I'm getting pretty good at it.

🤣

In its place is rain, rain, and more rain. And doubtless some snow up north to rub it in all the more!

It really is most frustrating. We had a Scandinavian High on Christmas Day but the (tiny, microscopic, needs-a-magnifying-glass-to-see-it) cold pool missed us to the south. This time round everything's corrected northwards.

It's now 5 years since there was a covering of snow on the ground at 9 AM here - the joint-longest run in my lifetime (which goes back to 1979). I've a funny feeling that will end up as 6 years soon enough.

Poxy global warming. To those of you who still get snow, please do make the most of it - as one day you'll join us Kentish folks in getting bugger-all for years and years on end!

EDIT: If only I could go back in time and tell my younger self to enjoy the frequent easterlies all the more, that one day the random back-edge snow that leaves a slushy covering for a few hours would be no more. The Indy article in 2000 which said snow would become almost unknown, and Philip Eden's 2005 commentary that that could well be the last easterly turned out to be true. Makes me wonder how many more times I'll see snow in my lifetime... I've already given up on ever seeing a proper White Christmas here.

I’ve got some unused advent calendars that I’m going to use to tick off the days to the awesomeness of spring 

 I would get some photos but my relations are not the most up to date with Smart phones e.t.c.😄

Despite my prejudices, it is fascinating to see how we have gone from scenarios such as this and the early 80s, to it being next to impossible now in Ian Brown’s modern era (yes he’s still on TWO - not me)

Some of the footage is extraordinary. The future of these sort of programmes focuses around extreme heat, and that’s my thing. 

In the 1980's all the cold weather events always successfully deep cold with decent low temps and low subzero maxes which was normal for a UK being a cold country and normal to get subzero temps at times for a winter of 6C average in Jan before,  6c is close to 0C so nothing wrong to get down to -2 to -5C at day time same to 12-13C mild temps?

What is so annoying that UK is technically a cold country which you expect snow at all levels not stupid hills, hills and hills all the time.  No it not acceptable for this lattitude.  I always accept Nicosia at 150m never get snow because Cyprus is technically a hot country so snow only appear on mountains above 1500m while snow occaionaly drop to down to 1000m to 500m during cold spells lasting few days while exceptional cases to sea level but very rare.   Some do drive to the hills here to see the snow but I refused for this reason but i see the snow and have my fix in Troodos to see the snow for a day or twice visit per winter.

America yet again is on the verge of an historic freeze. This is off the back of last year when New Orleans saw heavy snow which lay deep on the ground. 

It is beyond depressing. Snow has always given me so much joy, and even though I’ve been lucky compared to Darren, it’s now over three years with laying snow here in East London. I too have given up on ever seeing a white Christmas. We were so close this year and I don’t expect another before I die.

Ha. I usually get up at 5am. If we are in a cold spell chase and Darren has already posted it usually means it’s still on. If beast has posted (usually around 1am) I know things have gone of the rails. 

The moaning thread usually fires up around the same time as the jet stream, thats how i know things have gone off the rails. 

Chive/garlic grass is really shooting up now, the days are noticeably brighter when the sun is out..

I'm now writing off winter for this season although know doubt we'll see the usual frosts return for early spring.

That is probably true now. When Richard from Aberdeen was around though, the moaning thread could fire up at any time as he was very rarely happy with the weather in his area and would moan about more or less anything, thereby making him the biggest contributor to the moaning threads at the time.

It’s a shame that he doesn’t post on this forum anymore though, and I hope that he’s still in good health.

He now posting in NW chat moan thread under user name Richard2901 so not sure why he stopped here.  Was nice yesterday with sunshine and conservatory temps reached 20C so in few weeks time will start seeing rising temperatures to mid 20s soon.

Probably to find a larger audience - and yes, he's still going at it despite having more snow than we've had here for many a year! 

Down here winter so far was a week and a half earlier this month - we even had a few air frosts. Will winter return before the end of February? I'll not get my hopes up, put it that way, but it *would* be nice to have a few dry days in a row - everything's absolutely sodden out there, and my lawn now resembles a mudpit!

It boil my anger about over hyped drought nonsense last year as we had none experienced African drought type.  In a drought to get here required months of warm to hot sun ☀️ all the time and no rain full year.  Here in the UK never experienced this as rain fall anytime anywhere.  If no rain fall for a month is not a drought but just dried out and vegetation turn yellow parched briefly.  See how much rain fell since last year dry Spring to now.  I also surprised why Richard not happy as he had deep snow and deep cold temps? I didn’t get those deep cold temps on last cold spell as it came with less cold day temps.

