Yes it has been fairly interesting. Yet apart from a short spell of rain last night this month has been notably dry. If the weekends rain arrives as forecast I will be happy to enjoy the settled spell next week the Met Office seem bullish about.

Whilst not directly weather related as such, every single conker is off the two local trees...that has to be the earliest I can remember that happening

Was away on a golfing weekend in Northumberland Sat/Sun. In the week leading up to it, the Saturday forecast was consistently OK, whilst the Sunday went from wet and windy, to pretty wet, to showery, to sunny spells.

In the event, the morning was unbroken sunshine. Absolutely beautiful.

And the scenery just stunning.

I ache like hell today, though.

We had our first ground frost this morning with the temperature falling to 3 C. That's as early an air frost as I can recall here - I would usually expect the first to arrive in October. Occasionally, we wouldn't see ground frost until November.

A great view of the Harvest Moon on a chilly autumn night:

https://twitter.com/M35weather/status/1044345704251097088

Driving to work through the countryside as the sun rose this morning was a beautiful sight to behold!  With mist hanging low in the distant fields, green hollows tinged with frost and a spattering of amber tipped trees against a clear blue sky!   

A few odd trees have started to turn orange now but most are still green. If we keep getting cold nights and sunny days, this Autumn will be spectacularly colourful.  

I seem to remember reading that a dry summer produced particularly vivid autumn colours, so this year should be a good example of this, especially if we get more of this clear, sunny, blue-sky weather to set them off nicely. 

I'm not so sure about that. This summer a lot of trees were hit by stress and drought in June and July, so in theory that would make the autumn colours much more dull.

Late summer and early autumn sunshine with average rainfall is what I've heard is the best weather for autumn colours. I remember back in autumn 2016 we had some stunning colours. In 2016, August, September and October had been sunnier than average so that would suggest that sunshine is more what you want in autumn, and at least around here, that has been in short supply.

Some trees have more red leaf pigment, others more yellow etc, which is why different varieties of trees have different autumn colours but they all need the sunlight to destroy the green for us to see the other colours.  So to get good autumn colours we need warm sunny days and cool nights.  

But you’re so right about the clear blue sky setting off the colours!  

I like the misty mornings of Autumn which show up all the spiders webs in the holly hedge next to our house. Yet to experience it so far this Autumn though that's probably 'cos I haven't woken up early enough. 

According to an item on the Woodland Trust site: https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/blog/2016/09/why-autumn-leaves-change-colour/ we've both got some elements of the explanation right.  To quote one paragraph from this item: "So, for the greatest variety and intensity of autumn colours, sunny, dry autumn days with cold but not freezing nights are best. Especially if preceded by a dry summer. Cloudy and rainy autumn days on the other hand, lead to muted autumn colours." (Bold added for emphasis to show I wasn't talking complete guff.)

However this year we haven’t just had a dry summer, we’ve had drought which stresses some trees and has caused some of their leaves to go brown and fall in Summer.  This isn’t quite the same thing as the natural Autumnal change and in severe cases can cause long term damage.  

OK, just means that conditions were good at flowering time! But there is always the old wives tale......😃

Chris Hibbert

With the exception of a Japanese maple, the only trees to be turning are the horse chestnut, but these normally turn very early.

Just come back from town. Quite a keen and dare I say nippy easterly breeze. A contrast to yesterday with its warmth and summery feel.

Noticed the field maple on the roadside edges and euonymus alatas on the edge of town are showing some striking crimsons and yellows.

Amelanchier (June Berry) changed colour which is early. Also a few patches of bright yellow leaves on the lime tree.

Another frosty morning here. Seems to be an unusual amount of them relative to the time of year. 

Virtually impossible to get frost here in September any even October is a struggle.

This mornings minimum of 2.6C was the coldest in September for six years but even then only 0.4C colder than was recorded five weeks earlier on 25th August 2014.

I've only recorded five air frosts in October in the past 13 years and three of those were in 2012. Since then there has been none at all with a low of +0.9C last year the coldest I've recorded.

October really has been a terrible month in the 21st Century for horrible southerly gloom and double digit dross overnight which is just awful for bringing out good tree colour. We are long overdue a break from that sort of garbage.

Having returned from a week’s holiday, I’ve been struck by the appearance of quite a bit of Autumn colour in the trees locally! 

Certainly true here in Lincolnshire, Caz. Stunning.

I think a walk in the woods tomorrow is called for.

Roger

The big problem I have with that is that I would much rather be looking forward to the winter in the hope that we can then get some decent cold weather, rather than being shoved back into summer again. It's not that I don't like summer-like weather but for me, I would be much happier if we had that during the actual summer where that type of weather belongs. In any case, we've had more than enough summer weather during this year to do us for quite a while.