Monthly Archives: February 2018

London weather, Weather

London’s March extremes since 1959

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I’ve put together a few top 10s of stats for Wanstead, St James’s Park and Heathrow for the month of March.

The month, the first of the meteorological spring can offer really contrasting weather; perishing cold and very pleasant warmth are both very possible, as the values show.

Probably most notable in the list is the cold March of 1962 which was the coldest of the 20th century and 11th coldest in a local list going back to 1797. March 2013 was also very cold. Strong winds from deep depressions often feature as does the odd blizzard.

Marches in the 1960s also appear to often start very cold and end very warm; the term ‘In like a lion, out like a lamb’ being very appropriate.
•Though this blog only covers extremes back to 1959, thanks to Met Office digitised data, I’ve unearthed records prior to this. Both W.A.L Marshall’s A Century of London Weather (covering 1841 to 1941) and J. H. Brazell’s London Weather (covering 1841 to 1964) confirm the coldest March day as the 13th in 1845 when 25F (-3.9C) was recorded at

The coldest March minimum was 4/5 in 1909 with 9F (-12.8C) at Epsom. Greenwich and Hampstead recorded 14F (-10C)

march extreme

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Some national UK March values according to TORRO

Hottest: 25C Wakefield, West Yorks – 29th 1929
Coldest: -22.8C Logie Coldstone, Grampian – 14th 1958
Wettest: 164.3mm Glen Etive, Highland – 26th 1968

march av tmax

march Tmin

march av rain

Air thickness, cold spell, History, London snowfall, London weather, UK snowfall, Weather

Record cold pools and snowfalls

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This week has the potential to see new temperature records set or matched as very cold air moves in off the continent.

Whilst amounts and location of snow are very difficult to estimate at more than 24hrs to 48hrs away there is no doubt that the incoming air is very cold indeed.

In the early hours of Wednesday one weather model is showing extremely cold air (496-504 DAM ie very low thickness) just off the coast of Scotland. In the last 60 years there have been only three occasions where air approaching this thickness (500 DAM and lower) has been recorded in the UK:

February 1st 1956: Hemsby, Norfolk
February 7th 1969 at Stornoway, Outer Hebrides
January 12th 1987 at Hemsby.

thick
Radiosonde (weather balloon) ascents will make very interesting reading this week

With the deep cold air in place the potential for snowfall comes once the air starts to become unstable. East London, and much of the east coast, best falls come where convergence lines ‘streamers’ form.

streamer
One example of a streamer is forecast to occur on Tuesday

If persistent, these ‘Christmas tree’ features are capable of producing snowfall accumulating at the rate of 5–7cm per hour in especially cold
outbreaks, albeit often very locally. The steep thermal contrast between the very cold air and the current warm anomaly in the North Sea could make any snowfall very heavy indeed.

Streamers during the cold spell of January 1987 saw 30cm fall widely with some up to 65cm in Kent and 45cm in south Essex. Parts of Cornwall saw up to 40cm.

During a cold spell in February 2009 thundersnow was recorded – the favoured spot this time being parts of Surrey which saw 30cm.

Personally the most snow I have recorded during a cold spell was in February 1991. A very deep cold pool, not unlike what is forecast this week, covered much of the south. in air approaching 500 DAM. Days and days of snow followed dumping knee-deep powder in my local park in suburban East London. Reported depths included 20cm at St James’ Park in the centre of London, and 38cm at Rettendon, Essex.

There is a very good paper on cold pools and snowfall here.

beast

 

 

 

Blizzards, cold spell, London snowfall, London weather, UK snowfall, Weather, weather pattern

The most potent cold spells since 1960

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‘This cold spell is rubbish compared to what we used to get!’
Every winter when weather model hype builds expectation for many, often days in advance, the outcome never seems to quite match the hype.

This expectation among weather nerds is inflated even further when the tabloids cotton on and build anticipation further only for it all to end in a ‘damp squib’.

