Stormy Weather II

[greenilex]

Lovely sunny afternoon in Southampton. Magnolia trees are amazing just now.

[BBMmk2]

Been a lovely spring day today. I was able to go and see my haematologist on my mobility scooter! Very nice to do this. Helps me to get out and about very nicely.

[cloughie]

After overnight rain been a good day hear. Temperature 16+ this morning - a good to be alive day!

[DracoM]

Yep, plenty of sun, but as reported upthread, seriously sustained blustery easterly winds.

[oddoneout]

Switzerland is a very good part of the world for spectacular thunderstorms, given that the Alps provide a barrier where south-eastward migrating cold fronts marking a dividing line between polar air to the north and subtropical air coming up from Africa meet head on, with nowhere to go but upwards. I shan't forget the golfball-sized hailstones that had people rushing indoors from a Zurich restaurant terrace where, moments earlier, they'd been happily and noisily enjoying a summer evening with friends and families; nor the April storm that came after daytime temperatures had reached 26 degrees Celsius was followed, the next morning, by 10 centimeters of snow on the ground. This was "all quite normal" in the Swiss climate, I was "reassured"!

I had several childhood camping holidays in Switzerland, usually at Whitsun, and remember a very pleasant campsite at Montana where a brief thunderstorm would turn up out of the blue every afternoon round about 2-30/3-00pm, chuck it down for about 10 or 15 mins and then disappear. As it stayed pleasantly warm we children would more often than not have fun running around in it, shrieking at the thunderclaps.

[oddoneout]

Third day in a row that temperatures have been way below those predicted by the meteorological professionals. They haven't apparently taken into account two factors: the first being that the winds (albeit light) are bringing in cold air and associated cloud from the North Sea, which, following last month's unusually late spell of Siberian air, remains 2-3 degrees C lower than is usual at this time of year; and, two, that the sun, strong enough by this stage to be expected to "burn off" low cloud such as this, is probably hidden above a sheet of middle height cloud associated with the rain front that had been plaguing the south for the past 3 days. Don't they ever go outside at the Met Office and look up? If they did so, they would bear witness to a dense and characteristically featureless blanket of stratus, lifted from last night's fog - one which is obviously not in any mood either to shift or break up. Tomorrow's forecast will probably be correct in predicting what we're having today; we're just going to have to wait and see if these winds will eventually do as they're told, swing around to the south and bring us the warmth so optimistically being prognosticated for next week by the prognosticators.

The Met Office summary I use now has a useful 'feels like' line to take wind chill into account, although I don't really need it these days as after decades of living in the East of the country I'm accustomed to doing a quick subtraction if the wind's in the wrong quarter.
Today has been grey, damp, foggy and generally rather dispiriting, although at least it didn't actually rain....which is always a bonus at present.

[Joseph K]

Unremitting grey over the past almost week where I am in the Midlands.

[DracoM]

The forecast we use in this enclave is www.yr.no
Scandinavian, yes, but which can be calibrated to focus on your own area.
Farmers here seem to find it more accurate than the BBC or Met, and at lambing / silageng etc, they need accuracy or near it.

[oddoneout]

The forecast we use in this enclave is www.yr.no
Scandinavian, yes, but which can be calibrated to focus on your own area.
Farmers here seem to find it more accurate than the BBC or Met, and at lambing / silageng etc, they need accuracy or near it.

Given the sheer variety of weather we seem to be able to experience on such a small bit of land it's probably just as well there is now access to a choice of forecasts. I've found the Met office summary pretty good for my purposes, but my son, south of London, favours the Norwegian offering I think. Back in the day the forecast given with our local ITV news was always pretty good but the swallowing up and amalgamation that then happened resulted in a completely useless generic 'summary', the only redeeming feature of which was that it was equally useless for everyone, so we all felt short-changed. About 4 years ago I started using the Beeb's online service, but recent changes there put a stop to that, hence ending up with the current arrangement.

[Lat-Literal]

Given the sheer variety of weather we seem to be able to experience on such a small bit of land it's probably just as well there is now access to a choice of forecasts. I've found the Met office summary pretty good for my purposes, but my son, south of London, favours the Norwegian offering I think. Back in the day the forecast given with our local ITV news was always pretty good but the swallowing up and amalgamation that then happened resulted in a completely useless generic 'summary', the only redeeming feature of which was that it was equally useless for everyone, so we all felt short-changed. About 4 years ago I started using the Beeb's online service, but recent changes there put a stop to that, hence ending up with the current arrangement.

The BBC weather website has gone downhill.

Not at all user friendly now.

Three days of not being able to see the trees in the distance here.

When will they change the name of this kind of fog to smog?

Or did every last bit of honesty leave us in the 1950s?

[gurnemanz]

Weather ok for tennis this evening, but not too spring-like. Dank with a chilly north wind

[Nick Armstrong]

The forecast we use in this enclave is www.yr.no
Scandinavian, yes, but which can be calibrated to focus on your own area.

Yes I too, following a recommendation here (perhaps from you, Draco)

For the past couple of years, I've turned to it when there seems to be disagreement between home-grown sources. Often it's yr.no which gets it right.

The last few days, there has been a laughable contradiction between the BBC weather website forecasts and the Met Office ones. I'm sure 'April showers' are difficult to predict, but the opposites forecast by those two sites make it seem as if there's not much actual science at work, just guesswork...

[DracoM]

Glad yr.no is doing a job!
Here the easterly wind has raged all night. Not bitingly cold, but thumping roof tiles and windows.
Not that you'd know that from any BBC / Met forecast.

[BBMmk2]

Back to normal!

[oddoneout]

The BBC weather website has gone downhill.

Not at all user friendly now.

Three days of not being able to see the trees in the distance here.

When will they change the name of this kind of fog to smog?

Or did every last bit of honesty leave us in the 1950s?

Well it won't be smog for all the areas covered?