Sunday and Monday's forecasts for yesterday and today have proved a disaster for the BBC, the Met Office and the models they use. !t will go It will go  down in my book as some of the worst forecasting short term by models and forecasters alike for some time. I paid a lot of attention to detail late Sunday night and Monday morning. The forecast was for Tuesday onwards was rain spreading in from the East affecting East Anglia (mainly the northern part) and then N.E and Northern England. No mention of it being particularly heavy. The South coast was predicted as being warm, dry and sunny on Tuesday then hazy sunshine on Wednesday with the risk of some showers later. So I booked my trip for some photography in the New Forest and Arne and set out at 5.00am. Tuesday morning was indeed glorious there but it became cloudy and cool after lunch and was raining by late afternoon. It then rained most of the night and pretty much all day Wednesday with a few short drier spells. Thick cloud no sunshine, not even hazy. Meanwhile, back in Essex the rain set in early and didn't stop. Tuesday and Wednesday giving my highest 24 hr total of the year - 30.5mm. And the BBC are still pretending it didn't happen in the south with tonight's graphic summarising today showing the rain and front moving north with the south of England being shown as dry. Frankly shocking.

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Use your window to check outside and plan for today that the max you can do.  Apps, models and forecasts are very rubbish and unreliable.

As I am typing this feeling cosy warm indoors at 21-22C thanks to the conservatory that still warm up under cloudy weather that reading 25-26C.  Without that would be shivering indoors at 16-19C when outside cold 13-14C.

Average temps when cloudy like today at 25-26C
Rain all day like yesterday hit 24C as it became brighter despite nasty rain won't stop.
Sunny spells to polluted haze 35-36C.
Full wall to wall azure blue skies not yet known but happened near that on last BH weekeend hit 37C when outside was only 16C.

Yet again what should be the best time of year has been reduced to a catastrophic write-off, with endless revolting conditions considerably more vile than would ever be expected at the worst time of year which used to be November to January. 

Last Spring was just off the scale of horrors. Throughout April and May the nine Sundays averaged a spectacularly grim 1.6 hours of sunshine. With an average of 6.2 hours and standard deviation of 1.61 that was so far outside the normal range of variation it shouldn't have happened. Yet one year on we have endured a virtual repeat. A repeat of something that has an infinitesimally probability of happening just sums up the sickening horror of the garbage we are being subjected to without rhyme nor reason. With today looking like another zero sun day the average will end up barely any higher at 1.64 hours 🤬

Last years garbage Sunday totals:

3.7, 0, 2.7, 0.2, 0, 0, 3.2, 0, 4.6  🤢🤢🤢

and this year just more of the same ludicrous soul destroying filth that nowhere else on earth has to endure. Even the 7th April was crap as the 6 hours was mostly early and late and asides from that no other Sunday even managed 4 hours

6.0, 2.6, 0, 0, 1.1, 3.7, 1.4 🤢🤢🤢

Being constantly deprived of enjoyment and unable to do the things you want is just torture. A living hell in a zero quality of life hell hole. Bet even the Faeroe Isles have seen a sunny sunday during this time period.

It's not just the lack of sun. It's the rotten, filthy, claggy, murky gloom. The shockingly bad light levels and poor air quality that is purely a 21st Century phenomenon. Not even the worst Mays would have seen the stinking murky crud that has contaminated both this month and last May. It's truly inhuman having to endure this. Every time you leave the house it feels like being suffocated by a giant sponge.

This will be the first time that successive Mays have failed to reach 175 hours sun since 1972/73 but I can guarantee that that awful pair will have been nowhere near the same endurance test to have to suffer. There just wouldn't have been this vile murky clag day after day like nothing on earth we ever endured. You can tell that from the minima which in each year were around 5C where this year has seen an unprecedented 9C and it has been so excruciatingly awful lately it hasn't dropped out of double figures since Wednesday despite there being zero daytime warmth to speak of. It's only 10.4C now yet still didn't drop below 10C overnight and this is supposed to be the time of year that diurnal ranges are at there highest 🤬

Thursday saw a fresh all time low reached with a record number of sunless days for consecutive springs. 40 days beat the previous record of 39 in 1936/37 and 1983/84 and the poison just marches on relentlessly with today on course to be number 41 and 22 of the spring. Just three more now needed to equal the spring record of 25 in 1969 and 1983 🤮

Also going to be the first time since 1963/64 that sunshine has been below average in all six months of consecutive springs and also the first time since 1967-70 that four consecutive Mays failed to reach 200 hours. An absolute garbage run of awful springs, particularly May which has now seen below average sunshine 8 years out of 11. The one month of the year that you could rely on to produce a lot of decent weather completely spoiled 🤢

You just can't understate how repulsive the past 21 months have been. An utter car crash of consistent exceptionally poor weather that has been going on so long I think we can now say it even beats the notoriously bad periods in the 1870s and 1920s for sustained unrelenting hell. It's extremely worrying that there seems to be no end in sight to this repellent easterly dominated purgatory 🤮


 

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I'm with you Richard. A terrible Spring here and the lack of sun and torrents of rain barely get mentioned any more. I think Edinburgh folk just accept this as the norm now and wander round in a 'drookit' state.

