for Aberdeen yesterday from Met O, apparently sun came out at around 1400hrs

Put it this way I spent much of the day in the garden and it was very pleasant and bright even when the sun wasn't shining. In this climate we need to make the most of what we get and enjoy it. There's plenty of opportunity to moan about the bad days.

Yesterday Aberdeen was the 4th warmest location in the UK (max 18.8°C) so it wasn't one of the bad days despite a poor start with rain before 9am. I guess I just prefer the glass half full/make the most of what we get approach.

I guess it is partly to do with how "sunshine hours" are measured with patchy thin cloud with bright sun through it not counting. The bright conditions are evident from the satellite imagery if people don't believe my experiences in my own garden 

http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/weather/satellite/UK/UnitedKingdom/Infraredcolor/premium.htm 

Richard's posts can also be entertaining, and offer "counterpoint"

The sun is out now after the rain here earlier and if we avoid the showers it might turn into another nice day. Failing that there will hopefully be some photogenic convective skyscapes. 

http://53039b5a18097.click2stream.com