Courtesy of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere
Storm Éowyn turned out to be the most powerful named storm by far in the UKUKThe 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. and Ireland using my Gale Index method. It finished top in both the gale hours and the maximum gust hours category, but finished third behind Isha and Ciara on peak hourly GIGIGale Index. There were a number of missing observations from key stations such as Belmullet, Mace Head and Glasgow, who knows the GI could have been even higher if these observations hadn’t gone missing, possibly as a result of power cuts brought about by the storm itself.
09 UTCUTCCoordinated 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). 24 Jan 2025Gale Index – 24 January 2025Maximum gusts 240000-250600 UTCHours of storm force gusts or higherHours of gale force 8 or higher
December 2024 was a very wet and a rather mild month in StrathpefferStrathpefferStrathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469. with almost 9 inches of rain.
December 2024 was a rather anticyclonic affair, and zonal in nature. There were some cyclonic interruptions though, notably on the 6th and 7th with Storm Darragh, but after that pressure rose quickly with an intense high forming close to northern Scotland from the 9th to the 13th. A couple of other deep depressions tracked eastward close to the north of Scotland on the 18th and 22nd, producing gales and storm force gusts, but the UKMOUKMOThe 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 deemed neither were worthy of being a named storm. I produced this data from six hourly reanalysis data rather than just the daily data from the CRU at the UEA, I wonder if anyone will even notice?
A bridge between two large positive temperature anomalies, one in the west of in Hudson Bay (+11°C), the other in the east in the Kara Sea (+7°C), spanned the North Atlantic in December. Either side was generally cooler, Southern Greenland was anomalously cold (-5°C), as was much of the southern North Atlantic, Mediterranean and near East. Anomalies across IONAIONAIslands 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 the bridge were a toasty +1.6°C above the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO..
The climate across the UKUKThe 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. during 2024 was :-
Rather warm everywhere, but very warm across much of England.
Wet across central southern England, parts of the Midlands and northwest England, but less wet further north, particularly Northern Ireland, where totals were below average.
Rather dull, with below average sunshine in much of the west, but brighter further east, with above average sunshine totals across East Anglia and the far east.
December was a very mild month across the UKUKThe 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., the fifth warmest in the UK to be exact since 1884, with a mean temperature of 6.2°C, that was +2.0°C above the 1991-2020 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. Rainfall totals were closer to average though, at 110% of the POAPOAPercentage Of Average, the wetter weather in the north balancing out the drier weather across the south. It was a very dull month across the board, sunshine totals were the fourth lowest since 1910, at just 57% of the POA.
December 2024 ended up with a mean of 6.8°C, that’s 1.9°C above the 1991-2020 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., making it the joint 12th mildest since 1659.
Using the objective LWTLWTLamb Weather Types are often used in UK-based analyses, with individual weather patterns based on the eight primary cardinal directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) plus cyclonic (C), anticyclonic (A) and unclassified (U) types. as a guide, the most anticyclonic December since 1871 across the British Isles occurred as recently as 1991.
Despite being so anticyclonic, 1991 only managed #41 driest December in the UKUKThe 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 1836, with a total of 83 mm of precipitation (65% of average). A much drier December occurred more recently in the cold December of 2010, when just 47 mm fell (37% of the 1991-2020 long-term average).
6 Dec 2024 12 UTCUTCCoordinated 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). Surface analysis MSLPMSLPMean sea level pressure is the pressure at sea level, or, when measured at a given elevation on land, the station pressure reduced to sea level assuming an isothermal layer at the station temperature. falling 10.4 hPahPaA Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar in the last 3 hrs at Belmullet (1), with dewpoints of 11°C coming into Valentia (2).
6 Dec 2024 13 UTC 3 hr Pressure Tendencies The central pressure of Storm Darragh may not be explosive cyclogenetic, but 3 hr pressure falls of 12 hPa across W Ireland at present are not to be sniffed at. 🤨 The Belmullet barograph is showing a roller coaster ride 😉
6 Dec 2024 15 UTC Surface analysis Dewpoints of 13°C into SW Ireland. Cold front getting close to Valentia Big pressure fall across Ireland of 10 hPa or more over 3 hrs. Weather buoy K2 goes offline – can you beleive it! No double structures here!!
6 Dec 2024 18 UTC 3 hr pressure changes
6 Dec 2024 21 UTC Surface analysis Big pressure rises at Valentia (1) First signs of very strong northerly to the W of Ireland Sleet at Aboyne (2)
7 Dec 2024 08 UTC Highest overnight gusts It looks like Capel Curig, aka as the Snowdonia wind tunnel, has recorded the highest gust of 81 kts or 93 mph overnight.
7 Dec 2024 09 UTC Total Precipitation [33 hrs] Estimates from weather radar A wet night in many places away from the far SE, with areas of 40-50 mm over high ground of Argyll & Bute, N Ireland, Lake district & Snowdonia,with white pixels indicating >80 mm in wettest places.
