At the moment, I don't have too much to moan about but we didn't have very much in the way of cold weather during the winter. Now that we've just gone into the start to spring though, it's now turned a bit colder this morning with some models suggesting that this month could end up being colder than what February was.

Even with that, we're not expecting any exceptionally cold weather such as what we had in 2013 and 2018 but even though we live in an era of climate change and global warming (whether or not, that is largely man-made is a different and rather controversial subject which I won't go into here), we still tend to get colder periods at this time of year so this month could easily provide us with what we could have done with getting during February, and which a lot of people were even predicting for that particular month.

If you have anything to moan or gloat about or just want to have a general discussion on what's happening during this spring (I know that it's not everyone on here who is even in favour of having a moaning thread on here), this is the very thread for that and as per usual, I look forward to seeing the usual contributions to this thread from Aberdeen Richard amongst others.

There’s nothing controversial about man-made climate change. Its science, proven beyond any doubt, except those being paid by firms like Exon Mobil to shed doubt, for which billions has been paid in a campaign of misinformation for the last two decades. Did you not see the TV drama “The Trick”? It would be like saying that the Post Office scandal did not really happen and the post masters just made it up. There were plenty that tried to do just that for a decade.  

A moaning thread is absolutely essential to stop the threads with serious meteorology from being cluttered up.

Yes, I agree that it's proven by science and like you, I see no reason whatsoever as to why such a subject should be controversial given that you can't argue with actual data at the end of the day.

Sadly though, it's not everyone who shares that view and so in my books, it's important to respect those alternative views as well.

Finally, I'll finish by saying that I haven't seen the TV drama which you're referring to (I very rarely actually watch any TV these days).

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65e0879a2f2b3b00117cd783/Rainfall_and_river_flow_summary_21_to_27_February_2024.pdf 

Its even worse for those in East Anglia...

This feels almost so unbelievable that i'm starting to weave totally absurd conspiracy theories in my head to try and make sense of it all!

I think a general chat thread could do that, like we had in winter. Having a separate thread just for moaning isn't, IMO, that necessary

That is why I have extended this thread to include any general chat if you want to do that (you will be able to see that if you read this thread's sub-title).

I have also modified this thread's title in order to clarify that a bit better.

Just three days in and already a third of the monthly rainfall average has been logged. Just when the hell is this going to end? How can we keep on getting this month after month?

It's staggeringly awful and so breathtakingly bad it's on the verge of exceeding anything ever recorded before even during the phenomenally wet 1870s decade 🤢

Closing in on 1200mm for the rolling 12-month total but this ludicrous garbage has been going on far longer than that. September 2022 was when it started and in that 18 months (not including this months horror start) 1825.2mm has fallen. It's just off the scale to be averaging 100mm a month over such a prolonged period which represents a repulsive excess of 61% 🤢

Only three drier than average months in that period, two of which were only marginally below average. It just beggars belief.

Anomalies compared to 1981-2010 average.

Sep-22    235%

Oct-22    117%

Nov-22    235%

Dec-22    168%

Jan-23    119%

Feb-23    55%

Mar-23    156%

Apr-23    100%

May-23    89%

Jun-23    125%

Jul-23    216%

Aug-23    96%

Sep-23    101%

Oct-23    225%

Nov-23    145%

Dec-23    335%

Jan-24    143%

Feb-24    147%

🤢🤢🤢

A run of utter poison only matched by the grotesque horror of the irrational and inexplicable weekend curse which continues to make it's ugly presence felt month after rotten stinking month.

After being sunny most of the week yet again we have ended up with an utterly vile and repulsive weekend. Yet another miserable depressing grey Sunday with an endless feed of rotten stinking filth off the North Sea. 5C with a force 5 wind under a revoltingly ugly grey sky. Just the absolute pits. More of the relentless unusable, uninteresting easterly hell that made last spring the worst I've ever known 🤬

Just three months now out of 16 where the weekends have seen better weather than weekdays with many of the rest seeing significantly and substantially worse conditions to the extent that it just seems like every single weekend is grey and miserable. Apart from the last weekend of February can barely recall seeing the sun the whole of winter.

