As I get older I am finding the UK winters more and more depressing and
boring and just long for some decent weather.
Each year now the same old repeated weather patterns seem to get locked in
with wind, rain and gloom with constant
flooding and damage to peoples property.
It seems that after a brief respite in the new year its back to the same old
south westerly trash pattern.
I find it very tedious here in Essex, and we are the driest, but god knows
how the people living further north manage to deal with this never ending
train of storms from the Atlantic.

Yes the climate has changed since I was a child, but I never remember
winters like the way they are now. I will not discuss
the possible causes as I do not have the answers, but it appears that
October till April now is a time to dread.

December was unseasonably warm, but no compensation for what it delivered, I
do feel that dry & cold winters are a thing of the past
and if this is the alternative I'm not too sure how we adapt to the way
things now look set.

Just a quick moan, as you may guess I'm sick of it!

On Sunday, 31 January 2016 18:39:00 UTC, GKN wrote:
As I get older I am finding the UK winters more and more depressing and
boring and just long for some decent weather.
Each year now the same old repeated weather patterns seem to get locked in
with wind, rain and gloom with constant
flooding and damage to peoples property.
It seems that after a brief respite in the new year its back to the same old
south westerly trash pattern.
I find it very tedious here in Essex, and we are the driest, but god knows
how the people living further north manage to deal with this never ending
train of storms from the Atlantic.

Yes the climate has changed since I was a child, but I never remember
winters like the way they are now. I will not discuss
the possible causes as I do not have the answers, but it appears that
October till April now is a time to dread.

December was unseasonably warm, but no compensation for what it delivered, I
do feel that dry & cold winters are a thing of the past
and if this is the alternative I'm not too sure how we adapt to the way
things now look set.

Just a quick moan, as you may guess I'm sick of it!

The problem is politics. A succession of disastrous governments have ruined the beer in Britain. Starting with Lloyd George who much preferred adultery to alcohol but had free access to alcohol at all time including Sundays.

Over the last few years pubs have been shut down as brewers concentrate on lacing lemonade and representing fighter fuel as beer to children. The working man can not buy a decent Mild and Porter no longer exists in a drinkable form for working men at lunch time -which the government has also banned to working men.

My advice it to go to whichever pub sells decent beer you can afford and vote for communists in future. They may not know an arse from an elbow in finance but they tend to understand the merits of good beer. And anyway they won't blatantly cheat you like the Tories and the Labour parties do as they can rely entirely on blank stupidity.

On 31/01/2016 18:38, GKN wrote:
As I get older I am finding the UK winters more and more depressing and
boring and just long for some decent weather.
Each year now the same old repeated weather patterns seem to get locked
in with wind, rain and gloom with constant
flooding and damage to peoples property.
It seems that after a brief respite in the new year its back to the same
old south westerly trash pattern.
I find it very tedious here in Essex, and we are the driest, but god
knows how the people living further north manage to deal with this never
ending
train of storms from the Atlantic.

Yes the climate has changed since I was a child, but I never remember
winters like the way they are now. I will not discuss
the possible causes as I do not have the answers, but it appears that
October till April now is a time to dread.

December was unseasonably warm, but no compensation for what it
delivered, I do feel that dry & cold winters are a thing of the past
and if this is the alternative I'm not too sure how we adapt to the way
things now look set.

