Show's the massive difference just about 150 miles can make on this accursed chunk of rock.

Do you live on Mount St. Helens?

 

 

Show's the massive difference just about 150 miles can make on this accursed chunk of rock.

Yes, it's been sodden here lately. Some minor flooding about and the local brook was as high as I've seen it all winter the other day. 

19 days

 

Do you live on Mount St. Helens?

Alas no...

...but this chunk of rock called the UK is accursed enough.

I hate our climate.

Today has been the best day of March here which says a lot about this March as there has still been absolutely no sun.

Every day this month, bar the 1st has recorded at least 1mm of rainfall. Even the other soggy months, like April 2012, June 2012 and January 2014 weren't as bad as this.

I'm sure we had some bits of drizzle on the 1st.

in a way, this week's sunshine totals for this part of the world show us yet another example of just how abysmal, this month's weather (and therefore, this so-called "spring"'s weather) has been so far.

For Edinburgh Gogarbank, these totals are 1.1 hours of sunshine during yesterday (Monday) and a really abysmal 42 minutes during today (Tuesday). That is an average of just 54 minutes of sunshine per day at the very time when were approaching the Vernal Equinox and even at the winter sostice, these figures would still be abysmal for that time of the year.

This is the week when everything was forecast to be so much better and as a result, be our best and most high pressure dominated week of this spring so far. Yet, our sunshine totals have actually got even worse during this week so far, than what they were during that really wet and miserable first couple of weeks or so of this month.

At the moment, we can't yet rule out the possibility of this month somehow, managing to end up being sunnier than average overall in this part of the world. In order for that to happen though, we are going to have to start getting some much better sunshine totals than what we are getting at the moment, and it is really going to have to start getting on with that very soon if not, right now otherwise we will be staring down the barrel of our duller than average month of this year which is probably a status which this month probably deserves anyway, given how dismal our weather has been recently.

I think today could break the sequence, and no rain falls for the first 24-hour day this spring.

Pity, really; it's not as if the alternative is going to be particularly great: mostly cloudy with the odd sunny spell.

I hate our climate.

My granddad once said that we don't have a climate, we just have weather.

If we had a really hot and sunny climate, for example, we'd really appreciate the rare days it was cool, cloudy and wet    

If we had a really hot and sunny climate, for example, we'd really appreciate the rare days it was cool, cloudy and wet    

I just like predictability within a framework of huge seasonal variation.

If we had a really hot and sunny climate, for example, we'd really appreciate the rare days it was cool, cloudy and wet    

I wonder what weather enthusiasts in the Sahara desert must think when they see a cirrus cloud?

Yet another sunless day here. Why do we get a crap HP? (Rhetorical question, I know why) . I see virtually the whole of France, Spain, Italy Germany in fact most of the rest of the world is sunny !

Yet another sunless day here. Why do we get a crap HP? (Rhetorical question, I know why) . I see virtually the whole of France, Spain, Italy Germany in fact most of the rest of the world is sunny !

For me this is the worst aspect of our maritime climate, the ease that HP systems fill with the strato-crap. The main factor is overall obviously the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere (plus low amounts of solar radiation in winter).

What makes it worse is knowing that it's a such a shallow layer of clouds.

It's soul destroying esp when it happens out of winter.

This is just nauseating

Yet again failed to record a frost with an annoying min of +0.2C  Three weeks since the last frost and March's dire total of three equalled my record low for the month following on from a record equalling low of five in February. Those three frosts are the only frosts recorded since 11th February. It's incredulous 

26 frosts for the season is one more than was recorded in 2016/17. However 14 of those frosts occurred between 17th Jan and 5th February meaning that the remaining 131 days of the November to March period, when we should be getting regular frosts, produced a total of 12 or an average of just one per 11 days 

Unbelievably awful. This is easily the most tedious boring and pathetic late autumn, winter and early spring I have experienced. Just woeful.

As if that wasn't bad enough the wait for decent weekend weather goes on. While we have seen several weekdays reach 15-17C not one weekend day has even reached 12C and it's always windy. A glorious 16.2C on Friday but yesterday the vile wind was back again making the max of 10.6C feel distinctly cold. Today will not even reach 10C as despite a clear start the sky has filled with loads of cumulus resulting in very little sun at what should be the warmest time of the day. Always happens under these types of synoptics and means the temp is just 6.9C at the moment 

The warmest at the weekend is just 11.5C which has been beaten 15 times during the week. That is again incredulous and defies rational explanation. Just how the hell can none of the top 15 warmest days over a three-month period fall at the weekend? 2013 is the only year in my 14 years of records that we had not seen warmer weekend weather by this stage. Even during last years cold grey March the weekend of 24th/25th comfortably beat anything we've seen so far this year.

Warmest Weekend Day up to end of March (number of weekend days with 12C+)

2006: 13.3C 26 March (1)
2007: 15.0C 10 March (3)
2008: 13.3C 23 Feb (3) plus 13.0C on 27th Jan!
2009: 14.8C 21 March (7)
2010: 12.8C 21 March (3)
2011: 14.9C 20 March (1)
2012: 20.4C 25 March (3)
2013: 11.5C 3 March (0)
2014: 16.3C 16 March (2)
2015: 14.0C 7 March (3)
2016: 14.6C 13 March (2)
2017: 17.1C 26 March (7)
2018: 12.2C 24 March (1)

What a truly hideous start to 2019. With April likely to prove a cold, wet month we could have to wait even longer than 2013 for some pleasant weekend weather as 14.2C was reached on 14th April 2013. Wouldn't be so bad if we were seeing some interesting weather but of course we're not