Temperatures were just a little below average, a cold spell in the first half of the month was cancelled out by a cold spell in the second. Rainfall was below average in the east and well below average south of 53°N. Sunshine was close to or a little above average in most places, but it was dull month across Northern Ireland and NW Scotland.
June 2024 – Weather Summary Read More »
The mean temperature for June 2024 in Central England was 14.0°C, which was -0.6°C below the 1991-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., and as far as I can make out, the coldest June since 2015.
June 2024 – The coldest in Central England since 2015 Read More »
I’ve never added any animation to my Daily Central England temperature application up until now, so I thought as the weather today is still pretty dreich, I would put that right today. It’s amazing how the simple animated GIF is still going after all these years, it was declared dead many years ago at the same time as Javascript, but it’s simple and produces compact files, and there’s still not anything out there to replace it.
21st century summers in Central England Read More »
Apologies for the late arrival of this article. I wrote the code to identify the earliest and latest date a temperature in Central England achieved a given threshold way back in March, but I must have got fed up with it happening in 2024, so forgot all about it! In this case it was a maximum of 20°C that I was interested in, and it finally managed it this year on the 10th of May, which by coincidence is the average date it’s done this since 1878. Having said that, because this date is getting earlier, if you use a linear trend the first 20°C should happen by the 28th of April these days, so it’s really 12 days late this year. Not a lot of people know that. 😉
Earliest 20°C day in Central England Read More »
The UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy are going overboard at the moment about high UVUV Ultraviolet (UV) light is electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths of 10–400 nanometers, shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. levels and the dangers of getting sunburnt. It’s a bit ironic, because so far (June 14th) 2024 has seen the coolest and cloudiest start to a meteorological summer in at least 23 years. What’s puzzling is that they never mention in their forecast that UV levels can be considerably higher on a mountain than on lower ground. I used AIAI Artificial intelligence is intelligence - perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information - demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. in the form of ChatGPT to confirm what I already suspected. I well remember two colleagues at RAF Kinloss coming to work for a night shift, both as red as a beetroots, after a days hillwalking on Ben Wyvis on a sunny day. Back in the 1980’s people weren’t so concerned about the risk of skin cancer from getting sunburnt, but today skin cancer are much more common.😮
Fact Check : Are UV levels higher on a mountain? Read More »
Forgive me if you already have seen this, but I’ve just noticed a rather clever new feature on Windy.com concerning weather radar. You can now extrapolate forward the latest weather radar imagery by up to an hour to see just how quickly rain or snow from a shower or frontal system is moving, and when it will reach you. Perhaps they must use the 850 hPahPa A Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar wind speeds and direction to steer the pixels. The Met OfficeUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy do a similar thing with actual and NWPNWP Numerical weather prediction uses mathematical models of the atmosphere and oceans to predict the weather based on current weather conditions. forecast data, but it’s rather jerky at T+0, and just underlines the disconnect between the two at times. I’ve also noticed that you can now overlay isobars and show SFERICs which is also very useful.
I’ve been involved with developing new and innovative ways to visualise weather information ation for nearly 30 years now, and I’ve never seen anything as obvious and useful as this functionality. I’ve always been a fan of Windy.com, and one day I’ll pluck up the courage to subscribe, the only thing that prevents this is that I’m a tight fisted Yorkshire man.
Use the slider in the above image to see what I mean or try it out live at Windy.com.
Spring 2024 saw a very warm spell from approximately the 8th to the 20th of May with anomalies across northern Scotland of +7°C, followed quickly by a cold spell, from the 4th to 12th of June with anomalies of -5°C. The Met OfficeUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy thought little of both spells, despite May ending up the warmest since records began in 1883. They argued that the cold spell wasn’t that unusual, or as cold as the temperatures in many recent years, despite the fact that snow fell on ground above 800 M in Scotland for at least five consecutive days. They didn’t seem to want to factor in that the cold spell had occurred at a time when global temperatures were 1.54°C above the pre-industrial age or that North Atlantic SSTSST Sea Surface Temperatures are at record levels. What a strange attitude to take. 😮
The warm and cold spell of spring 2024 Read More »
Of all months, June in Central England is the slowest to catch on to the fact that global temperatures have increased by close to, if not more than 1.5°C since the start of pre-industrial times. This is certainly true for the seven day period between the 5th and 11th of June in 2024, which was 17th coldest in the daily series that started in 1772. The mean temperature of 11.34°C was 2.31°C below the 1961-1990 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. which made it the coldest period since 2001.
