Autumn has hit here with a bang today. Wet, very windy and 8 degrees. 
Big contrast with the last couple of weeks where even though we have had a ground frost and an air frost the days have been very settled and decent.

Leaves now flying everywhere.

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As far as I know, there has never been a very warm September according to known records which has then been followed by a cold winter.

There has been quite a few instances of that in recent years and last year also kept that trend going.

However, this year has bucked that trend as this month has actually been colder than average overall here and even the CET for this month is probably not any warmer than average if you go by the most recent 30 year average (which is 1991-2020) for that.

That in turn, follows on from what what was our coolest summer since 2015 with a lot of the model output also pointing towards a possible cold October as well.

Given this era of ongoing climate change and global warming, that is very impressive indeed and the fact that we didn't get a warm September this year at least makes me feel as though there is maybe at least a glimmer of hope for our chances of getting a cold winter this time despite the westerly QBO and the fact that we are close to solar maximum.

For that reason, I'm glad that we didn't get a warm September this year although I also wouldn't like it to become too cold too quickly as that could  then easily end up being "it" for our winter which would just be typical of our weather here in the UK.

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Proper autumnal weather today

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A thoroughly miserable day. Just nipped to the shop over the road on my break to get a drink and got soaked. It's just constant rain with no signs of an end.

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Yes, indeed, it's back to Blade Runner climate. 😞

As things stand now, 2024 is going to go down as one of the most tedious years I've experienced for weather. No month particularly stands out as "good" and the constant wetness has completely outstayed its welcome. The only thing I'll remember have been the auroral displays, but they're not technically meteorological so do they really count?

The rest of autumn and December would have to do something very remarkable to redeem this year, and so far it looks like October will continue in the same vain.

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I think they do count to a certain extent as you need clear skies at night to be able to see that.

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I wondered what caused those regular nasty 24 hours unwelcome rains?  Not normal for this climate as normally fast moving LP bring just few hours of rain with sun in between.  There been absent of zonality that bring nice summers and decent winters with shorter rain, more sunshine frosty sunny days in between.  Such a borefest this month and 0/10 as well.  

From a weather interest perspective September is often a benign borefest here. It has been very different this year. A few warm summer like days. Very wet, mostly in the form of heavy convective rainfall. Quite a number of proper thunderstorms and even a couple of light frosts, so a more interesting start to autumn than normal for me

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After the deluge, today was supposed to be dry with sunny spells.

It's been rainy and cloudy.

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Same here very poor forecast as usual.

Compared with the last few years, autumn seems more advanced this year, for early October. Many trees are showing signs of turning, when it normally wouldn't happen for another week or two around here. It makes sense, likely as a result of the poor summer and those cool nights in September.

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As an aside and not surprisingly, UK SSTs are lower than many recent years too at the same time. Especially in the North Sea. About 2 degrees lower than 2023 in some areas.  

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It's yet another vile 21st Century autumn. Utterly horrific with no redeeming features.

As usual only the useless weather forecasts can compete with the inadequacy of the soul destroying weather. Yesterday was meant to be cloudy with sunny spells. It was overcast with periods of pointless drizzly rain. Today was meant to be sunny and it's disgustingly dark, overcast and sunless and it's just started raining. Yet another write-off weekend. It became ridiculous a long time ago. There are no words for it now and haven't been for some time.

This past few weeks are up there with the very worst. Horrendously cold by day, like almost nothing seen in living memory at this time, yet barely any properly cold nights. It's not reached 15C since the 19th September and the final third of September had a mean max of just 11.8C which was substantially colder than any other year since at least 1961 bar 1974. A whole week passed without reaching 12C which never even happened in the 1960s not even in 1962 and 1965 which were the only Septembers of the decade to have a monthly mean max as low as 2024.

At the same time it's failed to drop below 9C four out of the last six nights and the past night had a min of 10.9C but it's still only 12.3C. Zero warmth whatsoever and need the heating on practically all the time which is unheard of this early in the autumn. 21st Century weather hell at it's absolute worst.

Such a tedious, mind-numbing lack of variety and interest. Once again the lack of wind from the westerly half of the compass defies belief. We used to get changeable weather with variable cloud cover giving ever changing skies. Now it's just endless gloom with the odd sunny day thrown in, almost never coinciding with the weekend. Utterly loathsome.

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Lovely, crisp autumnal day today. Perfect for starting the 'putting the garden to bed for the winter' task.

Pity tomorrow is due to be showery through the afternoon here. 