Weekend sun as a % of weekday sun:

Nov-22    79%

Dec-22    68%

Jan-23    69%

Feb-23    85%

Mar-23    63%

Apr-23    38%

May-23    59%

Jun-23    134%

Jul-23    177%

Aug-23    96%

Sep-23    95%

Oct-23    78%

Nov-23    120%

Dec-23    92%

Jan-24    93%

Feb-24    68%

It's just a sick joke. That's half of the last 16 months where it's been less than 80%. 2023 was the worst year for it with 91% and so far this year it's down to 75%. Truly feels like the worst, most soul destroying climate anywhere in the western world. An absolute 💩 hole with ZERO quality of life. Every single season is now bringing the worst possible rubbish with nothing decent or acceptable ever on offer.

Nice one, John 👍

So do I as I would much rather be getting in with spring now, rather than being thrown backwards into winter.

However, most of us would probably also like to see a decent summer after that and it turns out that the last two really cold Marches which we had in 2013 and 2018 were actually followed by decent summers, albeit with a cool start to the summer of 2013.

However, that raises quite a big question of why it is that we can so easily get a hot and dry summer after a really cold March but can never get a cold winter after a really warm (or even hot) September these days.

March and September at the exact opposite ends of the year from each other and so, those two scenarios of a cold March followed by a hot summer and a hot September followed by a cold winter should be the exact opposite scenarios of each other on paper.

Because of that, you would think that the chances of either or those two scenarios occurring would be roughly equal on average and yet, that is clearly not actually the case these days.

Of course, I'm sure that a lot of people will probably jump on the bandwagon with this and totally blame all of that on climate change.

Indeed, I'm sure that climate change has probably played some part in that which might well be quite significant. However, I don't believe that all of that can entirely be put down to climate change as I'm sure that there is probably at least one other factor behind that in addition to climate change.

Of course, there are others on this forum who will no doubt have more knowledge than me on this subject (I'm not a professional meteorologist or climatologist after all, and am only a weather enthusiast at the end of the day) so if anyone else on here can answer that question as to why we can so easily get a hot summer after a cold March these days but can't seem to be able to get a cold winter after a hot September, I will be more than happy to hear all about that.

A cheery general prospect of sunny periods and a few showers this week was downgraded yesterday to cloudy but dry at first (i.e. today, Tuesday) - and it has rained solidly and heavily since about 0930, just beginning to brighten up at 1330.

Even Louise Lear on BBC4 at 1255 trapped by her own script and referring to 'some heavy showers from Dorset to Kent' when a glance at the radar would have shown persistent and heavy rainfall nearly everywhere from W Hampshire to E Kent, only beginning to break up properly and retreat to the coast about 1700.

EDIT - 14.5mm this morning to add to 6mm last night

 Just brightneng up here after another near 24 hrs of rain , started 3 p.m. yesterday , stopped for a while last night and back to heavy rain this morning. Absolutely fed up with rain this last Autumn , Winter, now spring . Looks like a couple of dry days then rain here the end of the week.

The nearby River Avon has been running at near Flood or Flood level since October. Wettest i can recall.

Not a single decent weekend the entirety of last years grotesque spring and this year continues with the unspeakable garbage. 

This time last year we were in a good cold, snowy and sunny spell that lasted from the 7th to 12th. This year we are suffering the most totally rank, vile and putrid spell of March poison since the utterly hideous final week of March 2005.

Absolutely ZERO sunshine since Monday. Prior to last October there had only been seven spells of five or more sunless days in 17 years. This is now the third in less than five months and shows no sign of ending. It's the worst start to March since the phenomenal horror of 1996.

Just endless featureless grey damp unpleasant, unusable filth. No longer any changeable conditions. It's just a block of sunny weather followed by weeks on end of unadultered hell. The last 12 months have seen nearly 1200mm of rain and 68 sunless days - 7 more than the highest annual total of 61 in 2010 and still it keeps getting worse. 

