What a dire month this has been here. Virtually sunless and raining and cold most of the time. The models have been awful in their reliability, even at less than a week that has led to the media forecast outlooks being pretty much 100% wrong most of the time. The short term outlook is  awful so lets hope that the promised warm up (again!) materialises for the end of the month this time.
If in Scotland please ignore!

My wife told me a guest who use the gym at her work place told her it been  the worst Spring and for sure the CET should be well below average instead of lying or boosting is been above average.   Only 8 weeks left for longest day and already lost 4-6 weeks of warm spell chances and useable.

Another poor weekend on the cards. 

Funny how an easterly or northerly can always manage to get the PPN over to NW England when it's falling as rain, but not when it's snow.

 

Glad I'm not the only one to have noticed that!

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Interesting as it is to see these ‘if only’ Retronesque charts, I would like to see some robust Jirien Splendour charts in the reliable time frame. If only to be able to sit in the garden in a tee shirt and not a fleece and beanie hat.
It’s been a Spring where both the Met office and BBC weather sites have been pushing warm jam later since the start and nothing comes of it.

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I have a feeling that this late spring early summer could turn into a cooler and wetter than average period but we shall see. The next week is looking particularly chilly for late April 

Lovely April day today - after forecasts had pretty much written it off a day or two ago 😡

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Yet another vile Sunday as the worst start to a year in my memory continues to hit new depths of utter misery and despair.

This horrific run of dross was beyond a joke a long time ago but it just keeps getting worse and worse. After unbroken sun most of the week it's now akin to the depths of winter despite it almost being May. 6.6C, raining, windy. A complete write-off day that is good for nothing  like pretty much every single Sunday since mid-February. Looking like being yet another sunless Sunday only two weeks after the foulest, coldest and most depressing April Easter Sunday of the century to date 🤢

Prior to 2019 even in the worst years the weekend curse never extended to more than 4 months in a row. Then from April to September 2019 it lasted for 6 months at 86% of weekday sun. This was rapidly followed by another 6 months from January to June 2020 this time weekends averaging just 74% of weekday sun. Then an even worse run from August to December 2021 at just 66%. Now another 6 months of it averaging just 68% which will drop even further. This month looks like having the worst weekend curse of any month since the atrocity of June 2007 😒

Every time it goes away it comes back even worse. It's truly soul destroying, horrific and devoid of any rational explanation. I bet there is nowhere else on earth that endures nonsense like this 🤬

2013 had the worst weekend sunshine levels for March/April by a wide margin and this year is beating that with an appalling average that will only drop further after this rank Sunday has mercifully ended.

2021    7.58
2011    6.66
2007    5.99
2008    5.92
2015    5.68
2019    5.68
2022    5.59
2017    5.45
2009    5.38
2018    5.16
2012    4.97
2010    4.91
2014    4.61
2020    4.31
2016    4.15
2013    3.25
2023    3.14 🤮

It's truly unbearable. Weekend after weekend of cold, dismal grey filth. It's not warmed up at all since February. Yet to see a single Spring weekend achieve 12C when it managed 13.3C on Saturday 11th February. 

Unlike sunshine, weekdays not doing much better on the temperature front. This will be the 7th April since 1998 to fail to reach 15C compared to only five in 50 years prior to that. At the same time the absolute minimum for this April continues to be the highest on record and the colder it gets by day the warmer it gets by night. Utter filth like nothing on earth April used to be like. No convection either. It's just an unfulfilling nightmare on every count. Worse than a typical bad November.

Says it all about what a horrifically bland uninteresing and unfulfilling pile of 💩 the 21st Century climate is. Constant winds off the North Sea supressing any warmth like nothing on earth ever seen before. Average used to be 5 days in April reaching 15C. So far this decade there has been a total of 7 in 4 years - 35% of average and three Aprils in a row failing to reach 16C, as we have now had, is unprecedented in at least 80 years.

A truly awful time to be alive 🤮

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Cold, heavy rain now up to 10mm. This is shaping up to be the coldest wettest April here since my records began in 2009.