Just a quick moan, as you may guess I'm sick of it!
----------------------------------------------------------------
Do you know I was just sitting here thinking the same. Reading stuff
from the younger members on TWO clutching at a three day spell of 4C as
a cold spell and quoting the "cold" winters of 3cm of snow as something
to aspire to makes you realise how much the climate has changed. Here
in Essex we had many winters not on the cold winter list (pre-2000) with
the odd blizzard or bitterly cold Easterlies. I don't think we've had a
bitterly cold Easterly for several years now. Rarely was there a winter
without snow showers off the North Sea. I was once stranded in Southend
when the rest of the Country had no snow at all. Perhaps the most
obvious missing instance wasn't even considered as a snow event. Rain
moving in from the West and hitting the cold continental air giving
several hours of snow, maybe 3-4" which turned to rain and melted the
same day. Hasn't happened for years. 2010 was no big deal here. Better
than most in that 20 year period but no blizzards, no deep drifts. This
winter has been one of no extremes (here) - just a bit of wind, damp all
the time but no heavy rain, invariably long dingy spells (aka today).
Difficult to keep the winter interest going with the same progged for
the next two weeks.
Dave

Difficult to keep the winter interest going with the same progged for the
next two weeks.
Dave now you know why I was moaning for weeks on end about the endless
dross!
We've had at least a few half decent snowfalls in November and the middle of
this month, but most of the time it's been nothing but endless dross.
November saw around 120 mm of rain, December almost a 100 mm of rain and
this month so far 125 mm of rain.
Sunshine totals for the 3 months (Nov to Jan) not even reached 100 hours
(average 155 hours), and still the dross goes on.
Yesterday was one of the better days of this horrible winter. I really can't
see February getting any better.
The only upside I suppose, if we do get a cold spell we will at least get
some sunny days which would be a welcome relief.

Graham (Weston Coyney)

On Sunday, 31 January 2016 22:34:19 UTC, Graham wrote:
Difficult to keep the winter interest going with the same progged for the
next two weeks.
Dave now you know why I was moaning for weeks on end about the endless
dross!
We've had at least a few half decent snowfalls in November and the middle of
this month, but most of the time it's been nothing but endless dross.
November saw around 120 mm of rain, December almost a 100 mm of rain and
this month so far 125 mm of rain.
Sunshine totals for the 3 months (Nov to Jan) not even reached 100 hours
(average 155 hours), and still the dross goes on.
Yesterday was one of the better days of this horrible winter. I really can't
see February getting any better.
The only upside I suppose, if we do get a cold spell we will at least get
some sunny days which would be a welcome relief.

What on earth are you idiots groaning for on Monday there is a linestorm warning that runs through to Tuesday when it is replaced by a tornado warning.

Nip down to the pub until Tuesday afternoon then dust yourselves off ready for the middle of February. You are going to need all your faculties then:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/w...ime=1454371200

Graham. I know exactly what you mean.
The UK winter this year has been characterised by boring grey skies in the
south east and something bordering on frightening in the north & west.
As I said in my last post I can only hope this phase ends soon, but the
signs are that it will continue. On the first of November 2015, we flew out
to Malaga and thirty minutes after landing we were greeted with a
thunderstorm of the intensity I have not seen in years. The whole event
lasted close on three hours with dazzling forked lightning, hail and
torrential rain which lasted till around midnight.
It was very much like the storms we used to get that drifted up from France
on a hot summers evening. But No, we do not even get those anymore.
After being interested in the weather since the age of 5 or 6 my interest is
waning purely due to anything of any interest happening here!

Now watch what happens!!!!

"Weatherlawyer" wrote in message
...

On Sunday, 31 January 2016 22:34:19 UTC, Graham wrote:
Difficult to keep the winter interest going with the same progged for the
next two weeks.
Dave now you know why I was moaning for weeks on end about the endless
dross!
We've had at least a few half decent snowfalls in November and the middle
of
this month, but most of the time it's been nothing but endless dross.
November saw around 120 mm of rain, December almost a 100 mm of rain and
this month so far 125 mm of rain.
Sunshine totals for the 3 months (Nov to Jan) not even reached 100 hours
(average 155 hours), and still the dross goes on.
Yesterday was one of the better days of this horrible winter. I really
can't
see February getting any better.
The only upside I suppose, if we do get a cold spell we will at least get
some sunny days which would be a welcome relief.

What on earth are you idiots groaning for on Monday there is a linestorm
warning that runs through to Tuesday when it is replaced by a tornado
warning.

