Embrace the most revolting, soul destroying and repellent conditions to be found anywhere on earth? I think not.

Never mind snow, it's becoming an ordeal to even get a frost. Absolutely unreal for 57 degrees north. The worst winters on earth. Where else is there no hope of getting frost, snow or warm sunshine? Just endless misery.

It's either zonality or the unadultered horror we have at the moment. Nothing else on offer any more. It's the equivalent of having a choice for a meal of either a bowl of gruel , with an accompaniment of stale bread and hard boiled potatoes, or a plate of dog muck laced with strychnine. There really is only one viable option as the other will kill you and this sure as hell is sucking the life out of me.

No words in the English language could do justice to this atrocity of a winter. A league below even the worst of the past 7 years of unprecedented horror. Relentless rain and gloom. It hasn't let up all week. Haven't been able to get outdoors for exercise once. Never in my life have I endured such a horrific week where every lunchtime has been a soggy wet washout 

It's ridiculous beyond words. When I was at school I only recall once when there was even two consecutive wet intervals.  Feels like our weather is now constantly influenced by the North Sea. Everywhere else the rain bands pass through whereas here it stagnates and turns into a relentless onslaught with is no respite. No sooner has one weather warning for rain/floods expired than another one has been put in place 

Feeling tired and lathargic constantly due to the needing the light on all day and being unable to get fresh air which should be considered a basic human right. Had a terrible, disturbed nights sleep due to the rain and vile rattling wind.

It's just unrelenting horror with no end in sight. I predicted a frost-free December and while we did get a frost last week I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's into the new year before there's another one. 

The first five months of the year were the driest in over 160 years but the annual total looks as though it will be close to or even above average. A disgusting reflection of how monumentally vile it has been since June with the very worst saved till last.

Getting even two months as bad as June, August or October would make for a truly terrible period. Add what we endured in mid-November and now this putrid December into the mix and it's off the scale of horrors.

A living hell 

I feel your pain Richard, but your moans are the best.

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Embrace the most revolting, soul destroying and repellent conditions to be found anywhere on earth? I think not.

Never mind snow, it's becoming an ordeal to even get a frost. Absolutely unreal for 57 degrees north. The worst winters on earth. Where else is there no hope of getting frost, snow or warm sunshine? Just endless misery.

It's either zonality or the unadultered horror we have at the moment. Nothing else on offer any more. It's the equivalent of having a choice for a meal of either a bowl of gruel , with an accompaniment of stale bread and hard boiled potatoes, or a plate of dog muck laced with strychnine. There really is only one viable option as the other will kill you and this sure as hell is sucking the life out of me.

No words in the English language could do justice to this atrocity of a winter. A league below even the worst of the past 7 years of unprecedented horror. Relentless rain and gloom. It hasn't let up all week. Haven't been able to get outdoors for exercise once. Never in my life have I endured such a horrific week where every lunchtime has been a soggy wet washout 

It's ridiculous beyond words. When I was at school I only recall once when there was even two consecutive wet intervals.  Feels like our weather is now constantly influenced by the North Sea. Everywhere else the rain bands pass through whereas here it stagnates and turns into a relentless onslaught with is no respite. No sooner has one weather warning for rain/floods expired than another one has been put in place 

Feeling tired and lathargic constantly due to the needing the light on all day and being unable to get fresh air which should be considered a basic human right. Had a terrible, disturbed nights sleep due to the rain and vile rattling wind.

It's just unrelenting horror with no end in sight. I predicted a frost-free December and while we did get a frost last week I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's into the new year before there's another one. 

The first five months of the year were the driest in over 160 years but the annual total looks as though it will be close to or even above average. A disgusting reflection of how monumentally vile it has been since June with the very worst saved till last.

Getting even two months as bad as June, August or October would make for a truly terrible period. Add what we endured in mid-November and now this putrid December into the mix and it's off the scale of horrors.

A living hell 

Thanks for keeping this thread going Richard. I feel your pain. It isn't much better here either. Do you suffer with SAD btw?