The cold spell of 5-11th June 2024 in Central England Read More »
Anyone who is fortunate to have a Davis Vantage Pro2 AWSAWS Automatic Weather Station as I do, know only too well, that the software it comes with doesn’t present the climate data it collects at all well. I’ve made a new unit in my VP DelphiDelphi Delphi is a general-purpose programming language and a software product that uses the Delphi dialect of the Object Pascal programming language and provides an integrated development environment for rapid application development of desktop, mobile, web, and console software. application, to graph temperature data a little more clearly. I recently came across some LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. data for StrathpefferStrathpeffer Strathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469., I don’t think it’s been calculated from real weather data but probably derived from gridded monthly climate data the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy make available. I mention this LTA data because it enables me to calculate anomalies, something dear to my heart. Anomalies let you gauge how the climates been performing, whether a day has been hot or cold, or a month or season wet or dry, in your own back garden.
The lower chart shows mean anomalies for the last 90 days for Strathpeffer, and clearly shows why May 2024 was a record warm month in northern Scotland. The top chart shows temperatures for the last year, and by dragging the yellow coloured box you can replot the lower graph to show the anomalies for the period you are interested. The width of the yellow box can also be adjusted with the mouse as well.
Next unit precipitation.😉
Davis Vantage Pro2 Read More »
A warm dry month with no frosts and mild nights.
Sunshine a little below average, despite some sunny days.
May 2024 – Strathpeffer Read More »
You may have noticed the media backlash to this weeks news that May 2024 was the warmest in the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. since at least 1883. I think the ferocity of the backlash surprised most people at the BBCBBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, based at Broadcasting House in London. It is the world's oldest national broadcaster, and the largest broadcaster in the world by number of employees, employing over 22,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 19,000 are in public-sector broadcasting. and Met OfficeUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
For the first half of May, the warmest of the weather occurred across northern Scotland, and because the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and BBC have a seemingly inbuilt reluctance to report extremes for places other than in the south of England, news of +6°C anomalies didn’t get much of a mention, either on Twitter/X, in YouTube videos or in TV forecasts.
Here are just a few of my Tweets from the middle of May to try and highlight the exceptional early warmth across the Highlands:
I believe one of the main reasons for the backlash is the inability of the UKMO and BBC to monitor evolving climate stories across the UK. If the UKMO had incorporated climate news, similar to some of my Tweets, at the start of their ‘Deep Dives’, ’10 Day Trends’ or video forecasts, and the BBC had done the same in ‘Weather For The Week Ahead’, then news of a record warm May might not have come as such a big surprise!
Media backlash to warmest May on record Read More »
According to gridded climate data from the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. was warmer and wetter than average, as well as being warmer and duller than average in Spring [MAMMAM Meteorological Spring comprising the months of March, April & May] of 2024.
Spring [MAM] 2024 – UK Correlations Read More »
May was a generally quiet month with four or more cycles of cyclonic and anticyclonic spells, as much positive meridional than it was negative, with more negative zonality than positive. It’s no wonder that the mean pressure pattern for the month was slack.
May 2024 – Objective LWT Read More »
Mean pressure across IONAIONA Islands Of North Atlantic. Yes I know there's an island called Iona, but this is so I don't have to use the term 'British Isles' when referring to the whole of Ireland and the UK. in May was around 3 hPahPa A Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar below the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. In fact lower than average pressure was strung out westward across the central Atlantic all the way to the United States. Mean higher than average pressure persisted across Scandinavia (+6 hPa) resulting in a very slack pressure pattern across the country.