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Currently snowing here just now. I’m so over this winter.

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Grim here in fulham constant heavy rain 7 degrees since 4pm will this awful spring ever end? 

Grim here in fulham constant heavy rain 7 degrees since 4pm will this awful spring ever end? 

 It is not very pleasant i agree but i think we have been spoiled by some balmy springs in recent years and this spring is more reminiscent of springs we used to experience more frequently . Today was a great example of heavy April showers , cold in the showers but warm in the fleeting sunny breaks.

Currently snowing here just now. I’m so over this winter.

 Snow this time of year is pretty normal for the area north of Inverness where i have family  and lambing snow is a regular event up there . A few days ago they were having glorious weather, much better than down here.

Snow this time of year is pretty normal for the area north of Inverness where i have family  and lambing snow is a regular event up there . A few days ago they were having glorious weather, much better than down here.

Although 100 miles or so SE of Inverness it’s not that unusual here but it follows on from a distinct lack of any warmer days this month. We had quite a bit of sunshine but not the warmth seen elsewhere in parts of Scotland.

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It's the April showers that have been rare in recent years until this year. Yesterday stayed almost dry until late afternoon. To the north you could see the towering cumulus with heavy rain slowly trundling along. Much breezier than the forecast predicted with the winds coming off the sea  to feed these showers it seemed. Then in the early evening a line of heavy showers moved over giving a wet end to the day. Another chilly one too given that we've become almost used to dry and sometimes warm early Springs too.
 

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It's not been too bad here last few days. The showers/rain that was forecast didn't really materialise in the main.

Chilly, though. I'm still donning the 'big coat' most times I go out.

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Hopefully that's the end of any frost now until late autumn. It's interesting to see from a meteorological perspective at the later stages of spring, but as a gardener, I really could do without it now.

Still no sign of a proper warm up though. You'd have thought a few upper teens days would be in the outlook as May starts to come around, but still nothing. It's been a strange spring this really - average to slightly above average temperatures, yet nothing in the way of "warmth". The seasonal equivilent would be like a slightly below average autumn but without any proper cool spell or frost.

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Hopefully that's the end of any frost now until late autumn. It's interesting to see from a meteorological perspective at the later stages of spring, but as a gardener, I really could do without it now.

Still no sign of a proper warm up though. You'd have thought a few upper teens days would be in the outlook as May starts to come around, but still nothing. It's been a strange spring this really - average to slightly above average temperatures, yet nothing in the way of "warmth". The seasonal equivilent would be like a slightly below average autumn but without any proper cool spell or frost.

Have you seen the GFS 12Z. Definitely more frost on the way if that certifies. 
Really cold for early May. When will this shocking spring improve?

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I don’t see any improvement until at least the second week of May .

Cheer up folks!! For a touch a schadenfreude, you'll be happy to know the spring in central france has been pretty awful too. February was a better month. March and April have been cool, frequently wet and mainly grey. Not freezing cold but no sign of warmth? The forecasts seem to be lying as well. Three different sites predicting 17 degrees for today. I'd wager it's around 10 to 12 at most with a cool breeze and the sun has abandoned us! 

Our climate is turning into chaos. How can it be so unenduringly hot in the summers here, pushing forty degrees with wall to wall sunshine and no rain and yet the other nine months of the year there is little to no warmth around? How extreme is that?

I think most of northern Europe has had a terrible spring. In February I had Tete a Tete daffodils that lasted about ten days in flower. The ones that came into flower in the cooler March are still flowering now due to no warm weather. We seem to stuck under a continuous blanket of cool grey cloud with rainy intervals. No major cold this spring and certainly no warmth...just meh!!

We seem to be in a run of cool and miserable springs here, with the last great spring being in 2020 (the covid spring).

Current CET mean for this month is 8.4C - this is higher than any April between 1965 and 1979

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/meantemp_monthly_totals.txt 
 

Looking at that list, 1943-5 was the time to be around if you wanted warm spring weather: April CETs of 10.5, 10.2 and 10.1C!

Just a pity that other things were going on to spoil it.

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