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It was interesting heading into the deep south yesterday... at home on Sheppey it's been a much warmer and rather drier than average month so far, and all the moans about the weather seem to me to be as if moaning about a different country.

The difference between Reading and Sheppey was much more than it normally is - far more cloud around in Reading, along with some sunny spells, lower dewpoints, some actual wind (which is hard to come by in the summer IMBY) and generally a typical late spring feel to things. I'd have far less complaints if that was what we had on Sheppey, but we don't... the north Downs and the proximity of warmer than average sea in the other direction create a microclimate it seems, warmer and sunnier (and less windy, but not in winter when it'd be handy to have less wind).

I guess that's part of the reason why there are so many former resort towns down here... the weather really is markedly "better" (as most people would see it) in the summer half of the year.

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According to the 1991-2020 averages, the spring is normally our driest season of the year on average but on this occasion, it's been the wettest season of the year so far by quite a considerable amount.

Every single month during this spring has brought more than 100 mm of rain to Edinburgh Gogarbank with the top 3 wettest months of the year all occurring during this spring.

In addition to that, each month during this spring has been even wetter than its preceding month with this month being the wettest of the lot.

I would imagine that this is possibly one of the consequences of climate change (although I don't in any way want to get involved in that particular debate). With that, we get more really dry spells with those being even more intense with even worse drought conditions increasing the concerns over possible water shortages at that time. In recent years, this has even led to wildfires in locations such as Arthur's Seat in the centre of Edinburgh, so that is something which we at least won't have to worry about for now.

When it does rain though, we are always going to know all about with increasing amounts of flooding and despite those more intense droughts and drier spells at times, our actual overall amounts of rain are clearly still going to increase over time as a result of ongoing climate change which means that as the air continues to warm up, it can then hold more water vapour which then becomes a recipe for increased amounts of rain over time. 

In addition to that though is the constant lack of sunshine which is preventing us from getting the full benefits of the lighter nights at this time of year. Normally, May is our sunniest month of the year on average but we're now almost at the end of the month and at Edinburgh Gogarbank, we've still only had around a half of our 1991-2020 May average sunshine.

To date, we still haven't had a sunnier than average month since January and we're clearly not going to get a sunnier than average month this time either. After this month, we will still be a further month away from reaching the halfway point in the year, yet it's already looking odds on now that this year will be duller than average in the end because in order to get a sunnier than average year, you really need to be getting some decent sunshine totals during this lightest period of the year and that is clearly not happening.

In fact, we still haven't even managed to get a single day with 12 or more hours of sunshine during this year so far and we have to go all the way back to April to find our sunniest day of the year so far.

Absolutely shocking!!😡🤢

Finally, we are now less than a week away from the start of meteorological summer and to get what is normally regarded as a "decent" summer, it needs to drier and sunnier than average in addition to being warmer than average. As for the summer as whole, there should be no problems with it being warmer than average but the models are suggesting that this might not even be the case, at least to begin with.

As for everything else though, it is going to take a very drastic change in the overall pattern in order for us to have even the remotest change of getting a decent summer this year and according to the latest model output, there's no real sign of that just yet so this isn't exactly boding well for the coming summer as it stands just now.
 

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Quite unpleasant with drizzly showers at the moment and a chilly 11.8c.

I just got back to Bristol this evening from Gdansk & Sopot (N. Poland on Baltic sea) where it was +30.0c with sun and it rarely reaches such temperatures but to reach this high in May is very unseasonal for Gdansk. So coming back to this wet weather feels depressingly cold and miserable! What shite of a climate the UK has eh!?

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Not a bad BH weekend overall. Saturday was lovely (as forecast); Sunday a mixed bag; Monday much better than forecast as the showers stopped by lunchtime and we had a pleasant afternoon.

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Not so on Monday in Fulham pretty chilly with showers and lack of sun 

Gloat or moan? At any rate it was rather a shock to move from breakfast in shirtsleeves with sunshine at 24C in Crete to supper in Britain in a thick sweater indoors, and the outside conditions 14C with rain.

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It was 30c in Gdansk, Poland on 27th May! Came back to 13c with rain! yuck! 🤢

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