Poor weather this weekend (02/10)

[Falcon1200]

The Carmont slip was due to having nobody on the maintenance team who appeared to understand civil engineering, plus some decidedly dubious operating principles...

From what we know of the tragedy so far, those are certainly not the conclusions I would draw. Perhaps we should wait for the final RAIB report ?

 

[jackot]

Been to Portsmouth for football, had an advance on the Southern 17:19 to Croydon which was cancelled. Spoke to a Southwestern lady who put me on a Waterloo train which has got as far as Havant and has now been diverted due to flooding, so it’s going non-stop to Woking then Clapham and Waterloo, instead of stopping at Rowlands Castle, Petersfield, Liss, et al.

I came back from Southbourne to Havant this afternoon, as well as the stopping service from Havant to Guildford. No disruption seen, but there was extremely heavy rain, and it does not surprise me that flooding has occurred.

 

[al78]

I must say this year has been one of the most depressing years in terms of weather I can remember. The south in particular has seen a lot of grey sky, and there’s been a big trend for “locked in” weather patterns where we have seen the same weather for weeks at a time, and generally poor weather at that. Even when we’ve had high pressure something seems to have conspired to spoil it. What with the Covid restrictions it’s been pretty depressing. I’m sure I’m not the only one who can’t wait for this rancid year to end! I think it’s fair to say it’s actually been worse than 2020 for many.

I agree. I believe Heathrow is on 75% of average sunshine for the year to date (compared with 1981-2010 climatology), but that is despite a very sunny April (it was the sunniest on record for the UK, stealing the crown from 2020), which tells you how cloudy the rest of the year has been. August was particularly gloomy. It has been a poor year for allotment gardening, with the frostiest Aptil for nearly 100 years (blocking high to the NW advecting polar air over the UK for the whole month), followed by a cool dull wet May, June starting off decent then becoming very wet and dull (some parts of the SE got double the normal monthly rainfall in the second half of the month), July dull and unsettled, and August very dull with a lack of warm temperatures (the highest temperature recorded in August in the UK was in Scotland). Many of my brassicas decimated by slugs and snails. The end of August was frustrating, a huge high pressure over the UK which advected North Sea clag over virtually the whole country for a full week, what a waste of a summer anticyclone. I get the impression that these blocked weather patterns are becoming more common, and we might have to start thinking about the resiliance of our infrastructure to sustained periods of wet and dry, or even stormy (e.g. winter 2013/14). Over the last two years the weather seems to have been lovely during peak COVID restrictions, then regressed to unsettled shortly after restrictions were eased (e.g. April/May 2020, peak restrictions, weather very dry and sunny, restrictions eased beginning of June, June was a very wet month, I think in the top 25% going back at least a century). This year the SE has copped the worst weather this summer, June and July were much better (i.e. drier) further north and west, and I had superb weather in the highlands at the end of May/early June. In some ways this year has felt worse because Spring 2020 was very warm and sunny, but this year SE England has had five consecutive months of poor weather during BST. To add insult to injury, the summer weekends have tended to get the worst weather which is a nuisance if, like me, you work standard weekday office hours.

As for today, welcome to autumn. The rain hasn't been heavy, just persistent all day, and a lot of standing water around even though the totals are not notable. Was a bit breezy earlier on with some branches coming off trees.

What has been so frustrating for us of those in the south this year is the knowledge that much of the UK has had a good or least decent summer.

I guess the Scots and those in northern England must feel like this in most years though!

That said the weather today does not seem that bad, just a typically wet day that you expect to occur a few times in October.

I originally come from Northern England and I can say this year's weather in general in the SE has been poor, even by Mancunian standards.