In contrast to my previous moan, I can say today how good it is that a transient ridge of high pressure is crossing the country during daylight hours, giving some much-welcome sunshine.

I don't think I'd want to live in Finland...

This is what we need to see in Trafalgar Square:

The USA is so lucky with its winter weather:

https://www.earthcam.com/usa/newyork/timessquare/?cam=tsrobo1

For those of us wanting a snow fix..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/55334191

For those of us wanting a snow fix..

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/55334191

 

Just highlights how cursed we are with the prevailing wind from the wrong direction.   Why can't our prevailing wind direction be from Siberia across a sea to generate convection. 

Just a lovely chart for them in the North and West of Japan. ICOOPEA12_3_2.png (959×770) (wetterzentrale.de) and not that uncommon.  Sapporo and Aoomori are some of the snowiest cities in the world. 

Snow might be quite future proof too. Global warming might just serve to generate more convection because of the warm seas. 

 

 

Just highlights how cursed we are with the prevailing wind from the wrong direction.   Why can't our prevailing wind direction be from Siberia across a sea to generate convection. 

Just a lovely chart for them in the North and West of Japan. ICOOPEA12_3_2.png (959×770) (wetterzentrale.de) and not that uncommon.  Sapporo and Aoomori are some of the snowiest cities in the world. 

Snow might be quite future proof too. Global warming might just serve to generate more convection because of the warm seas. 

 

Everyone goes on about us being too far west on the European scale to get much of the cold air from Siberia, but the real problem is, we're actually too far east. If the UK was 1,000-1,500 miles further out into the Atlantic, much of the cold air off the Canadian Sea Board would still be cold enough for snow. Add in the moisture from the Atlantic, and we'd be one of the snowiest countries in the world.

Remember winter 2013-14? That really wet and stormy winter? The daily temepratures were only just too mild for snow, a few degrees colder and that would have been remembered as the winter of fierce blizzards and record deep snowfall, like it was on the Scottish mountains.

Everywhere else at this latitude children are out having fun in winter. Playing in the snow, skating, skiing, sledging, building snowmen.

Whereas here the worst winter in living memory continues to depress us with tales of abject horror:
https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/news/local/boy-10-rescued-from-mud-at-north-east-park/  

Woke up to clear skies today for the first time in an eternity. Should mean a frost this close to the solstice but the reality was a min of 5.8C. Just astounding. Needless to say the dry weather didn’t last long as it’s raining yet again. The wind is coming from the SE yet again and the temperature is rising when it should be falling - up to 7.6C 

It’s been a fortnight since the temperature last dropped below freezing and, a beyond ludicrous, eight days since the temperature last dropped below 5C. Not even December 2015 could come close to this, managing no more than six consecutive days above this threshold.

Look at what the lower limit of the optimum temperature range for coronavirus spread is
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720330047

You couldn’t make it up. No wonder we are seeing an upturn in cases. The excruciatingly unpleasant and unhealthy conditions being endured day after day are just ideal for bugs, germs and viruses to thrive in. Utterly sickening, vile and disgusting 

Mean min of 3.7C so far this month. That’s 0.3C higher than for the first half of May which wasn’t the brilliant month it’s made out to be. Absolutely horrible at times (weekends of course) with hail and snow showers and a max of 7C on the 10th.

No problem getting ludicrously cold, well below average temperatures in the warmer months when you don’t want them. As well as that, we endured an unreal first half of June akin to a bleak arctic wilderness with temperatures in single figures day after day. Then a colder final week of August than anything even the 60s could manage. Now we’re in winter it’s just relentless mild dross and the absolute worst kind of mild. Stupefyingly wet with 5-9C constantly for 10 days with no difference between day and night 

Hell on earth 

Living on an island that for thousands of years has had one of the most benign climates for anywhere on it's latitude, does have its disadvantages!

Everywhere else at this latitude children are out having fun in winter. Playing in the snow, skating, skiing, sledging, building snowmen.

Whereas here the worst winter in living memory continues to depress us with tales of abject horror:
https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/news/local/boy-10-rescued-from-mud-at-north-east-park/  

Woke up to clear skies today for the first time in an eternity. Should mean a frost this close to the solstice but the reality was a min of 5.8C. Just astounding. Needless to say the dry weather didn’t last long as it’s raining yet again. The wind is coming from the SE yet again and the temperature is rising when it should be falling - up to 7.6C 

It’s been a fortnight since the temperature last dropped below freezing and, a beyond ludicrous, eight days since the temperature last dropped below 5C. Not even December 2015 could come close to this, managing no more than six consecutive days above this threshold.

Look at what the lower limit of the optimum temperature range for coronavirus spread is
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720330047

You couldn’t make it up. No wonder we are seeing an upturn in cases. The excruciatingly unpleasant and unhealthy conditions being endured day after day are just ideal for bugs, germs and viruses to thrive in. Utterly sickening, vile and disgusting 

Mean min of 3.7C so far this month. That’s 0.3C higher than for the first half of May which wasn’t the brilliant month it’s made out to be. Absolutely horrible at times (weekends of course) with hail and snow showers and a max of 7C on the 10th.

