Will it or Won't it??

Daily Mail reports a change in weather 

There are strong signals this weekend that the weather is about to change, with the cold weather from the east winning the battle with the Atlantic. What will be critical to what  happens next week will be where the high pressure ends up and so we could either end up with a nice easterly or it will be the north west that ends up with all the  snow when the cold and mild air clashes.

Whilst we will probably see some frosts and maybe some ice days in the UK the rest of europe is looking extremely cold, with Germany forecast at - 22 degrees!!!

The chart below is for next Thursday at 06:00 and whilst cold I don't believe we will see any snow until at least Friday but probably Saturday. Living a few miles from the Thames I am hoping for some excellent Thames streamers if we have the anticipated easterly winds.

Temperatures at 2m for Thursday 2nd Feb

I am travelling next week and plan to be in the Midlands on Monday and Yorkshire the rest of the week. I should be where the snow is, especially when the easterlies are forecast to be best in the south east next Friday / Saturday which is when I plan to be home. My only concern is the driving though, I need to make sure I have a tank of Petrol and some warm clothes in the car just in case I get stuck and with a rear wheel drive BMW I hope I am not driving when the snow starts!

An interesting week ahead!

First real frost of Winter

This winter has been abysmal for cold weather. Yesterday was the 3rd day this winter where I have recorded a sub zero temperature.  The low yesterday for Cliffe Woods as -1.5 compared to frost hollow Ellis, in Hawley, at -5.2. The local fields looked amazing in white and the photos below where quick snaps taking on the good old iPhone 4s!

Even with the cold nights and the forecast of more cold next week  the lack of rain will probably mean limited snow. Last year was the 2nd driest year I have recorded at 418mm  which is around 40% lower than a normal year. January 2012 has started of in a similar vain as well. Whilst we are stuck in a zonal weather pattern at the moment, with the atlantic determining our weather, it is not helping out with rain in the South East.

Oh and for the record I don't believe we will see and really cold weather in Jan or snow and whilst I will be disappointed I can't see Feb being any different either!

What a shite winter!!

Windy miller!!!

Whilst it still looks like my winter forecast is hopeless with no cold weather in sight, today's weather has been interesting. On the way into work this morning they closed the Dartford bridge due to high winds and looking at the data from the weather station I recorded my highest gust since I purchased the weather station in 2006.


















Then tonight, at sunset, after 8 mm of rain came a beautiful red sky. Looking at the horizon towards London was stunning but this picture from the iphone doesn't do it justice

First winter weather

Travelled to Liverpool today, via Wakefield and back home.. 500 miles for 2 meetings!

Interesting thing was the weather, 7.5 degrees in London, 2 degrees along the m62 with snow dusting on the hills and very dark sky!

There was hail whilst driving and then again when I got to skelm



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LRF - Winter 2011 - 2012

Well what will this year bring in terms of weather, will it be cold or mild?

Here is my prediction for this winter. It will be interesting to see if any of this comes off as it's purely my views based on comments from various websites.

With the current "indian Summer" with temperatures pushing 30 degrees it's hard to predict a colder than average winter!

In terms of forecasting I am leaning more and more to sun activity as a guide to our weather, and with sun activity still low but up on last year I feel the overall theme of this year's winter will be slightly milder than last year.


Now for the months forecasts

October:

I do expect it to stay warmer on average, with the indian summer staying for a few days, with a lot of clear blue sky. The temps will drop back next week with some rain as well. We need this rain, not only to drive up our annual rainfall but also because we need rain to make snow later in the winter!!!

In the last week, going into November, I expect temperatures to start dropping to average temps with fog and cold nights coming back throughout this transition

November:

November  will be cold but not as cold as last year and I do not believe there will be any snow at the end of the month like there was last year. I feel it will be a dry month and so some possible blue sky days.

December:

December is going to be the month, I feel this year the snow will come more from the east and so I feel the SE will get some good snow, and should generate some good Thames streamers! Temperatures will be on par with last year, and I feel the 2nd half of the month will be the coldest and this will last right through xmas into the new year.

I do not predict any ice days though and whilst it will be snowy it's will only last a few days at a time and so I don't see snow lying around for a week or more like last year.

January:

I think the cold spell will be over very soon into January, with mild temperatures most of the month.  If we lived in the North I think this might be a different story.

February

Mild weather will continue into this Month but it will turn cold again in the last 2 weeks. In the last 2 weeks there will be some cold days, but not prolonged and there will be some snow

Stats for the year so far

Just my normal stats update now that it's nearing the end of August.