I’ve lost count of the number of times when excited enthusiasts proclaim that an incoming cold spell is going to last at least three weeks; the reality being that the intensity of the cold has gone after four or five days. Cold spells since 2008 often arrive as a ‘blob of cold air’ from the continent that eventually gets ‘warmed out’; it’s been a very long time since we had a cold spell that’s been fuelled by a continual feed of air off the continent.

Screen Shot 2018-02-22 at 09.02.23
In 2018 the really cold air aloft had warmed after 5 days

To illustrate my point I had a look back at every cold spell in this area of suburban east London since 1960. I weeded out the feeble efforts of the last few years by only considering spells where the maximum didn’t exceed 2.8C. The results spanned from the most recent cold spell of February 2018 to the mammoth 31-day Siberian blast that began on Boxing Day 1962.

In another blog I remarked how similar the 2018 pattern was to February 1962. This cold spell began on the 26th and lasted 9 days. Some 7cm of snow fell, this drifting in the wind, possibly making it seem worse with only 4 hours of sunshine which would have maintained any snow cover.

One of the snowiest cold spells happened in February 2009, eight days after an SSW event that lead to a polar vortex split. This four day spell saw a total of 26cm of snow fall.

February 1991 was even snowier, the intense cold lasting some 11 days.

Looking at other February cold spells a 7-day spell occurred in 1985 about a month after an SSW event.

Overall the median length was 5 days with an average of 6cm of snow and 8hrs of sunshine.

*A survey of winters ranked for temperature and snow can be found here.

London snowfall, London weather, Sudden stratospheric warming, UK snowfall, Weather, weather pattern

The cold spell of February / March 1962

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The last week or so has been agony for model watching coldies wishing for a snowy end to winter.

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The Synoptic chart for February 27th which saw 4 inches of snow in Stratford, east London

Solutions have often flip-flopped between a mild and cold outlook. Even this morning at 6 days out the GFS and ECM model temperature outcomes differed by some 20C, a choice between spring and deepest winter!

Sometimes you have to try and second guess what is going to happen by looking at previous patterns from years past.

Yesterday at Philip Eden‘s funeral I spoke to Woodford Green resident Ron Button. He pointed out how much this February reminded him of February 1962, a month that was non-descript for the first three weeks before turning very cold and snowy. Ron, who has kept a meticulous record of the weather ever since his interest was prompted by the severe winter of 1947, produced diaries of 1962 when he was living in Stratford. The entry for 26th / 27th read: “4 inches of snow with drifting”!

The March that followed was the coldest of the 20th century, ranking 10th in my list back to 1797, and 0.3C colder than March 2013. The fact that the monthly sunshine in 1962 was only slightly below average is testament to how cold the source of the air must have been. March 2013 was very dull by comparison!

An entry in London-weather.eu reads that March was colder than any of the previous 3 winter months: “The first three weeks were mostly mild and dry. It was often breezy which resulted in fewer than average night frosts. Frontal systems off the Atlantic passed through the London area, most of them weak though on the 12th, nearly 8mm of rain fell with southwesterly winds gusting to 57 knots. During the last week of the month, it became much colder, and on the 26th snow fell with the temperature not rising above -0.3C all day.”

There was no stratospheric sudden warming that winter and ENSO was neutral.

The winter of 1961/62 ranks only 14th in my list of worst winters, mostly because the core of the cold happened in March which is considered spring in meteorological circles

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march 1962 summary

The Snow Survey of Great Britain also makes interesting reading with these entries for February and March.

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march 1962

Wanstead Park history, Weather

A new weather station for Wanstead

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Wanstead has a new automatic weather station to complement the one set up in November 2012.Screen Shot 2018-02-13 at 19.13.20

The new AWS, situated in the grounds of Wanstead Golf Club, comes thanks to Friends of Wanstead Parklands. Data from the unit, which is sited very close to where Wanstead House once stood, will be used to help monitor the levels of the park’s lakes.

