A blog that tries to make sense of how the UK's national climate translates into local weather for Wanstead and the surrounding regions of east London and west Essex.
Check out my twitter feed @wanstead_meteo for local weather forecasts, stats, records and phenomena for the east London areas of Wanstead, Aldersbrook, Leytonstone and Stratford. And anything else weather
The beginning of the month started with lots of calm, quiet weather with fog and night frosts. A high pressure inversion so not a proper ‘cold spell’
December was warmer than average with a mean temperature of 6.5C (0.9C above the 30-year average) – ranking it 33rd in the series since 1881. Rainfall of 81.9mm was 154% of average – ranking it 22nd in the series.
The month was 1C warmer than last December – with 84% of the rain that fell in December 2012.
Despite it ‘feeling’ like it has been the stormiest December for some years this month was not as windy as December 2012. To illustrate this the ‘wind run’ for this month (the number of revolutions of the anemometer) was 2408.7 miles. Last December was 2654.5 miles, in other words last December was 10% more windy.
Air frosts: 4
Ground frosts: 11
Thunder: 1
Small hail: 1
The rain on the evening of the 23rd was heaviest to the south and west of us – with 75mm in the Warlingham area of Surrey. Flooding and high winds caused hundreds of thousands of power outs in Sussex and Kent
There was a time when not too far from the hustle and bustle of Selfridges, Harvey Nicks and Fortnum & Mason stood a fine scientific instrument supplier.
This advert, in an old HMSO Observer’s Handbook, gives a no-nonsense list of what you’ll find at No.122 Regent Street
Negretti & Zambra, at No. 122 Regent Street and later at No. 15 New Bond Street, specialised in barometers and thermometers – everything you could need to set up a weather station. The brand among weather anoraks is the byword for quality. The company, along with Short & Mason, probably made the majority of barometers that adorn many hallway walls across Britain. Next time you visit old aunt Flo or uncle Albert chances are the barometer hung on the wall is made by one of these companies.
Enrico Negretti and Joseph Zambra started their company in 1850, which was run by them and their descendents until well after the Second World War. They had shops firstly in Regent Street and later at Holborn Viaduct. The company was highly successful, winning a medal at the Great Exhibition in 1851, counting among their customers the Astronomer Royal, Prince Albert, the Royal Observatory and Admiral Robert Fitzroy.
Initially they specialised in barometers and thermometers, particularly those needed for taking deep sea and atmospheric measurements, which until they arrived were very unreliable. Later they increased their range to include telescopes, gun sights, theodolites and optical instruments. During the Second World War Negretti expanded substantially to meet the demand for instruments for war planes in particular. Their instruments were also produced under licence to supply the USAAF.
After their stand against Nazism in World War II, the two men helped found the United Nations. Churchill’s mother was American and he and FDR were distant cousins
Go to No.122 Regent Street today and you’ll find a shuttered branch of the Body Shop. The shop at No.15 New Bond Street, which closed in 1975, 11 years after the company moved production to a factory in Aylesbury, is now a branch of watchmaker Patek Philippe. Outside you will find seated bronze statues of Allied wartime leaders Sir Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sharing a joke. The statue by Lawrence Holofcener was unveiled in 1995 by the Bond Street Association to mark 50 years of peace. I’m not sure how intentional this was but how fitting that they are outside Negretti’s old shop, the instruments of which played a big part in helping the Allies to prevail over the Axis.
Back in the day N&Z was highly regarded in the local community and people would phone to access data that the company compiled from its rooftop weather station. In the late 1950s it was the job of Geoffrey John Gill, an office junior who went on to become an apprentice draftsman, to collect these stats.
“I was getting tea, coffee and buns from a Greek cafe in Soho’s Wardor Street for the office staff, collecting the mail and using the franking machine and last but not least the holy of holy’ climbing to the shop roof top and collecting the charts from the sunshine glass ball recorder, the rain gauge, barograph and the hygrometer box. You see it was common in those days for people to phone N&Z to enquire what these readings had been for the past day or so, a typical quality N&Z service.” A full account of his time with the company can be found here.
Short and Mason were based in Walthamstow for nearly 60 years. They supplied instruments to the Polar expeditions of Scott and Shackleton
Short & Mason were established five years prior to Negretti in 1845 by Thomas Short and James Mason. The business was located at 40 Hatton Garden, London, and produced precision measuring instruments including barometers, anemometers, and compasses. They became leaders in the field of barograph design and supplied scientific instruments for the Scott and Shackleton polar expeditions in the early 20th century and for Everest climbers.
In 1910 the company relocated to Macdonald Road, Walthamstow. It was here that 11 years later the company pioneered the theory that a storm forecast could be made from just observing the air pressure and whether it was rising or falling. The company went on to develop aeronautical, medical, meteorological and surveying instruments and were listed exhibitors at the British Industries Fair in 1922 and 1947.
