Hoping that we are on the cusp of some genuine spring warmth and sunshine.

Still keeping an eye on solar activity and it is very low indeed. We often look to solar activity in terms of how it might affect our winter weather, but it would also be interesting to analyse historical data on summer weather during periods of extended solar minima like the Dalton and Maunder minimums.

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Gfs Oz conjuring up quite a spell of wet and potentially very windy weather from midweek next week..

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00z ECM is fantastic this morning for warmth the good news is it is now just a matter of a few days away from arriving whilst later in the run some cooler air does make it into Scotland & NI England and Wales holds on to the warm air

Enjoy

 

Big divergence between ECM and GFS OOz runs after May 9th. GFS Ensembles also showing a wide scatter at the same point, so still all to play for after the BH weekend.

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GEM is a GEM of a run for warmth with just a minor blip later next week 

Plenty of flies in the ointment IMO. Those forecasters (including some well known ones) calling a long and settled spell are being over zealous. It may or may not happen.

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12z GEM is a GEM of a run again for warmth

 

Fabulous ECM this evening warm to very warm, well into next week a bit fresher for a time later next week but high pressure dominates

Great UKMO extended (t168)

Another early breakdown on GFS but the op has consistently been worse than the ensemble mean.

Whatever happens it looks like an unusually good bank holiday weekend, probably one of the best ever. My local automated forecast is suggesting 15 hours of sunshine on Sunday.

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Another early breakdown on GFS but the op has consistently been worse than the ensemble mean.

Whatever happens it looks like an unusually good bank holiday weekend, probably one of the best ever. My local automated forecast is suggesting 15 hours of sunshine on Sunday.

An interesting contrast between GFS and ECM at about T+240; GFS as above going for an active Atlantic breakdown but ECM after a slight weakening rebuilds the HP cell strongly

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Looking forward to a period of warmer and drier weather....beyond that we'll see

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Another early breakdown on GFS but the op has consistently been worse than the ensemble mean.

Whatever happens it looks like an unusually good bank holiday weekend, probably one of the best ever. My local automated forecast is suggesting 15 hours of sunshine on Sunday.

 

Yes Met Office twitter suggesting the early May Bank holiday will be the hottest ever beating 23.6c in 1996. 27c on the cards.

 

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Optimism fading fast for the following week though - talk of a length settled spell into mid May seems to have been premature, as Brian alluded to yesterday. Even the ECM and GEM are looking a lot more unsettled now.

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I'm going to the east neuk of fife for the bank holiday and the metoffice says a max of 10c on bank holiday monday. Are we on the same planet?

Just like the last warm spell it's an England event. Cloudy here on Saturday 16 C. Light rain on Sunday 15 C.
But the forecasters can only concentrate on a warm English Bank Holiday including Scottish Carol!.....i suppose she lives in scorchio London now

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Just like the last warm spell it's an England event. Cloudy here on Saturday 16 C. Light rain on Sunday 15 C.
But the forecasters can only concentrate on a warm English Bank Holiday including Scottish Carol!.....i suppose she lives in scorchio London now

According to the last BBC forecast I saw, Sunday looks to be pretty decent over virtually all of the UK, even NW Scotland.

I wouldn't say that the last warm spell a fortnight ago was purely confined to England. OK it didn't get to the high 20s here as happened in London but Saturday 21st April was a glorious day here, and easily our warmest day this year thus far.

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According to the last BBC forecast I saw, Sunday looks to be pretty decent over virtually all of the UK, even NW Scotland.

I wouldn't say that the last warm spell a fortnight ago was purely confined to England. OK it didn't get to the high 20s here as happened in London but Saturday 21st April was a glorious day here, and easily our warmest day this year thus far.

Here is the BBC forecast for Edinburgh for the coming few days:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/0/2650225

Sunday looks not bad going by that as far as I can see.

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According to the last BBC forecast I saw, Sunday looks to be pretty decent over virtually all of the UK, even NW Scotland.

I wouldn't say that the last warm spell a fortnight ago was purely confined to England. OK it didn't get to the high 20s here as happened in London but Saturday 21st April was a glorious day here, and easily our warmest day this year thus far.

All we got in April were a few nice sunny days with temperatures not out of the ordinary. That was better than most of Scotland which was just covered in cloud as usual. Still awaiting the first 20C which it’s normal to see in May but which there continues to be no sign of.

This month is proving abysmal so far. Cold, grey and drizzly muck on Tuesday evening, cold and windy with hailstones yesterday and another cold, wet evening today. Straight back to the hellish spring weather which prevailed until 13th April. Prospects of a decent weekend seem to be receding as well.

There is pretty much no such thing as a heatwave in Scotland any more with regular temperature differences of 10-15C compared to Southern England as opposed to 3 or 4C in the past. The whole of Scotland is always plagued with cloud now during heatwaves not just the Highlands and Islands. This decades highest temperature is the lowest of any decade at Dyce going back nearly 70 years because there are always fronts sitting over us bringing cloud and rain. Even the 1960s weren’t this incessantly poor

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The combination of forecast warmth, especially week2

http://www.wxmaps.org/pix/temp4

and continued snow cover

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_asiaeurope.gif

is going to lead to a spectacular thaw in northern Scandinavia and nearby Russia where the snow has still been hanging on

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