I put meter as it turn out cheaper for me than expensive estimate amount before as I don’t use much water but fine not to have one for family like my brother don’t have one.  Yesterday I find the cloudscape stunning and give me flash back memory seeing those sharp cloudscape with darker small clouds on the sides and bases with pure clean blue skies. I used see this so many times here in the past and in Nicosia during shower days.  It very rare now as most so called shower forecasts never appear true form. 

My water bill is £300 a quarter so wish I didn't have a meter. 2 teenage daughters certainly doesn't help!

Get your teenage daughters to pay towards the cost of the water that they use. It's never too soon to teach people that they have to pay for what they consume, especially when it's something as precious as water.

Nice idea but they need to be earning to do that. 

That said, the lack of rain is starting to become a concern, so a few sunshine and showers/thunderstorms days won't go a miss. My only fear is us getting to the start of summer and then flipping into another total washout pattern again.

I'm wondering if this may turn out to be a 1959 summer. That commenced with a spring like this. The really bad one was a lovely April in 2007 followed by a terrible wet summer.  🙂🙂

A 1959 summer would really be a pleasant one. Prolonged spells of dry, sunny and pleasant warmth weather but never really excessively hot. The warmth began in early May and lasted all the way up to the middle of October.

We can but hope!

Happy for a spell of more unsettled to give the ground/crops a watering - as long as it's bloody brief!!

As long no more horrible clouds from the east as it had been very poor today and last Thursday so a change of weather is welcome so able to see sunny days and especially morning to be sunny.  Got more sunshine during Monday shower day than today. No use for sun come out late pm meaning temps rising from dawn to 3pm is cancelled as it dropping stage from mid pm to dawn. 

The main story of this month has been the complete absence of any rainfall in this part of the world and I even saw a photo on Facebook which showed the Water of Leith having virtually completely dried out in the centre of Edinburgh as a result of the very dry spring so far. When our rivers are drying out in this fashion, that is extremely concerning especially this early in the season and we badly need some rain in order to alleviate that situation to at least some extent.

It's also been a very sunny spring in which we've already had more sunshine at Edinburgh Gogarbank than the 1991-2020 spring average and this means that regardless of what happens between now and the end of this month, this spring will now go down as being sunnier than average.

During this month, we have already had 88.4% of our 1991-2020 average May sunshine at Edinburgh Gogarbank and we have now not had a duller than average month here since February which is still our only duller than average month of this year to date.

With that, you would expect it to have been a lot warmer than average and that has been the case as regards to the daytime maximum temperatures. However, the overnight minimum temperatures during this month have actually been quite a bit colder than average so far with a rare air frost even being recorded at the beginning of the month. Because of that, the average temperatures for this month are actually only around average overall so far this month.

As for the spring as a whole, the overnight minimum temperatures are only slightly below average overall and because of that, the overall average temperatures for this spring are running a bit warmer than average, though not by all that much.

Apart from the very concerning lack of rainfall though, it has to be remembered that we're still not even into the start of the actual meteorological summer just yet and I would much rather be getting all of this dry, warm and sunny weather which we've been getting during the actual summer itself, rather than right now before we have even got there. There has to be a flip to a wetter pattern at some point in time and it would just like the thing if that was to happen in time for the start of the actual summer, and the very time when we we actually typically want it to be warmer, drier and sunnier than average.

That however, has been my one major gripe about this spring's weather so far.

Sunshine for the past week was 97.2 hours which is the highest for a seven day period since May 2012 and we all know what that was followed by. At least 2012 was a proper summer spell with temperatures in the 20s as opposed to 16C with the now ever present nasty chilly wind that never relents. Not one day has reached 20C so far this month when three days in April managed it.

I've loathed this spring. Just about the worst ever season for the Weekend Curse. I've never known anything like it. A contrast between brilliantly sunny weeks and disgusting grey/cold/wet write-off weekends. All of the coldest and wettest days have been at the weekend and it looks like yet another horror is lined up for next weekend. Unbelievably bad. Will this crap end ever end? It's truly unbearable.

As we are heading towards summer, this should be the time of year when everything is warming up and this means that we would typically expect May to be our warmest month of the spring on average.

In terms of the daytime maximum temperatures and despite the continuation of the dry and sunny conditions into this month though, that has not actually been the case this year. Our highest maximum temperatures here in Edinburgh were actually recorded during April and although this has been another warmer month with a number of 20+°C maximum temperatures once again, this month's highest temperature hasn't been quite as high as April's highest temperature here even though the synoptics were similar in both cases with high pressure to our east feeding up warm air from the south.

Even down south, that has still been noticeable because in April, they came within a whisker of getting what would have been their earliest  30+°C on record down there if that had actually happened. The highest temperatures even down there stopped just short of that and despite all of the dry, wam and sunny weather which has continued to be around since then, that first 30+°C hasn't even come close to happening since then. Eventually, England will see at least one 30+°C maximum at some point during this year as that is now something which happens every year even with our poorest summers but for now, there are no signs of that happening any time soon, especially given that an end to this spell of dry and sunny weather is now starting to look increasingly likely by the time that we get to the late May Bank Holiday.

I'm sure than it can't be very often that when a dry and sunny April is followed by an equally dry and sunny May, it doesn't actually get any warmer over time in the manner in which we would typically expect it to at this time of year even under similar synoptics, and that is what I find very peculiar about this spell of weather.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but even if you look a longterm daily averages, there are dips and peaks in any month and in any season, but the broader trends (much like with longer term climate trends) will show a gradual warming at this time of year and up to about the end of July / early August period. 

I'm not suggesting in any way that the overall average temperatures haven't been any higher in this month than they were in April, but the fact remains that our highest maximum temperatures so far have actually been in April rather than in this month, and that we came closer to getting a 30+°C maximum at some location in the UK during April than we did during this month.

If it is indeed the case that our overall average temperatures have increased during this last couple of months, we would normally expect those highest maximums to go up accordingly, but that has not actually been the case over the last two months despite those months being dry and sunny throughout.

It is this fact that the daytime maximums haven't been any higher this month than they were in April which I find rather peculiar under these circumstances, and that is something which probably doesn't happen all that often at this time of the year. I know that I probably should have worded that a lot better, but that is what I was actually referring to when I was talking about it not actually getting any warmer.

I get what you mean now. May would be more consistently warmer than April, even f April does have a higher absolute max this year. When I look at stats (locally) from the winter of 1962-1963, there was no remarkablely cold temps recorded at all throughout, yet the consistancy of moderately low temps made it stand out. Jan 1963 remains the coldest month on record here, but Feb 1969* recorded the lowest all time minima, despite being a warmer month overall than Jan 1963. This is coming across as a bit garbled but I think you might get my point. 

*Edit, Feb 1969 not Feb 1961. 

On a serious note though, the ground around here is baked hard and solid now. Heavy rain falling straight on to that in one go would likely just run off and fill the rivers up, causing some sudden flooding issues. At least initially, light and steady rain would be needed to soften the ground again. It's potentially looking like a great month with one heck of a sting in its tail.

And what about last weekend? That was fine & sunny in Aberdeen but you never commented on that, you never do when you get good weather.

There is evidence of something on the most recent satellite imagery although I’m not sure it is the same location as the one you are referring to? 

https://www.sat24.com/en-gb/country/gb 

Been grey, windy and dismal here - but dry. I was xxxxxx cold helping with a local event in the village, despite my fleece. Bumped into a pupil I last met 52 years ago - a retired Dr! Strange old world.