May 2024 – Mean Pressure & anomalies Read More »
In my DIYDIY Do It Yourself Global Temperatures series that I calculate from gridded reanalysis temperature, May 2024 has come in with a record mean temperature of 10.7°C that’s 0.35°C above the 1991-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO..
May 2024 – Another record warm month globally Read More »
Latest ECMWFECMWF The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data. global temperatures are still at record levels as of the 1st of June at +1.69°C above the pre-industrial LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. levels. I mistakenly thought that the demise of El NinoEl Niño El Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific this spring into the neutral zone might cool things down globally, but I was wrong again. We are now one year on from when this unprecedented surge in global temperatures began, and there’s little doubt that will mean 12 months of consecutive records.
1 June 2024 – Latest daily global temperature anomalies Read More »
May 2024 was a record warm month in Scotland. In the north of Scotland mean temperature were +3.5°C above the 1991-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., and beat the previous record set in 1889 by 1.6°C. The UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy say the high mean temperatures were down to high overnight minimum temperatures, that may be true for the whole of the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland., but not for northern Scotland where the mean maximum anomaly of +3.3°C was very similar to the mean minimum anomaly of+3.5°C.
May was also another rather dry month in NW Scotland with rainfall totals just 63% of the LTA. Although there were some very sunny days total sunshine for the month was just 85% of the LTA.
May 2024 – Weather Summary Read More »
I’m guessing, but it looks like the snow that stopped play at Buxton was from heavy snow showers over high ground, enhanced by that trough close to Liverpool at 12 UTCUTC Coordinated Universal Time or UTC is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time (such as UT1) at 0° longitude (at the IERS Reference Meridian as the currently used prime meridian) and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. It is effectively a successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).. I remember the day quite clearly because I was a window cleaner back then in Sheffield. Needless to say, I didn’t get many houses done that Monday. 😉
This PDFPDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992. of the day in question is courtesy of the UKMOUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
junesnowfall2june1975Monday, 2 June 1975 – The day that snow stopped play Read More »
I monitor the weather forecast for the Highland and Eilean Siar region of the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland., so a map like this that delineates the exact area comes in handy when trying to decipher the forecast from the Met OfficeUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Basically it comprises the whole of the Highland region plus the Western Isles. Even after being up here on and off for over 15 years, I still have a job trying to visualise the precise areas they are trying to describe. One thing I do know though is that just using terms such as ‘in the east’ or ‘in the west’ doesn’t help in an area as large and oddly shaped as this one is. Neither is using towns and cities such as Inverness and Nairn as reference points. Do you have any idea where Lochaber is? Or for that matter where Sutherland and Caithness are, and how far Ross-shire (or should that be Ross and Cromarty) extends? Shires in Scotland are a very complex subject, as this Wikipedia article explains.
Just a couple of hyetographs so far this year to compare precipitation totals at Loch Glascarnoch in Wester Ross with those at Gogarbank Edinburgh further south. The difference is very marked, with only 87.7% of the LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO. in the north and 169% of the LTA in the south during the first five months of 2024. That large Edinburgh total is probably due in part to a couple of thundery days that occurred in April and May. Having said that, I’m sure that the tracks of the numerous lows and their frontal systems has much more to do with it.
Jan-May 2024: Disparity in precipitation across Scotland Read More »
I make the mean temperature for spring [MAMMAM Meteorological Spring comprising the months of March, April & May] 2024 in central England 10.6°C, that’s +1.38°C above the 1991-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., and the warmest spring since the series began back in 1659.
Spring 2024 – Warmest on record in Central England Read More »
I make the mean temperature for May 2024 14.1°C, that’s +2.2°C above the 1991-2020 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., making it the second warmest May since 1659, but still well behind the 15.1°C of 1833.
May 2024 – Second warmest in Central England Read More »