No problem getting ludicrously cold, well below average temperatures in the warmer months when you don’t want them. As well as that, we endured an unreal first half of June akin to a bleak arctic wilderness with temperatures in single figures day after day. Then a colder final week of August than anything even the 60s could manage. Now we’re in winter it’s just relentless mild dross and the absolute worst kind of mild. Stupefyingly wet with 5-9C constantly for 10 days with no difference between day and night 

Hell on earth 

Yes, I have noticed that you lot along with your neighbours in Aberdeenshire have now been moved up to level 3 along with other major cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow.

I'm sure you probably won't be happy with the fact that you are not now able to travel anywhere outside your own local area in order to find the sort of weather which you might actually be happy with, but I don't think that we can blame the weather for the latest increase in COVID-19 cases which we are now seeing.

Here in Edinburgh, this so-called "winter" continues to go even more down the toilet pan and even though we're only 4 days away from the longest night, the temperature just short of midnight is still up at around 11°C and continuing to go up.

In today's videos though, Gavin P. was trying to dress everything by suggesting that we should be happy that this hasn't been one of those really mild months up until now, but that makes absolutely no difference to me whatsoever.

That is like trying to differentiate a 7-0 scoreline from a much narrower 1-0 win for that same team. In both cases, that still results in three points for the winning side in any league because at the end of the day, a win is a win regardless of how that is achieved, and regardless of the actual margin of victory.

It is therefore the same when it comes to temperature anomalies because regardless of whether a particular month is substantially milder than average or just slightly milder than average, that month is still milder than average at the end of the day regardless of what the actual anomaly is like.

In the context of this month, this just continues to confirm that we just CANNOT get a colder than average winter month these days, regardless of what the various factors such as AO ans NAO are like and at the end of the day, we have that same old story which we always see year in and year out once again, despite the AO and NAO being more negative this time with a weaker PV than what we had last winter.

Friday's weather extremes:
Warmest place: Edinburgh 14.2C
Coldest day: Lerwick (Shetland) 9.1C
Coldest night: Altnaharra (Herefordshire) 2.4C
Wettest place: Whitechurch (Pembrokeshire) 57mm
Sunniest place: Rhyl (Denbighshire) 1.0 hrs pic.twitter.com/wdXA8Cb5tL

— BBC Weather (@bbcweather) December 18, 2020

According to the above tweet from BBC Weather, Edinburgh was the warmest part of the UK during today with the ridiculously warm temperature of 14.2°C which is actually warmer than a number of days which we had during last summer!!

There isn't anything here which says which this station that was recorded at, but this is likely to have been the botanic gardens in Edinburgh where the BBC/Meteogroup takes its data for where I live.

That would appear to be correct since the actual maximum temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank was 13.9°C whereas the highest hourly reading at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh was exactly 14.0°C as recorded at 3pm this afternoon.

Isn't it just like the thing though that this is happening during our so-called "winter" when we should at the very least, be getting some cold weather and yet, I'll bet that we won't see this happening during the summer when we tend to end up being one of the coldest places in the UK, more often than not.

A whole hour of sunshine in the sunniest place. What a delightful country this is.

Used to see temperatures often reach 14C in winter due to the foehn effect and often there would be a sudden switch around to snow and cold within a few days.

Don't see that any more because we no longer have a changeable climate and have to endure the same garbage day in day out. Also all mild weather comes on a S or SE wind which is truly vile and horrific. Two adjectives that would be perfect for yesterday which reached 11C but felt thoroughly unpleasant and cold due to the strong winds, gloom and drizzle. 10th day with ZERO sunshine this month

REVOLTING and the horror show continues today with more of the same. Dank, damp and ridiculously mild. Same crap every day only it's getting milder and milder. Yet again in a month that should be cooling as it goes on it gets milder instead 

Now 10 days since it dropped below 5C and it has been stuck above 8C since 10:25pm on Thursday. The mean minimum for the month has gone above 4C and at this rate will end up higher than the mean temperatures for both 2018 and 2019 

Last winter was said to have a dearth of cold yet the same period recorded five maxima below 5C so how the hell could this winter be described? Truth is it can't, as it is indescribably bad. To be this much worse than a truly terrible winter defies comprehension.

This winter has already recorded more rainfall than the entirety of 2011/12, 2014/15, 2017/18 and 2018/19 and is not far off the total for 2019/20. 

It's had more sunless days than the entirety of winters 2011/12, 2014/15 and 2018/19. Only a further two needed to match last winters total which looking outside, at the seemingly endless sheet of grey, could well be achieved by the end of this weekend 

It's a different league entirely to any of the unspeakably awful winters we have endured since 2013/14. A soul destroying disaster on an epic scale 

Why has most of western Europe cecome so terrible for winter snow? I live in the Massif Central in Central France many hundreds of metres above sea level yet even here we cannot get prolonged snow and sustained cold temperatures? We had some snow in the last cold spell but it only settled above around 750 metres.

