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.
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 😉
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.
In November it looks like the semi-permanent Icelandic low decided to do some early Christmas shopping and head southeast towards Scotland. Thanks to blocking, from Greenland across to northern Scandinavia, for much of the month, anomalies were low from Denmark to eastern Russia (-12 hPahPaA Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar) and higher (+8 hPa) to the northeast of Iceland. Much of the cyclonic activity in the first half of the month took place at latitude 50° north, the North Atlantic’s answer to the roaring forties. 😉
Here’s a closer look at the daily charts and associated 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. and GIGIGale Index.
The curious thing is in a record warm world why has it been so cold in the last month in our bit of it? Answers on a postcard to the editor if you please.
The scores-are-in, and it’s a ten-from-Len, as the world produces a sixth consecutive record warmest month for November, which is a record in it’s own right. I make the daily mean for November 9.81°C which is 0.22°C higher than the previous warmest in 2015. It’s not quite as impressive as in previous months, but nonetheless it’s still quite remarkable. The Daily values from my DIYDIYDo It Yourself series are no less impressive as you can see in the graph below. This year started setting daily records at the beginning of June and it’s been #1 daily warmest for much of the six months since then. Remember you heard it first here even if it was a racing cert 😉
After unprecedented warm spells at both the start of September and October, Autumn 2023 was always going to end up being one of the warmest on record, and for along time it was, but the single cold spell at the end of November prevented this happening, and it ended up the third warmest since 1659, behind 2006 and 2011 with a mean temperature of 12.2°C, which was 1.4°C above 1991-2020 LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO..
Mean temperatures were close to average across England and Wales and southeast Scotland but slightly below average across the north and west of Scotland. Rainfall was above average in the south but much of Scotland was drier than average. Sunshine was well above average across England, the southwest and northwest of Scotland and Northern Ireland but much duller across west Wales, southwest England and northeast Scotland.
Dear Diary, It’s no wonder that November 2022 was both windy, wet and mild 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.. The Icelandic low was over 19 hPahPaA Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar lower and a little further to the SW than usual, whilst the Azores high was 2 hPa higher than the LTALTALong Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO., which squeezed the SW flow even tighter. Pressure was close to 10 hPa above average for the month across northern Scandinavia.
Dear Diary, I swear the 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 are getting faster at publishing these charts and gridded climate data. You always had to wait at least a couple of days in years gone by but now they’re instantly available.