Without that great start the last week or two of dull, grey and at times wet conditions (which look set to continue) would have been much less bearable.

Where do you live Jiries? I am not sure you’d have been boiling with Anger if you lived In East Anglia - where walking in the chalk aquifer zones there were rivers and lakes that were amply, dry and cracked - some for the very first time in history. These chalk streams lost populations of wild trout - their DNA specific to the rivers that kept them safe from disease. The Otters that fed on them could move on but the Aquatic insect populations that fed the trout have all died out too. This was an unprecedented low water table. how much of that is over abstraction and how much is low rainfall is debatable, but it was 6 months before meaningful rain that did more than settle the dust fell in the east. The West and central areas did much better at odd times.

But as the saying has it "None so surely pays his debt  / as wet to dry and dry to wet", and three wet months have restored the water table here to 67m and likely to continue rising, well above norm. 

I posted a few images I recall that illustrated it well. Nature is resilient but not always when a lake or watercourse dries up and has to start from scratch. Our water resource usage relies on regular tops ups not swings and roundabouts, feast to famine scenarios. And we still haven't learnt it seems after last summer. 

Its a strange, strange game...

Nuneaton and Epsom before both never experience African drought like you see on Namibia live cam nothing to grow, no water around.  Even  if your area so dry but still never match what they get in Africa and there rain always fall just the nature of far east  of EA/SE drier than the west but still never match what other drought effected countries that some had little to no rain in a year.    There one place I study in school geography that small area in EA have land below sea levels, can't remember how low is but we had map that show height and to see minus highest over EA. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp4RRAEgpeU

 Very beautiful and so much snow this year over there that covered some of the camera and the temperature display, seem to be a foot of snow on their roofs, less where lot of tourists walking around.  Far a lot better this year than last year less cold and mostly snowless.

Stark contrast to Namibia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydYDqZQpim8

 Both are stunning differences to the climate of Namibia and Finland.  At least both they have actual dry summer and snowy winter season while we don't have a winter season here that can run fully 3 months.

I fully agree with you that the UK will probably never experience African style droughts, at least not in my lifetime. However, I also don't believe that we need to actually be getting those types of African style droughts in order for that to raise any concerns. Last year, we saw rivers drying up in many places with the dry weather also having an impact on the local agriculture and lifestyle.

As long as that is happening then regardless of whether or not the situation is actually as bad as in certain parts of Africa, we are still entitled to be extremely concerned about that and raise concerns about that in return.

Last summer, I can remember one member of this forum up in Speyside (I think that was probably MRayner if I'm not mistaken) who mentioned back then, just how much the water supplies there had been badly impacted by all of the dry weather at the time, and the fact that his area was classed at the time by SEPA as experiencing significant water scarcity. That is the water scarcity equivalent of a red warning being issued by the Met Office for any particular weather type and so, this is the sort of thing which needs to be taken very seriously,

Even with that, the situation in Speyside was probably still nothing like on the scale of what you would see in Africa, but it was still bad enough to merit such a classification by SEPA. This therefore makes that a situation which needs ro be taken seriously anyway and which we need to be aware so when people on this forum are going on about that, that is generally all that they're trying to do and it is just such a pity that there are others such as yourself who get rather annoyed by that.

At the beginning of December, SEPA released a seasonal update in which they warned that this winter at the very least needed to be wetter than average in order for at least some of last year's deficit to be made up, otherwise we could end up facing even more severe water scarcity issues later on this year than what we experienced last year. I understand that places such as Speyside which has been more exposed to the current pattern of winds from the SE have been very wet recently, and this should help to ensure that they don't experience the same issues this year.

However, it's not everywhere that this deficit is being made up. Here in Edinburgh where we're actually more sheltered from that SE flow despite being located in the east of Scotland, we are actually expericing yet another dry winter which means that rather than actually being made up, our rainfall deficit is still continuing to grow even larger. That to me is very concerning indeed in terms of the potential water scarcity situation in the coming spring and summer which may well arise from that.

Of course, it's perfectly possible that the situation might not end up being as bad in the end as I fear but if this does go on to raise any concerns, I will continue to go on about in order to raise the awareness of that regardless of whether that annoys you (and certain others) or not.

Agree completely

Everything in life is now so depressing. Our recent winter weather is symbolic of that malaise