7 Dec 2024 09 UTC A selection of anemographs Notice the high gust-mean ratio at Capel Curig. The rapid increase of speed at Crosby at 06 UTC. Inland gale at Yeovilton.
7 Dec 2024 03-14 UTC Total Precipitation [11 hrs] Estimates from weather radar. The heaviest of the rain in Wales seems to have been further W than the AMBER warning area so far, with >80 mm over Snowdonia.
7 Dec 2024 16 UTC Aberporth Still blowing a force 10 NW’ly with gusts of 85 mph. Gale force 8 for 24 straight hours. 😱 That’s where the BBCBBCThe 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. & ITV should have sent their film crews today 😉
7 Dec 2024 19 UTC Max Gusts [mph] You can hear the wind moaning in the bell tower at Notre-Dame… The bells, the bells…
7 Dec 2024 19 UTC 24 hr MSLP difference The pressure is close to 47 hPa higher at Belmullet than it was last night.
Was there a gust of 96 mph or not at Berry head? The original tweet from the UKMOUKMOThe 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 has just vanished.
Snow on CairngormCairn GormCairn Gorm (Scottish Gaelic: An CÃ rn Gorm) is a mountain in the Scottish Highlands. It is part of the Cairngorms range and wider Grampian Mountains. With a summit elevation of 1,245 m (4,085 ft) above sea level, Cairn Gorm is classed as a Munro and is the seventh-highest mountain in the British Isles..
A very bland kind of month temperature wise across much of NW Europe. In the UKUKThe 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. a mild first half to November was cancelled out by a colder second half. The central Atlantic was above average, but both to the north and south it was a little colder than average.
Higher than average pressure in a band from southern Greenland, across Iceland (+9 hPahPaA Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar), the UKUKThe 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. and down into Italy, with lower than average pressure south of Newfoundland (-11 hPa) and the Barents Sea, helped produce a drier than average November across large parts of the UK.
A month of two distinct parts, that were not truly represented well in either the anomaly maps or climate graphs. The first 16 days of the month were dry and mild. In the south they were particularly overcast and gloomy. The second half was colder, with frost and snow in places, with three named storms, storm Bert bringing snow, heavy rain and flooding to some places. These two halves effectively cancelled each other out.
November 2024 ended up with a mean temperature very close to the average of 7.2°C in central England, and just 0.1°C lower than the 1991-2020 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. Curiously, the linear trend from 1878 shows a rise of +0.11° per decade in the last 136 years, whilst the most recent 30 year trend from 1995 shows that November temperatures seem to have plateaued.
Added a bit more logic to the Extremes viewer in my Reanalysis MSLPMSLPMean sea level pressure is the pressure at sea level, or, when measured at a given elevation on land, the station pressure reduced to sea level assuming an isothermal layer at the station temperature. application to distinguish if the centre of the vortices it found, be it high or low, was on the edge of the chart. Here are the results from all Decembers back to 1948.
Just a compilation of posts to my new Blue Sky account of this week long early cold spell across the country.
15 Nov 2024 1500-2100 UTCUTCCoordinated 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). Temp changes I generated this chart to see how the cold air was progressing into the NW behind the cold front. Then I noticed just how quickly this evening had cooled across S England under near perfect radiation conditions.
15 Nov 2024 06-20 UTC Precipitation Totals Estimates from weather radar. Just 0.6mm of rain from cold front in StrathpefferStrathpefferStrathpeffer (Scottish Gaelic: Srath Pheofhair) is a village and spa town in Easter Ross, Highland, Scotland, with a population of 1,469..
16 Nov 2024 1112 UTC 1097 M Snow already starting to accumulate on the Cairngorms at 1097 M. It’s -3°C at 1245 M so freezing level ~500 M 🤔
16 Nov 2024 2153 UTC Some snow in these heavier showers on the Velux windows in Strathpeffer.
18 Nov 2024 1610 UTC Looking down from the Nevis range over Ft William & the top end of Loch Linnhe if I’m not mistaken. It looks like the SW end of the Great Glen has been in fog all day.
18 Nov 2024 NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. Worldview You can see the extent of the snow cover across the N of Scotland this lunchtime. Loch shin stands out very sharply.
18 Nov 2024 21 UTC Surface analysis An absolutely fascinating chart, I wish I had more time to analyse it more properly. It’s already -8.3°C at Glascarnoch, beating this mornings -7.8°C at Tulloch Bridge, and it’s on[y 21 UTC.😮 Heavy snow at Waddington 🤔
16-19 Nov 2024 12 UTC Temp anomalies The cold air has slowly extended further and further S each day since Saturday.
19 Nov 2024 1445 UTC The sky has grown very dark in Strathpeffer as it fills in with CBCBCumulonimbus cloud. Well-developed cumulonimbus clouds are characterized by a flat, anvil-like top’s coming down from the N. It’s an active trough and deep convection, with thunderstorms in the Moray Firth. It’s just started to snow – big flakes – vis down t0 800 M.