In 1958 the business moved to Wood Street, Walthamstow, where it continued to trade until a merger in 1969 with Taylor Instrument Companies, of Leighton Buzzard, Beds. An account of somebody with experience of working for Short and Mason can be found here.
Many examples of Negretti & Zambra and Short & Mason instruments can be found on eBay and antique shops across the world, the finer examples often turn up at auction houses such as Bonhams where they go for thousands of pounds.
Though, like many industries, weather observing has become mostly automated there are are still probably hundreds of observers who still take the manual measurements every morning ‘because they can’. Though this observer relies on an automatic weather station for daily readings – there is nothing like the daily ritual of emptying the Snowdon raingauge or shaking down the maximum thermometer at 0900 GMT every day. One observer who still supplied the Met Office with monthly rainfall readings while in his 80s said that it was the one thing that got him out of bed every morning.
Examples of Negretti & Zambra instruments can be found on eBay
Perhaps it’s a little similar to the ever growing popularity of classic cars. A sense of being able to hold a piece of British engineering history that was so well designed that it still works today.
Winter 2024/25, considering the DJF mean, sits 68th out of 79 winters back to 1946/47.
It was the 13th snowless winter in the series . The only ‘top 10’ winter for snowfall of the past 30 years was 2009/10!
Snow is a very rare commodity in lowland Great Britain – even rarer in the Home Counties, and in our part of east London. Pulling back the curtains on a cold winter’s morning to be greeted by a fresh fall of deep, crisp and even snow is something most children experience and hold dear for life. The slush, ice and chaos that inevitably follows all too quickly is forgotten.
My memories of winters in the 1970s and 1980s is that they were far snowier and colder than they are today. But were they *always* cold and snowy? I decided to have a look back through the archives to find out. My first stop was the Met Office’s now defunct Snow Survey of Great Britain. This excellent compilation of reports logged by observers nationwide was printed annually as part of British Rainfall. But through lack of interest and cuts printing ceased after the 1991-92 season. Data continued to be collected though the modern version of the survey uses satellite technology to estimate daily UK snow depths – the Met Office website says that this is far less subjective than an individual nipping out at 9am every morning to ‘stick in a ruler’ and, those within sight of high ground, to observe where the snow line is. This does a disservice to the hundreds of observers who down the years diligently logged all their information as objectively as possible. But on to the data…
Regional data was not included in the survey until the 1965-66 season. Though Wanstead isn’t listed I have taken an estimate from data supplied from stations at Eastcote (53m), East Barnet (70m), Charlton Park (46m), Twickenham (13m), Teddington (9m). Because this area is influenced by Thames streamer snowfall that blows in off the North Sea and is funnelled upriver I have also considered readings from Epping (107m), Rayleigh (73m) and Southend (27m). Indeed, in some years Wanstead’s snowfall is much more similar to Rayleigh and Southend than it is to Greenwich and Teddington. Though my site is only 18m it seems to catch the snow much better than surrounding areas – probably to do with the fact that Aldersbrook is surrounded by greenery. People walking down from Wanstead village often remark that Wanstead Park is far snowier than the village a couple of dozen metres or so higher. Before 1965 I have used data from Woburn, Bedfordshire, which at 89m and 40 miles away as the crow flies, is the closest station in that long running series.
The mean temperature of a winter can look cold but it doesn’t always tell the full story. You can have a winter dominated by high pressure over the near continent making things very dry. But the anticyclones that ridge from Central Europe to the Azores can leave us in the ‘warm’ part of the high – and often lead to days of anticyclonic gloom; cold grey, dank and boring weather with little sunshine. On paper a season can look cold but in reality totally unremarkable; it is the number of days with ‘snow lying’ that people remember. For snow to settle it needs to be cold! For this reason I haven’t bothered with ‘snow falling’ data as it can snow at 4C in very dry air – yet nothing settles. Most weather geeks find ‘snow falling’ the most frustrating when it doesn’t stick. So on to the results.
The Top 20 winters in Wanstead, using ‘snow lying’ and ‘mean temperature’ in stats. Click here to view all 79 winters back to 1946/47
Once I worked out the ‘snow lying’ days I decided to devise a winter index by dividing ‘snow lying’ by seasonal mean temperature. Because the results using Celsius were problematic in that 1962/63 becomes very skewed upwards I decided to use Kelvin.
The results are quite surprising. Coming out top, not surprisingly, is 1962-63 with an index of 25.2 and 69 days of snow lying. Second is 1946-47 with an index of 21.1. Third is 1981-82 with an index of 10.5 – surprisingly ahead of 1978/79, the first winter in the series that I can recall; I remember returning home from school one night in December 1978 and the snow being as deep as the twelve-inch step to our house.