What also annoys me is that across the Atlantic - eastern USA - they seem to get upgrades whenever the GFS show something cold and wintry where as here we seem to get downgrades. - There could be up to 6-7" of snow this Wednesday in NYC when only a few days ago it was forecast to be cloudy and cold -1c to +4. Like hello? where did this nor-easterly come from!?

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I am certainly suffering from SAD at the moment with this rotten weather and working from home is making it worse as I’m not getting out of house at all. I don’t mind the dark nights so much but endless gloom really gets to me.

I keep saying that there’s no longer a floor on how low things can sink and I keep being proved correct. Finally it seems that ‘absolute zero’ must surely have been reached. It just couldn’t be any worse than this.

Close on 40mm in the past 40 hours with only four hours in that time failing to record any rain. Not because they were dry but because the drizzle got too light. It just won’t let up and clear off. An endless feed of pure and utter garbage off the North Sea

These are the hourly temperature readings since 8pm on the 10th:

6.4 6.5 6.5 6.6 6.9 6.6 6.6 6.7 6.6 6.6
6.6 6.7 6.8 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.8
6.8 6.8 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.6 6.7 6.7 6.7
6.7 6.7 6.6 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.4 6.6 6.7 6.9

A 0.5C range in 40 hours. Confirmation, as if it were needed, that this is now the most boring and depressing place on earth to be a weather enthusiast.

No daylight never mind sunlight. Apart from the brief burst on Wednesday morning there has been none of that since last Sunday morning. Beyond surreal how awful our weather has become. Just a relentless onslaught of complete and utter dross with nothing good or positive ever occurring any more.

The only places as wet as comparatively wet as here this month have been Capel Curig, Cardinham in Cornwall and Jersey. Says it all if we’re now in the same peer group as those godawful winter climates but even they are in the clear today and not subject to the day-in-day out horror that we are enduring 

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Please please get one of these before it's too late.

https://www.best10rated.co.uk/best-sad-lamps/?title=Daylight%20Lamps%20For%SAD&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6r_mtK_I7QIVwuvtCh0IaANaEAAYAyAAEgL09PD_BwE

 

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I am certainly suffering from SAD at the moment with this rotten weather and working from home is making it worse as I’m not getting out of house at all. I don’t mind the dark nights so much but endless gloom really gets to me.

I keep saying that there’s no longer a floor on how low things can sink and I keep being proved correct. Finally it seems that ‘absolute zero’ must surely have been reached. It just couldn’t be any worse than this.

Close on 40mm in the past 40 hours with only four hours in that time failing to record any rain. Not because they were dry but because the drizzle got too light. It just won’t let up and clear off. An endless feed of pure and utter garbage off the North Sea

These are the hourly temperature readings since 8pm on the 10th:

6.4 6.5 6.5 6.6 6.9 6.6 6.6 6.7 6.6 6.6
6.6 6.7 6.8 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.8
6.8 6.8 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.6 6.7 6.7 6.7
6.7 6.7 6.6 6.7 6.7 6.7 6.4 6.6 6.7 6.9

A 0.5C range in 40 hours. Confirmation, as if it were needed, that this is now the most boring and depressing place on earth to be a weather enthusiast.

No daylight never mind sunlight. Apart from the brief burst on Wednesday morning there has been none of that since last Sunday morning. Beyond surreal how awful our weather has become. Just a relentless onslaught of complete and utter dross with nothing good or positive ever occurring any more.

The only places as wet as comparatively wet as here this month have been Capel Curig, Cardinham in Cornwall and Jersey. Says it all if we’re now in the same peer group as those godawful winter climates but even they are in the clear today and not subject to the day-in-day out horror that we are enduring 

 

The bold bit sums up the modern era, it breaks records and then breaks em again.

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Look on the bright side everyone.
Although the shortest day isn't until 21st, tonight saw the earliest sunset time across much of England. Nights start drawing out from tomorrow. Summer is on the way.