Look at the recent snowfall in Japan and in New York? Why is it becoming almost impossible to see decent and prolonged snowfall across Europe. Only places that seem to have any snow cover are the mountain ranges.

It really is very, very crap. Winter is becoming like a never ending autumn!!

It's depressing to spend winters clinging onto hope that we'll maybe, perhaps get some decent weather for a change. I don't ask for much. Just 4-6 weeks of Day After Tomorrow conditions with level snow at least 6' deep and the entire country snowed in. I reckon we could survive, although I'd expect state of emergency protocols to focus on maintaining electricity generation and keeping broadband running. 

Another miserable, dark, dreary, drizzly and murky day. Thank God it's the winter solstice and we at least start heading back in the right direction after today.

Yup, it's pretty miserable. Getting quite misty now and I'm trying (and largely failling) to convince myselfthat's it' 'cozy' as someone on here would have it. Nope, it's miserable, dark, dreary, drizzly & murky.

Fat chance of seeing the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction!

 

Yup, it's pretty miserable. Getting quite misty now and I'm trying (and largely failling) to convince myselfthat's it' 'cozy' as someone on here would have it. Nope, it's miserable, dark, dreary, drizzly & murky.

Fat chance of seeing the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction!

 

A shame about that too. You can always guarantee that whenever there's an astronomical event viewable from the UK, the weather will always mess it up.

Want a *really* miserable dark, dreary, drizzly and murky sight?
Try this:

Chances of festive snow now looking like another big flat flop 

Quelle surprise...

Last year, I didn't think that it couldn't get any worse than what it was then in terms of the temperature and the number of frosts and to set the scene from what I am about to say, I will refer you all to this post which is my own contribution towards the statistics thread for last December which was started by the TWO user forum called four on New Year's Day at the very beginning of this year.

In particular, I would like to focus on this part of that particular post:-

Given below, are the final December statistics for Edinburgh, Gogarbank from all of the data which I have available which are:

Temperature (°C):

Lowest Min: -4.7 (on 1/12)
Highest Min: 9.8 (on 28/12)
Mean Min: 3.2
Min. Anomaly: +2.1

Lowest Max: 4.9 (on 14/12)
Highest Max: 12.6 (on 10/12)
Mean Max: 8.5
Max. Anomaly: +1.9

Ave. Temp.: 5.8
Temp. Anomaly: +2.0

Air Frosts: 3 (24.4% of 1981-2010 average)
Ice Days: 0

In that post, I then went on to refer to the number of air frosts as abysmal as we had less than a quarter of the 1981-2010 December average for the number of air frosts at the above mentioned station at that time.

Now, fast forward almost a year and we have this scenario for the temperatures at this same station as at the end of 22 December 2020:-

Temperature (°C):

Lowest Min: -0.9 (on 7/12)
Highest Min: 9.4 (on 18/12)
Mean Min: 3.7
Min. Anomaly: +2.6

Lowest Max: 2.5 (on 3/12)
Highest Max: 13.9 (on 18/12)
Mean Max: 8.3
Max. Anomaly: +1.7

Ave. Temp.: 6.0
Temp. Anomaly: +2.2
Air Frosts: 2 (16.3% of 1981-2010 average)
Ice Days: 0

From that, we can see that with just over a week left of this month, we have still had fewer air frosts during this month that we had in this same month during last year, and that we still need at least one more air frost between now and the end of this month just to at least match last year's total.

In addition to that, the lowest temperature during this month so far is lower than what it ended up being in this same month during last year, which is very poor fare indeed for a so-called "winter" month, especially when there is just over a week left of that month.

Furthermore, the highest temperature of this month so far is already higher than the highest temperature of this same month during last year, and even the overall temperature anomaly is slightly worse than what it ended up as in this same month during last year.

That is all happening despite those really interesting charts which kept on popping up in the model output, which has pointed towards the possibility of a protracted much colder period ahead.

This shows how little, these models can be trusted because as far as this month is concerned, it is on course to be even worse than this same month during last year in terms of the temperatures and the number of air frosts.

Last year at this time, I didn't think that these factors could possibly be any worse than what they were then, but I am already being proved wrong on that front and this is something which just keeps on happening every winter, year after year.

Tonight is yet another example of how we just cannot get a frost here because now, we find ourselves once again in the worst possible position in terms of being any sort of "interesting" weather, in relation to yet another southerly tracking low because once again, we are too far to the north to get any precipitation from that and yet, too far south to be in the clearer air which would allow us to have even a chance of getting a frost.

What happens then, is that the temperatures then refuse to drop due to there being too much cloud around and yet there is nothing happening in terms of any actual weather. This is something which happens time and time again and from that, it should come as no surprise that this then plays a very major part in where I live, being the most boring place on average when it comes to our weather.