The index of 25.2 for the 1962/63 winter and 21.1 for 1946/47 – over double the amount of 1981/82 – shows how ‘off the scale’ those two winters really were. My father, who doesn’t share my enthusiasm for the weather, can distinctly recall the severe conditions of 1962/63. He said the roads were so thick with snow that when the thaw finally arrived in March he’d become so used to driving on snow that he crashed through somebody’s front garden wall, after losing control of his Mini on surface water sat on the ice.
More recent winters, which pale by comparison, rank surprisingly highly. The 2009/10 winter comes in at Number 10, higher than the legendary 1986/87, where the coldest day in recent times was recorded in London, which came in at Number 12. It should be noted that January 1987, when on the 12th the temperature did not rise above -5.5C all day, was sandwiched by a mild December and February.
Just by looking at winters with a mean of, say, 5C doesn’t tell you much about snowfall. When you look at 1985-86 (mean 4.1C) there were 22 days of snow lying at 9am – yet 2005/06 was colder (3.9C) and only 3 mornings saw snow lying – though that winter was particularly dry – the 13th driest in the series.
The median for ‘snow lying’ days in this series is six. The rolling median of the past 30 years, however, is only 2 so, with this in mind, if it does snow you should get out there and make the most of it.
You can view over 70 years of winters in this area, all ranked using my winter index here.
*It should be noted that a day of ‘snow lying’ only qualifies if there is more than 50% cover at the observation time of 9am. This means that it could snow 1cm at 10am – if that snow thaws by 9am the next day it won’t count. Though 8 winters appear snowless it is possible that these winters did see temporary coverings
Will it be a white Christmas this year? It’s the question most forecasters get asked year after year as the big day looms less than a month away.
The snow probably won’t arrive until after Christmas this year
It always fascinates me why Christmas and snow are so closely associated with each other when the odds, especially in London, are so stacked against it happening.
Perhaps it is the Christmas card scenes of Dickensian winters that get people yearning for the white stuff. Indeed, the image of snow covered cobbled streets can probably be blamed on Charles Dickens. The backdrop of A Christmas Carol, and a host of other books, were written when winters, and Yuletide, were generally much colder than they are now. Perhaps it was also the cold Decembers, which came during notably cold years as he was coming of age, that sowed the seed of his impressions of life in London. The Central England Temperature (CET) for December 1829 and 1830 were 1.4C and 1.8C respectively. To give you perspective the average mean temperature for the Wanstead region in December is 5.6C. Of course we had a taste of what a Dickensian December was like three years ago in 2010 when the average mean temperature was 1.5C. Though bear in mind the mean for 2010 was 10.5C – way above the 8.2C and 8.7C mean temps of 1829 and 1830!
Christmas toys of yesteryear also took every opportunity to perpetuate the snow myth
But back to this Christmas… First of all, what do we mean by a white Christmas? The definition used most widely – notably by the bookies – is for a single snowflake, even if it lands in the midst of heavy rain, to be observed falling in the 24 hours of 25 December at a specified location recognised by the Met Office. Interestingly, the Met Office uses weather observations from Gravesend-Broadness, some 12 miles away, to show current conditions in Wanstead. A lot, however, could be said by us weather anoraks about the different microclimates between here and south of the Thames.
Technically, there has not been a white Christmas in Wanstead for over 30 years. In 2010, we could still see the Christmas card Victorian snow scene in small patches of our gardens, but these were leftovers of a previous dump, so it doesn’t count. Frustratingly, there has been snow on several Boxing Days in Wanstead (1995 and 1996) and in the weeks running up to Christmas, but not on Christmas day itself. The most typical Wanstead Christmas day weather is mild and dry, although it has rained on 12 of the last 33 Christmas days.
So why does it often snow either side of Christmas but not on the actual day? For Wanstead, Christmas is at the beginning of the period when it’s likely to snow. Looking at climate history, wintry weather is more likely between January and March than December.
On average, snow or sleet falls in the UK 5 days in December, compared with 7.6 days in January, 6.8 days in February and 6 days in March. White Christmases were more frequent in the 18th and 19th centuries, even more so before the change of calendar in 1752, which effectively brought Christmas back by 12 days. Climate change has also brought higher average temperatures over land and sea and this generally reduces the chances of a white Christmas.
For snow to fall we need moisture in the atmosphere. Snowflakes start their lives as ice crystals thousands of feet up, and when these tiny ice crystals collide they stick together in clouds to become snowflakes. If enough ice crystals stick together, they’ll become heavy enough to fall to the ground.