Nip down to the pub until Tuesday afternoon then dust yourselves off ready
for the middle of February. You are going to need all your faculties then:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/w...ime=1454371200

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/w...ime=1454371200
Funnily enough that chart epitomises one of the things that doesn't
happen any more. The front north of Scotland has occluded. I remember
many occasions when a cold front would rapidly dive South pulling a
vigorous northerly polar flow in behind it. Subsequent disturbances
would bring heavy hail, sleet or often snow showers and short lived
blizzards for at least a couple of days.
Dave, S.Essex

On 31/01/2016 22:34, Graham wrote:



Yesterday was one of the better days of this horrible winter.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You're spoilt ;-) Cloudy and drizzle all day here :-( Saturday before
last was nice though. We've not had lying snow for three years now. I'm
trying to paint the hallway but haven't had any natural light to see the
colour test swatches since I got them. Light on all day and it is South
facing!
Dave

On Monday, 1 February 2016 10:54:17 UTC, Dave Cornwell wrote:
On 31/01/2016 22:34, Graham wrote:



Yesterday was one of the better days of this horrible winter.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You're spoilt ;-) Cloudy and drizzle all day here :-( Saturday before
last was nice though. We've not had lying snow for three years now. I'm
trying to paint the hallway but haven't had any natural light to see the
colour test swatches since I got them. Light on all day and it is South
facing!

I have condensation problems which is good as there's no painting for me for a while.

You might be interested in this from sci.geo.earthquakes:
On Monday, 1 February 2016 00:30:18 UTC, Weatherlawyer wrote:


Too far out for a serious call but the NAEFS is clearly marking its card for the 14th as Earthquake Weather. Eastern Hemisphere -that means we probably won't have weather fronts for it.

As compared to the chart for the 3rd of February 2016 which, although ostensibly an earthquake signal, develops ragged isobars -indicative of line-storminess, instead (the so called aerial earthquake.)

So now we have to find corresponding indications such as a Delta "occluded front" traversing the Atlantic in a manner dissimilar to the style incorporated into Lows with lots of mice which tend to close up and go bang -as if a lit fuse. (Such as this one: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/w...ime=1454241600 for example.)

Or a very large cyclonic system nestled on the delta known as the Ross Ice Shelf such as this one: http://www.bom.gov.au/australia/char...Refresh+ View for another.

These are particularly useful as sometimes they don't run as expected (but only due to magnitude. (Forecast!!)) The one pictured at the time of writing spills over and runs upstream spreading a mat of isobars across the Furthest East. It is in fact conclusive.

Well, it is better than watching paint dry in the cold and damp.

I was thinking just the same - we seem to have a two season climate now in East Anglia, 3 months of summer and 9 months of Auuuutuuuuummmmmmmnnnnnnnn...

Looking at an old climate atlas, it shows the Jan isotherms going roughly North-South (coldest in the east, warmest in the west) as opposed to the summer isotherms which run East-West. Traditionally in terms of temperature, 0m here was the same as 150m where my parents live in Worcestershire, or 450m on Dartmoor.

However, with the extension of the Icelandic low eastwards, and the associated death of the winter easterly and battleground snow, the Jan isotherms have shifted East-West, and the Suffolk climate has become a drier version of Devon and Cornwall (snowless and near frostless, with 0m here now equivalent to 0m in Devon). We must have experienced larger changes in temperature and snowfall here than anywhere else I guess.

As to why it has happened, I don't know for sure but I surmise that the winter easterly can be thought of as a density-driven current pushing west against the prevailing wind regime. Now there is less cold air in Siberia and what there is is less dense, there is less force behind it, and the cold air is unable to reach us. Indeed the "battleground" region the last few years seems to have been near Moscow !!

I was in Copenhagen recently and the Danes were complaining about the lack of snow and the "English weather"....

Brac