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Something that does hack me off rather is what we've just had - a transient ridge of high pressure crossing the country in the middle of the night.  After a day of overcast gloom it is rather frustrating to look up at a clear night sky and think 'If this had happened during daytime we'd be having some much-welcome sunshine.'  And then by morning it's cloudy and gloomy again.  Doh!

 

And a note to Richard - do follow the previous suggestion of getting a lightbox to alleviate the winter glooms.  I use one at this time of year, and while it's not quite as uplifting as a bright sunny day, it's a lot better than nothing.

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Despite all of the northern blocking which is around, we still can't seem to be able to get a cold winter in this part of the world.

There has been a bit of snow and there has even been more snow already during this winter than what we saw during the whole of last winter. However, this isn't exactly difficult to achieve given that last winter was virtually completely snowless in this part of this world, and what snow we have had so far has still amount to far less than what we used to get by this same stage of this same month.

There has been two official air frosts during this month so far, which is on a par with what we got during this same month last year, but that is still well below what we should be getting at this stage of this month. We are already coming up towards the halfway stage of this month and yet, we have only had 16.3% of the 1981-2010 December average number of air frosts at Edinburgh Gogarbank during this month and I still haven't yet managed to wake up to a single bright, cold and frosty morning during this winter so far.

Whilst the CET has been running colder than average up until now, that hasn't been the case here. Unless it is colder than average at this time of the year, it can't really be seen as being much of a winter, just in the same way that a so-called summer can't be seen as much of a summer unless it is warmer than average. Yet, the average temperature anomaly at Edinburgh Gogarbank as at 9am this morning was +0.9°C, consisting of +1.3°C for the minimum temperatures and +0.4°C for the maximum temperatures, thus showing us just how much the temperatures just keep on refusing to drop at night in this part of the world.

This basically means that we just have the same old story here yet again which we now have every single winter. This makes that so boring and predictable that it actually makes Gavin P.'s winter updates leading up to all of this a complete waste of time because we already know in advance that it is going to be mild, regardless of what the various factors are like, which make up those updates.

In addition to that, it's also been very dull with 8 completely sunless days already at Edinburgh Gogarbank, with the last five days being completely sunless, and we have only had 16.7% of our 1981-2010 December average sunshine at Edinburgh Gogarbank despite being almost halfway through this month already.

Finally, it has also already been our wettest December since 2015 and we're not even halfway through the month just yet.

All in all, that doesn't exactly add up to a great start to this so-called "winter" up until now, which seems to just be turning increasingly into more of a non-event as time goes on just now.

 

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In January 2016 I was aghast, astounded and disgusted to endure six consecutive days of near unrelenting rainfall. It was like nothing I had ever experienced in my life before. On the 7th day the misery finally relented and I woke up to snow followed by sunshine.

Nearly five years on I have just endured another six-day spell of near constant rain and gloom and on the 7th day I've woken up to more of the same stinking garbage 

This nightmare is more than just surreal. It goes far beyond what should be expected to be tolerated even on the west coast of Scotland or Ireland.

Monthly rainfall now over 100mm which is more than I have recorded in the entirety of any other December in the past 15 years except 2012 

Plus another 24 hours of the same mind-numbing temperatures I posted yesterday. Not dropped below 6C for three days now nor exceeded 7.2C which is the highest it's got all month despite there being no meaningful cold. Disgraceful and the worst instance yet of how temperature extremes are being squeezed at both ends. 

As for a light box I don't think that will help. It's being unable to get outside for fresh air and exercise that is making me feel ill and depressed. I have never known anything like it in my entire life. A full week that offered no opportunity to get outside

No-one should be expected to live like this. It will take a miracle for this not to be the worst winter month ever recorded here 

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...

As for a light box I don't think that will help. It's being unable to get outside for fresh air and exercise that is making me feel ill and depressed. I have never known anything like it in my entire life. A full week that offered no opportunity to get outside

...