Rain this year

Firstly Rain, and what a poor year it has been! Whilst when it rained it rained hard for a few minutes there has still been little rain this year and August is looking just as dry. There are parts of the UK that have records levels of rain but the South East has been very dry


Some forecasters are talking about a wet Autumn but I will wait and see. I will predict that we  will see a sub 500mm year on rain in 2011.

Average Outside Temperature

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Maximun Outside Temperature

So far 2011 is actually warmer than 2010 although it doesn't feel like it as this summer has felt quite mild compared to previous years.


The main reason for the year to date temperature increase was due to temperatures between  January to May. Whilst we had a snowy & cold  winter it was front loaded and the last few months of winter into Spring was actually warm compared to the last few years and actually compared better  to the winter / spring of 2006/2007.



Moving to the summer and in particular July it  ended up being my lowest recorded average temperature for the month since 2006.


=August has reversed this trend so far and is actually looking at being above the norm for average temp. So why is this?




Well whilst the maximum temperature is not record breaking, neither is the min temperature and so really August has been a boring middle of the road month. Today's is actually overcast & dull but still at 24 degrees and this is what is driving the average higher.


One thing though, this year I have had to use the air conditioning less than previous years which has saved the £££, especially with the energy companies putting up their prices every minute - this year has seen a 18% increase in prices and so we needed a mild summer to stop the use of the aircon. More importantly we need mild Winter  with these energy prices but I think this year will be like last with a cold December becoming mild in Jan.

Wind Run - how many miles of Wind I have had

Finally here is the wind. Nothing much to report here apart from the fact that my wind vane has been up in Cliffe woods for a year now and so I should start to get some good like for like measurements.

August 7th 2011

Another coldish start to August with today's mean temp currently sitting at 16.2 and looks like the high temp for the day has been and gone. Last night it actually got down to 12.6. It's interesting too see how August pans out because it's definiately no longer the month when summer goes out with a bang. 

Pavan and I went for a walk today through the woods, there were blackberry's every where. They were good to eat although Pavan thought it was just as much fun to squash as many as possible and end up with bright purple hands.

Cliffe Woods looked the same as always, we went hunting for bugs and overturned a few logs but didn't find much. Pavan was more interested in tarantulas and red fire ants than little beetles!

The plums where ready for harvest.















At one point it really looked like rain but the clouds passed to the east of us

a lot of wild flowers were still in bloom

Summer creatures

Just a couple of photos of some creatures that I have found in the garden this year.. two Giants!

The stag beetle was nearly 6cm long, is an endangered species and so was good to see it in May - it stayed underneath the door to the house for 2 days much to the delight of my boy!

I've not seen a stag beetle for a long time, probably a good 20 - 25 years and so I managed to resists the requests to kill it as I knew it would eventually fly away over night - this is the time it looks for food and too mate. Good old Google!!

Then came the Gaint Slug. This one was nearly 3 inches and sat there on the garden slab all morning in June.  Apparently The UK is the slug capital of the world and so this is not an endangered species. The facts say that in every cubic meter there will be 200 slugs in the UK.

The size was the rarity for me and again the requests to kill it came thick and fast. How does a 5 year old boy know that salt kills slugs?All I had was go on Dad put Salt on it... I was tempted but I never. When I came home later the slug was gone and there was no slime trial to the soil - although there was slime where it was. I did wonder if a bird took it!








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July

Well July ended up at an average temperature of 16.9 degrees. That's a nearly 3 degree drop year on year and an approx 2 degree drop on a normal July over the last 6 years.

Coldest temp recorded was 10.3 down from 11.8 degrees last year

Warmest temp recorded was 27.7 degrees down from 32.4 last year

Rain was at 39.4mm which is slightly below average and 75% of this rain was over 7 days from the 16th July.
It feels  more like May than July..Garden liked it though!


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Where's the Summer gone?

A long time since I have posted on this Blog - weather just doesn't seem that interesting at the moment but it actually is quite fancinating what is happening this year. We started off with a mild end to the winter after the cold and snow of December and now we have low temps and Rain during the summer!

Firstly the rain - this year started dry, for the months of March, April and May  I only recorded 17.8 mm of rain. June was a record month with 71mm, this is the highest I have recorded since I installed the weather station back in 2005. It's raining again today and looks like it will rain most of next week so who knows what will happen for the rest of the year. Personally I think this year will end up with near normal level of Rain.

As for Temperatures - June ended up 1.4 degrees colder this year than last year and July seems to be going the same way.