The sensor unit, 750m NNE of the weather station wansteadweather.co.uk on the Aldersbrook estate, is much better exposed and will hopefully offer more accurate wind and sunshine readings. It will also provide a chance to further investigate the area’s microclimate.

The station has already shown that the golf course is warmer on a radiative cooling night than the Aldersbrook Estate. Screen Shot 2018-02-18 at 14.22.08

The AWS can be found at WeatherCloud https://app.weathercloud.net/d0507444306#profile

Also at Weather Online
https://www.wunderground.com/personal-weather-station/dashboard?ID=ILONDON737

It also tweets hourly and provides an automatic 24hr daily summary. You can follow it @WansteadParkWX

Hourly tweets and all things weather continue as normal at @wanstead_meteo

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Sudden stratospheric warming, Weather, weather pattern

How does an SSW affect London’s weather

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There’s been much anticipation regarding the forthcoming sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event with many hoping that a resultant split vortex will result in unseasonably cold weather in the UK and… copious snow in the low-lying south-east.

An SSW event, which reverses winds high up in the atmosphere from a westerly to easterly, can downwell into the troposphere, bringing weather from a (usually) cold continent instead of the warm Atlantic.

While a split PV event is usually more conducive for cold weather in the UK, as opposed to a ‘displaced vortex’, which usually favours only the eastern US, it is by no means a guarantee of a cold pattern subsequently evolving.

Screen Shot 2018-02-09 at 18.43.11Using results published in the paper Tropospheric Precursors and Stratospheric Warmings (Judah Cohen and Justin Jones), along with meteorological data for east London, I set out to find what influence past warmings had on the weather in the capital.

Looking 45 days either side of the central date for vortex splits gave the following, chaotic graph.

 

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But every year is different. And there appears to be more likelihood of an SSW making a difference, in terms of prompting a colder pattern, the earlier in the winter it occurs.

The SSW in 1985 was followed by a 45-day mean temperature anomaly of -3.8C! If you look at a shorter timescale, 15 days after a split PV and the anomaly is -10C on January 16th: -4.9C is the second coldest January day in Wanstead of the past 60 years.

At the other end of the scale the SSW event on March 23rd 1965 was followed by a POSITIVE anomaly of 3.4C. Perhaps solar influence this late in the year can override any SSW? Elsewhere, however, according to the website london-weather.eu: “3rd March – A combination of deep snow cover and clear skies allowed minimum temperatures to fall below -21C in northern Scotland.”

During another SSW in 2001 results in London were fairly unremarkable though heavy snow fell in Ireland.

 

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This graph shows a general downward trend in the 15 days following an SSW event

Screen Shot 2018-02-10 at 10.42.39The other result to consider is the influence from ENSO. It seems that when La Nina is ‘too negative’ this can ‘overcook’ proceedings and actually leave our part of the UK with a positive anomaly, as this table shows. It should be noted, however, that thicker Arctic ice in the 1960s would also possibly have had more influence than now.

There hasn’t been a full SSW event for years. The impact this one will have on our weather in London, a tiny part of the globe, is impossible to quantify. Though the latest model output is encouraging for anyone looking for a chilly end to winter.

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And here’s @wxcharts idea on two weeks from now.

 

Weather

Paris rats, rain, floods and snow

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It’s all been happening in the French capital recently with deep snow replacing floods and rats as the main problem hampering residents. paris

Some great footage is doing the rounds on social media of people of varying abilities partaking in various wintersports; Montmartre hill turning into an impromptu playground.

Last month parts of the city flooded, the Seine swollen by higher than usual rainfall in the area surrounding the city.

The high water levels appears to have flushed the rats out of the sewers, the rodents having nowhere to go except ground level.