Two points to make:

On a lightbox - it would be worth trying, as you don't know for certain until you've tried it.

Fresh air and exercise are still available when it's raining, you just need all-over waterproofs, and an umbrella if it's not too windy.  (And, I suppose, the motivation to get out there.) 

As the saying goes, there's no such thing as bad weather, only inadequate clothing.  (Hurricanes excepted. And thunderstoms producing golf-ball sized hail.  Neither of which are particularly frequent in Scotland.)

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Look on the bright side everyone.
Although the shortest day isn't until 21st, tonight saw the earliest sunset time across much of England. Nights start drawing out from tomorrow. Summer is on the way.

 

 

I really do wish we were 1000 miles further north.

Yesterday it hardly got properly light, and it would have been great, apart from the perma-drizzle. The best winter days IMO are those where there's snow on the ground, it struggles to reach 0c, but there's thick cloud or, even better, fog. We had a couple on 2009 and 2010. Especially nice around Xmas with all the Xmas lights.

So atmospheric.

 

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It's not a moan as such but it could turn into one eventually. I know snow here is getting to be a rarity so I have a habit of looking at the web cams around the world to see who are the lucky ones that get it all, one in particular is the Michigan snowman cam, I regularly watch this at this time of year because they are always snowed under and I like to see the animals and birds that frequent the spot because of food that is put down for them. The last ten years or so the snow at this time is pretty deep but this year they have had very little, two short falls that have disappeared within a day or two so although coldish there it's a lot dryer than normal. Quite disappointing as it's been a guaranteed snow fix for me up until now. Maybe it's coming later this year, who knows, but it's not normal for that spot as it arrives mid to late November every year.

 

Thought I'd better ad to this, the old Michigan Snowman Cam putting on a good show today, heavy snow falling and around 8+inches deep, makes you want to cry.

 

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Just checked the NY weather on my iPhone app. 100% chance of Snow do the next 12hrs.

It really is infuriating this country at times.

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Euro Snow Cover

How does the eastern euro snow cover compare? (ie with this time of year /last year)

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Thank God I am now retired and can spend lots of time abroad, I was lucky enough to spend the autumn in Southern Spain enjoying the semi permanent Iberian high pressure that brought such miserable conditions to the UK. The autumn in Spain was glorious and I could only thank my lucky stars while looking at the terrible weather back home. However, I made the mistake of returning to the UK for Christmas so here I sit with rain lashing the window and counting now 9 days without sun since I returned. As Scott of the Antarctic said 'My God! This is a terrible place'.

I think this winter is a write off so after Christmas I am back to Spain to escape Brexit, Covid lockdown and no doubt more bloody awful weather. Christ, I have endured many crap winters since TWO started but the last few are worse than anything since 2002, unremitting crapness and I for one am not taking it anymore. 

Adios Amigos.

Andy

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This country has an unerring knack of being able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 

Crappest. Climate. Ever. 

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Sorry. I need another moan.

It’s sickening watching the pictures from the NE of the USA.

I mean, while we most years have to deal with scraps and hope for an inch or two they currently have more snow that I have seen in decades. It’s that bad.

I really detest where our island is positioned. Ironaically it’s that bloody storm in NE that’s probably causing all the issues down the line for us.

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I have long since stopped bothering to look at the MO thread during what is laughably termed the UK "winter" (bah! we never get winter!) - same every goddam year - snow Heaven Stateside/horror show in NW Europe!

Eye candy always beyond reach - reality is mild.

The most awful meteorological sentence in the UK winter is "at least it will be mild" - I always want to throw a brick at the telly whenever I hear that.

But I am not wasting my time any more looking at nice charts at 10 days out which never get into the reliable  - I have better things to do with my time.

P.S. at least I have learned the lesson not to mention any possibility of cold weather in the UK to my nearest and dearest - fingers burned too many times to mention and all credibility gone as time after time after time, it never bloody well materialises!

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Meanwhile, in Finland .....

Many parts of Finland see zero hours of sunshine in December

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