The media is full of stories of the next Ice age, which makes a change from phone hacking! The sun's activity has reduced which will mean colder weather for the UK. My stats back this up but how true is it?.. who knows!! This winter is supposed to be bleak as well and hence my sudden interested in weather again. With Winter coming I thought I would refresh my web page and I have made it more iphone friendly. This means big buttons that can accomodate fingers easy and just a cleaner more clinical look as I like that. Over the next few weeks my aim is to do the same with the other pages on the web site!

Anyway check out the new style at www.t7own.co.uk 



The last 10 days

Been a little busy in the last few days at work and so weather has been neglected....but there has been a highlight - Xmas day was a record breaker this year.

Firstly it was the first ICE day for Xmas day and my 6th for December.
Then it was my lowest mean for Xmas day, see table below

Year             Mean     Low    high

2005             3.0        -2.3     7.1
2006             6.0        5.3      6.7
2008             6.2        4.7      7.1
2009             2.8        1.8      5.4
2010            -1.6       -2.7    -0.4

Then one more record, my first Xmas day without a Beer... was in Bed most of the day with a cold!!

Oh and this post has been written on my new imac!!

Bring back the frost!

Minus 0.8 last night



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Weekly update

Another cold week, with a couple of mild days - Friday and Saturday. Actually yesterday was the warmest 11th December we have had since 2005. It's turned cold again today with temps below zero and quite a hard frost this morning. You can see the above average 11th in the graph below.

Next week is going to be very interesting, will it snow or won't it? I think it's a given for North England and Scotland.

There is some snow on the charts from Tuesday (Blue stars on the map below) and the Met office is forecasting kent and London to have snow by Thursday evening, How much and for how long is going to be hard to work out

One thing for sure though, it will be cold all the way through until Xmas day and we should set some cold temperature records.

This year the mean Temp for Dec is 0.3 degrees, the average of the last 6 years is 4.7. This is a significant drop. So far for 2010 the Mean Temp is 1.2 degrees lower than the average of the last 5.1 years. This is significant, they say bad winters come in threes, is this the case or is this a start of the UK cooling down. I know the mean temps for the world is still increasing but there will be variations and ours could mean we get colder, especially with the Gulf stream stagnant, the sun activity at it's lowest and volcanic eruptions.

We'll see how the next 2.5 months pan out before we start beleiving the Mayans!!

Colder than Average!

Some more stats on the cold weather.

Since the 14th November it's be colder than the average 5 years!!



This Years Temps vrs Last Year




This year vrs the average of the last 5 years




Min Max Temps



Snow clearing!!!

I cleared Pinkys car about 30 mins ago and it's starting to get covered again already






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Another 3 inches over night

Now at 9 inches and snowing like crazy!!!


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November stats

TEMPERATURE:

November turned out really cold, with my mean average at 6.3 compared to an average of the last 5 years of 8.14....so nearly 2 degrees lower than average. This is even more amzing when the beginning of the month was so warm. On the 4th November we had a high of 18.1 degrees and a mean 15.7, 18.1 is the highest temperature recorded in November - A RECORD HIGH TEMP FOR NOVEMBER

I also recorded my first ice day since I started to record weather data in 2005. These meant the temperature did not go above zero all day! - RECORD MONTH NUMBER 2!!

RAIN:

Rain was low as well with on 38mm of rain compared to an average of 72mm for November. 2005 was a cold november and there was on 22mm of rain, so there may be a pattern here?

WIND:

Finally November was the month of high winds, I had a 44 mph gust on 11th November 2010 with an average windspeed of 9.5. I have only seen winds greater than this twice since 2005. This was on the 18th Jan 2005 where there was a 45 MPH gust and average winds of 10.2 MPH. The other was the 27th March 2006 where there was a 45 MPH gust and an average of 16.2.

So nearly a record but not quite... now what will December bring?

DECEMBER FORECAST:

My only prediction is it's going to stay cold all month but will it be a record breaking month?

My average mean temperature for December over the last 5 years is 5.2 degrees with last year at 4 degrees so I think it will around the 4 to 5 degree mark. I cannot see how it can fall below 4 degrees but we'll wait and see. The models are changing all the time but I think it will stay cold.

Still snowing!!!

This car was clear last night!!


Starting to drift in the 20mph gusts!!




Baby icicles


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An unbelieveable day

Today is unbelievable, whilst I am on holiday and can enjoy myself people that have had to work have struggled. My brother is currently stuck in Orpington some 4 miles from his home. He has not moved for 7 hours now and the chances of him getting home tonight must be zero.

At work we have 80% of the work still to get out and I can see us not catching up until Friday.

This snow event is the worse for years, it's still snowing now and so it's not really stopped for 24 hours. It's currently 0.3 degrees with 10 MPH easterly winds.

Great to see a big snow event but as a country we should be more prepared!

more photos