Pitiful, mind numbing temperatures with almost no diurnal range. 8.0C is the highest temperature reached so far this month. Even 2006 and 2018 beat that during the first third. The only years to have a comparative lack of warmth also saw some snow but nothing at all this year. Just miserable rain and grey skies. The worst of all worlds as is the norm these days. 

Spring used to be my favourite season of the year. Now it is just a living hell. There is just no quality of life at all any more being subjected to the worst possible conditions at every time of year. Nothing but utterly loathsome, unsatsifying and unrewarding crud. No respite from it ever. 

Month after month, season after season of the most dispiriting, unfulfilling and grinding conditions to be endured anywhere on earth.

🤬🤬🤬🤮🤮🤮

That why i stopped watching them for few year now to poor forecasting and same time weather had changed from vareity to wind, rain and cloud all year around with temperatures of 10-18C winter to summer months.  No other weather pattern or seasonal weather are on offer and all completely lost them for good.  I really need to see April a dry month as I having a new conversvatory install on 16th April.   

Perhaps we should open a thread for Glorious rare dry day thread and to post how many dry days it lasted, as now any dry day is really badly needed and there none of that proper dry days since 2018 summer where i recorded 60 days without rain, a welcome break from nasty rain in this country.

Every time we get some dry weather though, it's then not usually long before somebody then starts a drought thread on here, so I suppose that you have that occasionally to a certain extent.🤣

Those media and drought talking nonsense and severe overhyped in this country, it really stupid and they never learn or go to Africa or other places where proper drought, high temperatures and cloudless months.  1976 and 2018 summer shown how it like being so dry but still cannot matched other places that last months or years and cloudless skies.   60 day so no rain in 2018 was absolutely a bliss and countryside became so clean and beautiful with clear skies, fresh air, cooler nights and sunny days, more like Namibian arid climate.

Any long dry spell in the UK is very normal and ground need a dry break as most of the year is wet especailly from end of sept to end of March when soil never dried up.  The latest proper dried up ground was October 1995 and March 1993 and 2003.  

A good point and it's usually me 😂 But it does reflect the major climate change here in southern East Anglia. We don't get changeable any more. We get long blocks of the same weather. So we havehad10 weeks of dull wet weather. Before long we will get a 10 week dry spell. e don't get a mixture in the space of two weeks any more. The UK having very changeable weather is a myth these days.

I've often been guilty of that myself in the past and to be honest, I still wouldn't be surprised if I ended up doing so again in the future because although there has been quite a lot of recent wet weather around the UK in general, Edinburgh has generally escaped quite a lot of that, and the end result of this is that we have never actually came close to making up the vast rainfall deficit from the over the two year period prior to all that.

The end result of this is that it probably won't take all that much in the way of drier weather for us to be back in a drought situation once again in this part of the world and given that we're not getting the amounts of rain here which everyone else is getting, that is bound to become the case here, long before anywhere else even gets close to such a scenario.

The winter which has just passed points that out really well. We did get a wetter than winter overall even here in Edinburgh, but that was only due to an exceptionally wet December which massively skewed the overall totals for the entire winter.

During the rest of the winter, the rest of the UK continued to be wetter than average in January and February but as that happened, this part of the world where I am actually went slightly drier than average during those two months.

The end result of this is that we still haven't yet had a wetter than average month here during this year so far and as it is looking at the moment as though this month isn't going to be all that wet here overall either even though more unsettled weather is on the way in the meantime.

I also agree with the above point about the weather not being as changeable as it once used to be, although I still don't think that there is anywhere else in the UK where the weather is generally more boring and uninteresting overall than is the case here in Edinburgh.

That correct with low teen temps but all under wind and rain nothing else on offer as Autumn season all year round are expected to be norm so already eliminated other 3 seasons no longer exist.  Average from 6 in Jan to 22 in July in the very past to 8 to 24 in the recent past will be 10 to 17 more like Iceland summer climate.