At first, I wasn't sure whether a weather forum such as this one was the most appropriate place to report this, rather than through whatever means of reporting a UFO that there happens to be and the reason for that is because I have now just seen a very strange bright object in the sky which is very rare in these parts these days.
Upon doing some further research, I then discovered that this very bright object is something which is known as "the Sun", but the fact that this has been so rarely seen in these parts these days, shows just exactly what our weather has been like in these parts recently.
Indeed, this has been shown recently by the latest sunshine totals which show that as at 1pm this afternoon, a total of just 57.7 hours of sunshine has been recorded for this month so far at Edinburgh Gogarbank. Furthermore, we have also had more completely sunless days during this month than what we have had during any other month within this year with the exception of January.
I know that we are now well into October with more darkness than daylight which means that the amount of sunshine which we can get at this time of year isn't as much as what that would be during the summer. However, the amount of sunshine which have had during this month is still lagging behind what we would normally expect to have had by this stage of this month according to the 1981-2010 averages, especially since we are now just about two thirds of the way through this month now.
Furthermore, we are in the time of year when the days are still rapidly shortening which means that the amount of possible available sunshine isn't as much now as what that was at the very beginning of this month. This means that in order to maximise our chances of this month going down as being sunnier than average overall, we really needed to be getting our sunniest weather during the first half of this month when there was more available sunshine which we could get from that.
As it is, I still wouldn't completely write off our chances of this month being sunnier than average in the end in these parts, and the next few couple of days are looking quite good in that department. However, I don't think that the omens are good just now in terms of this month being sunnier than average, especially since at least some of the model output is pointing towards that unsettled weather which has already made this a very wet month, returning as we approach the last week of the month, and possibly even from the second half of next week.
The north of Edinburgh, usually always missing out on snow events which occur not just within the rest of Scotland or the UK, but also within the rest of Edinburgh.