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Yes - perfect here too, Saint - if a bit breezy. I managed to mow the lawn this week - and it looks good. Even the No-mow-May patch. I have noticed several people here "putting their garden to bed" today. We have have our final 2 "green bin" days in October - then that's it until next Spring. There are still a lot of leaves to come down - maybe when the much-discussed high winds arrive. The trees still look remarkably green and healthy. 🌳🌳🌳🌳

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The interesting thing is (at least for the North Sea), that's entirely due to September, which was only 0.1C below the 91-20 average.

At the beginning of September we'd still got warm seas, comparable with 2023. SSTs locally have fallen a whopping 5C since then.

https://www.meteociel.fr/accueil/sst.php?jour=4&mois=9&annee=2024&mode=0&sub=OK®ion= 

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The sun is out here now and it is turning into a lovely autumn day. The trees are also looking very autumnal, with the usual suspects  putting on a good display of colour but also many with leaves already fallen .

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Cool grey with some fine rain in here in Staffs. Very autumnal to say the least but very nice to see the colours everywhere. It feels like we have been treated with a more traditional Autumn and hopefully we get a winter this year. We were snow starved here last winter.

Earliest I’ve ever seen one of these!!! 😆
 

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Yesterday was dreadful and today is even worse. Yet again after some lovely weather during the week we've been subjected to a horror weekend. How much longer can this purgatory go on for? It's just getting worse and worse.

Yet again the sky is completely covered in a dark, dank, ugly, grim and depressing blanket of grey filth. Yet again the temperature failed to drop in to single figures overnight and has barely risen despite it being close to noon.

Two years of Sunday being the dullest day of the week by some margin and it keeps getting worse and worse. This will be the fourth sunless Sunday out of six from this beyond diabolical season. Once again a situation so grim it defies any rational explanation. Just how the hell can this keep happening?

Some years had only four or less sunless Sundays in their entirety. This will be the 11th this year which equals my record total from last year. It's just an unbearable endurance test.

It's not just two years of this extreme Weekend Curse as it was present throughout the vile second half of 2021 in which the autumn had the dullest weekends I've ever recorded with a wretched 2.47 hours daily sunshine average. No other autumn in my 17 years of records fell below 3 hours until now. After today it will be running at 2.69 hours and that's with the dullest half still to come. 

The autumns of the 2000s and 2010s were utterly detestable but the 2020s are just a whole new level of painful, depressing horror. Will this ever end? In a few weeks it will barely matter as the leaves will be off the trees and there will be nothing but months of ugly, dead rot ahead which sunshine alone can't make appealing. 

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Got lucky with the timing of the rain yesterday, which stopped mid-morning and only restarted late afternoon

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We've not had a still and chilly Halloween for a good few years. I'd really appreciate one!

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I've read some ridiculous nonsense over the years and the assertion that this has been a traditional autumn is up there with the most absurd and preposterous. Abject tripe.

It's 21st Century weather hell on steroids. Horrifically unvaried, uninteresting, grotfest garbage. The putrid combination of mild nights, cold days and near non-existent diurnal ranges, under a relentless soul destroying grey blanket feeding in from the North Sea is worse than ever.

Third straight day of totally unusable write-off mind-numbingly tedious soggy gloom and that was preceded by two days with little sunshine so we've now endured a five day spell with fewer than 3 hours of sun. Yet another spell of stagnant permacast hell. Every month of this abhorrent year has featured this bar June and August which were the only months with vaguely normal synoptic set-ups.

A traditional autumn would see a westerly pattern dominate giving changeable varied weather and a mix of warm days and cold nights both of which we almost never see any more. Low pressure stuck over the UK and the resultant vile easterly feed is not remotely traditional yet that is what we have had to endure almost constantly for the past two years and instead of things improving they keep on getting worse and worse.

This year is well on track to have the most sunless days of any year I can ever remember. It's not just the sunless nature but the dark, dank gloom with appalling light levels that make them so much worse than sunless days in the 90s.

Horrendously grim, depressing and completely unliveable.

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I'm inclined to agree with Richard on quite a number of his above points.

October is the month in which we would usually typically expect to be recording our first air frosts of the season and our first single figures maximums of the season.

Yet at the moment, we're struggling to get down to single figures at the moment even during the night, let alone as a daytime maximum temperature despite the fact that today's maximum temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank was only 11.9°C showing us once again that our diurnal temperature ranges are virtually non-existent just now.

Furthermore, the levels of light during the day have been so poor lately that I'm now often having to put my houselights on at or by around teatime and that shouldn't really be the case until the clocks go back at the end of this month.

Looking at the latest model output, I was hopeful that our first air frost and our first single figures maximum might have come within the next few days but the chances of that happening then appears to have diminished somewhat as the upcoming colder snap appears to have been downgraded a bit by the models.

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