20 Nov 2024 0855 UTC Strathpeffer A good ~4 cm level snow cover from overnight snow showers which continue this morning. The old wives tale that temperatures increase when it starts to snow are true this morning 🤔
20 Nov 2024 12 UTC Strathpeffer-Knockfarrel Plenty of CB coming down from the N but moving fairly rapidly. An icy wind & a little drifting on the top. Still sub-zero this lunchtime 5 cm of snow lying.
20-29 Nov 2024 12 UTC 2M Temp anomalies ECMWFECMWFThe 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. Its lasted a full week in N Scotland not bad for an early cold spell. It’s a winter wonderland in Strathpeffer today, with a max of just 0.2°C so far. I imagine the kids will be sledging down the golf course shortly.
20 Nov 2024 1630 UTC Snow showers all day long in Strathpeffer, despite the fact that we’re 100 km away from the N coast of Scotland. I’ve just measured 10 cm of lying snow by the traditional Met OfficeUKMOThe 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 method of the mean of 3 measurements. 😉
20 Nov 2024 2345 UTC Quite sharp pressure falls & an ominous blob of cloud on the IR satellite imagery, combined with a lot of mod/heavy ppn across the N of Sutherland at the moment.
21 Nov 2024 08 UTC Snow Depths Certainly much deeper than 14 cm just after midnight, but temps rose from -3°C to 1°C and the snow turned sleety from 02 UTC. Still only 0.7°C with some light snow in Strathpeffer.
21 Nov 2024 09 UTC Surface analysis This cold warm front solution seems to kind of fit the weather we’ve seen in Strathpeffer overnight.
21 Nov 2024 07 UTC (31 hr total) Total precipitation Estimates from weather radar Most of this, inland at least, fell as snow. Estimates look a bit too high.
21 Nov 2024 1040 UTC It’s snowing again in Strathpeffer, although you can’t see it so well in this webcam image. Temperature dropped back to 0.3°C. It’s a rather nasty day out there all in all. But it’s not over to the fat lady starts to sing. Apologies to any fat ladies out there 😉
The global temperature estimates made by the ECMWFECMWFThe 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. in the ERA5ERAERA stands for 'ECMWF Re-Analysis' and refers to a series of research projects at ECMWF which produced various datasets (ERA-Interim, ERA-40, etcetera). series show that October 2024 was the second warmest in the short series back to 1948. I’m quite glad about that, because my DIYDIYDo It Yourself reanalysis series which I maintain showed the same thing. What is more astounding about October’s temperatures though, is that a 30 year linear trend on the ERA5 data shows a whopping 0.313°C decadal rise in global temperatures. If this were typical for all months of the year you can forget about limiting the increase in warming to only 1.5°C, it would be more like 3°C.😮
A quick look at the objective LWTLWTLamb Weather Types are often used in UK-based analyses, with individual weather patterns based on the eight primary cardinal directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) plus cyclonic (C), anticyclonic (A) and unclassified (U) types. data from 1871 to find the most anticyclonic November reveals that 1942 and 1988 (60%) are at the top of the pile. Not a lot of people know that. 🙂
November 1988November 1942
As you might expect, November 1942 and 1978 were both quite dry and cold months.
I have no idea if this is an analog for the coming winter, but I’ll do a bit more digging and see what I can find out what the following winters were like.
A month of mixed weather types, a negatively zonal start gradually became more zonal, with alternating cyclonic and anticyclonic spells through the month, which gradually became more anticyclonic in nature as pressure gradually rose.
The cold theme continued across southern Greenland & Iceland during October. It was particularly warm across Arctic Canada and to the north of Franz Józef Land in the Arctic ocean (+12°C), central parts of the United States where also much warmer than average (+5°C). Europe was generally 1-3 degrees above average. Spot my deliberate mistake in anomalies across Africa, if I had more than 14 subscribers I would bother to fix it. 😜
Globally, October 2024 was the second warmest in my DIYDIYDo It Yourself reanalysis series that extend back to 1948, fractionally behind 2023.
The daily mean global temperature has just overtaken those in October last year once again, setting more new daily records. Even without an El NinoEl NiñoEl 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, the globe still continues to steadily warm. ☹
There is only one chart in the whole month that doesn’t include a front of some kind in it. Spot the days when Mr Occlusion was on shift down at Exeter, the 9th is total nonsense.
One day I’ll get around to adding some temperature and rainfall anomalies to these climate statistics, until then all I can say is October 2024 was a fairly average month for our part of Ross-shire.
The mean temperature for October 2024 in central England was 11.5°C, making it +0.7°C warmer than the 1991-2020 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. The month was marked by a short cold spell from the 10th to the 14th, after that temperatures were generally several degrees above the LTA.
Surprisingly, October ended up a rather average kind of month as far as sunshine, precipitation and temperature were concerned for the UKUKThe 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. as whole. Regionally, the northwest was drier than average, and the northeast sunnier than average. Mean temperature anomalies across the nation, which were slightly above the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., were within 0.3°C of each other. As Greavies would remark, it’s a funny old game Saint😜