 

https://twitter.com/Paris_Newz/status/956251478653620224

 

 

cold spell, History, London snowfall, London weather, UK snowfall, Weather

The severe cold spell of February 1991

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The cold spell of February 1991 saw unusually deep snowfall in central London. The 20cm recorded at St James’s Park on the 8th was the greatest cover recorded at the site since the severe winter of 1962/63.

summ821991
Courtesy of the Met Office

My own memory of the event was that the synoptics evolved fairly quickly. I was away at university at the time and had to be back for a family event that weekend. After seeing a forecast predicting that a foot of snow was on the way I jumped on a train a day earlier than planned and returned to London. The following morning all hell had broken loose as deep snow paralysed public transport.

Snow fell on the following 6 days with no thawing as the temperature remained below zero until the 10th. The maximum of the 7th was -3C. By the 9th there was widely 20cm of level powdery snow lying. Getting around was difficult – I remember some drifts during walks into town were thigh high.

The month saw the three coldest February days of the last 60 years in central London.

By the end of the 19th all of the British Isles were snow free.

February 1991
February 1991 in suburban east London

The nine charts below show how a strong ridge of high pressure from an anticyclone over northern Sweden on the 5th brought very cold air and heavy snowfall over the following days.

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08021991
09021991
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12021991
13021991

These significant weather charts show the snow depths at noon from 6th to the 13th.

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07021991
08021991
09021991
10021991
11021991
12021991
13021991

 

summ1021991
Courtesy of the Met Office

Ian McCaskill’s late evening BBC forecast on February 6th.

Francis Wilson’s breakfast telly forecast on February 7th 1991: “Temperatures rising from -11 to -5C. Depths in excess of a foot. It’s all downhill from now.”

Harlow, Essex, during the cold spell.

Weather

January 2018: rather mild, wet, dull

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January 2017 was a wet month. Just over 64mm of rain was recorded, 121 per cent of average, slightly less than last January.Screen Shot 2018-02-04 at 21.20.29

The monthly mean finished 6.4C, 1.2C above average and the mildest January for four years.

Some 44 hours of sunshine were recorded, 88 per cent of average, the dullest January for six years.

The most notable event was during the early hours of the 18th when the ‘storm with no name’ felled many mature trees across a swathe of England, including a large beech on Blake Hall Road that led to the closure of the road during morning rush hour.

Air frosts: 4. Ground frosts: 12. Snow falling: 1

 

Full stats for January here:http://1drv.ms/1rSfT7Y

Summary for January 2018
Temperature (°C):
Mean (1 minute)  6.5
Mean (min+max)   6.4
Mean Minimum     3.5
Mean Maximum     9.3
Minimum          -2.4 day 29
Maximum          13.5 day 28
Highest Minimum  10.8 day 28
Lowest Maximum   4.1 day 20
Air frosts       4
Rainfall (mm):
Total for month  64.4
Wettest day      15.3 day 02
High rain rate   28.2 day 02
Rain days        19
Dry days         12
Wind (mph):
Highest Gust     45.0 day 02
Average Speed    4.2
Wind Run         3124.8 miles
Gale days        1
Pressure (mb):
Maximum          1031.2 day 29
Minimum          986.4 day 02
Days with snow falling         1
Days with snow lying at 0900   0
Total hours of sunshine        44.1
London weather, Weather

London’s February extremes since 1959

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I’ve put together a few top 10s of stats for Wanstead, St James’s Park and Heathrow for the month of February.

Probably most notable is the cold February of 1991 which saw the deepest snowfall I can remember – days of snow saw the level depth past my knee in suburban London. February 1986 was also very cold but also very dry with little snow.

Februaries in the 1990s were also often warm with 19.7C being reached in Wanstead on 13th in 1998.

It is a shame that the Met Office only publishes easy to access daily data in Excel format back to 1959 as this obviously omits the classic snowy February of 1947 which is worth a blog on its own.

My winter forecast for the London area can be found here.

wanstead feb

top 10 heathrow feb

SJP top 10 feb

Some national UK February values according to TORRO

Hottest: 21.2C Kew Gardens – 26th 2019
Coldest: -27.2C Braemar – 11th 1895
Wettest: 196.6mm Ben Nevis, Highland – 6th 1894

feb max av