Here comes the sun too and the laundry is drying. Just had a bite to eat outside in the suntrap and I needed a hat too.

The garden beckoned yesterday and the soil is drying out well. So much so, a Berggarten sage in pot at the front was wilting yesterday. The box in pots need a soak too.

I have some cinnamon basil I'll sow this afternoon though that goes indoors. Far too early to keep outside.

And then later when it gets dark, a mollusc pogrom before bedtime. It's all go go go now in the garden.

Be careful that you don't get reported to the RSPCA which is having a be-kind-to-snails campaign.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/rspca-under-fire-over-rules-160157981.html? 

6am it was clear skies, as it was all night although the temperature wouldn't drop as much as it should due to the vile wind which never lets up. Then masses of ugly grot forms, for no valid reason, that takes an age to clear. Almost as soon as it does more 💩 arrives to take it's place with full overcast that looks set to write-off the rest of the day now. Utterly revolting 🤢

If the exact same synoptic set up occurred during the week there would have been clear blue skies all morning and we would have had 6 hours sun instead of a poxy 2 hours, almost half of which was pre-7am 🙄

Not a single sunny, dry sunday all of last spring. One so far this spring. That makes 1 good Sunday out of 20. Even the Faeroe Islands climate isn't so grim to make such an appalling hit rate anywhere near remotely acceptable. There just isn't anywhere on earth this depressing.

Yesterday it was the wind with hail stones battering the sun house during the afternoon. It's just a perpetual autumn/winter. Even Thursday and Friday were more like good days in September than spring, due to high minima, and both days turned into a cloudfest by evening. That's the sort of days we are desperately needing at the weekend, particularly Sunday, and it would need to be one hell of a long run to make up for this unrelenting grey purgatory.

It's just the absolute pits 👎 The spring equivalent of the 2007-12 summers 🤮

   https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-68816142 

This has happened as well, without there even being any named storm.

I did notice that there was extensive Met Office yellow warnings for wind across England and Wales for that, but no amber or red warnings (such warnings might well have led to that system being officially named Storm Lilian which is the next name on that list after Kathleen).

Clearly, the Met Office have completely underestimated the effects of this system, and were caught out by it being even worse than expected.

Thought you liked stormy weather?

Hardly 'stormy'. Very much high nuisance value rather. 

Very much 'stormy', or as close to it as you'll generally get inland. It's the worst so far of the winter half of the year here. There have been several gusts into the 60s locally, with the trees in full leaf it makes a massive roaring sound...

This morning:

Just now, as another squall goes through.

Quite impressive stats there Retron. I wager that I live more inland than you still. I imagine the NW coastal regions here are wild enough as well. Ugly Decemberesque skies continue unabated here. Low based cumulus in abundance. At least in December it would be dark by now so I wouldn't have to be looking at it. 

It's interesting, despite my location (half mile from the sea, which lies to the north, NE and east), the winds are coming from inland - they've not been too bad outside of the rain, but when it starts chucking it down, boy do you know it!

Looks like there have been tornadoes around, too, and given the ferocity of the convection today I'm not at all surprised. Thankfully none in Kent as far as I can tell...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/15/tornado-midlands-stoke-on-trent-met-office-weather-front/ 

Sun heating the ground can enhance gustiness overland in a synoptic scale flow at this time of year. Its just that particular flow is strong as it is! 

From what I recall reading from HH Lamb years back, the infamous 'year without a summer' was preceded by a similar March and April to this, although no doubt colder. 

🤔

You yourself described your weather as "howling like mad out there with frequent bouts of what can only be described as violent rain/hail showers", which fairly describes 'stormy'.

I still didn't call it 'stormy'. I said it was like a day in December, which this sort of weather is far more the norm. 

​​

Yesterday was truly unbelievable with a force 6 wind despite pressure over 1020mb. Today the wind has gone but in it's place vile grey soul destroying crap to ruin yet another weekend. It's truly beyond awful at only 5C. Hard to believe it's almost the final third of April as it's just day after day of the worst conditions winter has to offer.

If this is the utter garbage we get with a high pressure you have to ask just what the hell it would take to get something decent?

Not a single air frost since 4th March which is beyond ludicrous. Not even in the warmest of springs would the last frost be so early. To fail too manage a single frost in that period with so many cold days bears testimony to a relentless period of stupefyingly grim, depressing and unpleasant conditions that even the worst of springs would have been unable to sustain in the past. Never ending wind/rain/cloud. Even the wettest December in nearly 150 years wasn't as unceasingly hideous 🤢

The fourth consecutive colder than average April is the vilest of the lot. One of the worst months of all time. We have been unable to get the prolonged sunny, dry spell of weather after mid-month that provided a break from the dross in the past two Aprils and the outlook is horrific.

2023 was one of the worst years ever and so far 2024 is just 2023 with all the limited good bits removed. A wrist-slittingly awful nightmare offering nothing remotely acceptable. Just endless 💩

Mine facing SSE to NWW direction so we get some sun from 6pm to sunset time at the north side with briefly sun in the early morning sunrise.  Buying a house I did a great study on the map of the house position as I don't want a N to S or other way with worst offending is north facing garden that we endured in Epsom for 39 years.

It's clear now that this purgatory is never going to end when as in January we are seeing 1030-1040mb high pressure giving the exact same rank  wet, cold, grey, unusable filth. In fact it's even worse. More chance of actually seeing sun at 980mb. This has been by far the worst of the three utterly dire weekends this putrefying awful month has produced. It's the worst weekend since the completely sunless horror show of 9th/10th March.

Now in the final third of April and it's 6C grey and wet with 1033mb pressure. Nowhere else on earth would a weekend of high pressure translate to a weekend of cloud and rain 🤬Nowhere else on earth is still getting the same crap temperatures in late April as in the totally useless non-winter. Everywhere else has warmed up considerably by now. 

Hate is far too mild for the feelings of revulsion I experience constantly at having to live in this hideous hellhole unfit for human habitation. It's no better than slavery having to work all week then getting zero opportunity to do anything enjoyable at the weekend 🤢🤢🤢🤢

I've just spent a freezing, damp weekend on the Berwickshire Coast. Max temp over the 2 days, 8 C!! Soul destroying.

I sometimes wonder why people endure the NE UK climate. Luckily I'm retired, next winter I'm hoping to spend some considerable time in The Algarve 😎

The only crumb of comfort you can draw, is the prediction that in six months time it will be even worse than today. The picture you paint of life in the NE is truly apocalyptic.

Will 90 days really be enough? (the limit unless you get a long-stay visa)