Precipitation falls as snow when the air temperature is below 2°C. It is a myth that it needs to be below zero to snow. In fact, in this country, the heaviest snowfalls tend to occur when the air temperature is between zero and 2°C. The falling snow does begin to melt as soon as the temperature rises above freezing, but as the melting process begins, the air around the snowflake is cooled. If the temperature is warmer than 2 °C then the snowflake will melt and fall as sleet rather than snow, and if it’s warmer still, it will be rain.
It sounds a simple combination, but getting precipitation on the days when there are temperatures low enough for snow are few and far between.
Christmas day in Wanstead, on the balance of probability and from previous patterns, is most likely to be a green and mostly cloudy but dry one. Some brightness is possible with temperature peaking at around 10°C. You can read my full methodology on why I think this may happen here.
Though my attempt to find the probability of a White Christmas effectively rules one out, there is still an outside chance that one could happen.
At this time of year the UK can effectively become a battleground between cold polar continental air to the north or east and moisture-laden mild tropical maritime air to the south and west. Where these air masses meet, snow is possible, but a lot depends on which air mass wins the battle. When battleground situations occur, in one location it can be snowing, but just 20 miles or so down the road it can be raining. This is because there is a fine line between the boundary of the warm and cold air.
There’s nothing like an open coal fire. It’s even better when it is cold enough outside to have one
In years gone by, Wanstead and the surrounding area has often ended up in the cold air mass or the warm air mass. In these situations dry and mild or dry and cold weather is often the result. Of course, in a cold air mass situation there is always the chance of showery activity of the North Sea. The weather so far this winter has not been anything out of the ordinary, so I’m afraid there is nothing to suggest a white Christmas is likely.
If it does turn very cold on December 24, pray for clouds to appear and we could be in with a chance. But at the end of the day we still need that vital combination of temperature and moisture. Snow, like Christmas in that sense, requires some magic.
November was colder than average with a mean temperature of 6.7C (1.2C below the 30-year average) – ranking it 69th in the series since 1881. Rainfall of 56.5mm was 99% of average – ranking it 61st in the series.
The month was just 0.04C cooler than last November – with 93% of the rain that fell in November 2012.
Much has been printed in the tabloids over the past month or so that we are in for a severe winter. Not a week goes by without the Daily Express splashing that the ‘Worst winter EVER is on the way’. Just this morning the same rag told us that three months of ‘exceptionally cold’ weather are due. On closer inspection the story elaborated the scene with quotes from James Madden of Exacta Weather, one of the ‘experts’ feeding these fantastical stories.
The Temple, Wanstead Park, always looks that much more stunning with a covering of snow
Quite how Mr Madden and other experts arrive at these forecasts is a bit of a mystery. The mystery has deepened further since I decided to crunch a few numbers and try to predict what is in store for the months ahead. Looking at data for this area stretching back over 130 years to 1881 I decided to calculate a seasonal average and arrived at a final figure using singularities – basically looking at the weather patterns we’ve had during October and November.
Many professionals would scoff at this method of pattern-matching, so I’ve incorporated a couple of other ‘now’ factors and taken on board current variables such as sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic and Pacific.
The figure I arrived at, taken as an average of the closest matching autumn periods, is a mean temperature of 4C with rainfall totalling 133mm over the months of December, January and February – that’s about a degree colder than average and 90% of average rainfall. The probability of a winter with a mean temperature of between 4C and 5C is 37% – the most likely outcome. With this in mind a winter in the form of 1986-87 is possible – though whether we would see the same extremes of temperature and snowfall that we experienced in January 1987 is open to question.
The Met Office, with all their computing power and expertise, seem to be hinting at something similar – ie slightly colder than normal. The opening couple of weeks to my forecast seem quite plausible, looking at tonight’s models. Look at the similarity in the synoptic charts for December 8th here.
Shoulder of Mutton pond, Wanstead Park
Over the last few years the snow lovers among us have been spoiled after a run of very mild winters during the late Nineties and early Noughties that prompted climate expert Dr David Viner to utter the immortal words that one day “children just aren’t going to know what snow is”. It was only a matter of a few years before the words from the senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia seemed a bit hollow.
Mark Twain, born this day in 1835 , once uttered the famous phrase: “Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get” – there is always a chance we could suddenly lurch back to milder winters. This winter could spring a surprise, be it very cold or very mild. But judging what’s happened over the last 130-odd years – a 1962/63 or a balmy 1989/90 look very unlikely.
* Forecasting models use probability on any given outcome. Millions of observations are fed into the Met Office database (and other countries’ weather agencies) every day. Supercomputers then crunch through this data to give probable outcomes. With the volatility of the atmosphere it is not surprising that certainty of any outcome often falls away rapidly. Forecasting has improved greatly in the last 20 years – though anything the models churn out beyond three to five days should be handled with caution. Long range models can give *some* idea of general trends for the months ahead – but changing just one variable can vastly alter an outcome at the end of the run.
* *Over the past few months I have been collating data for the area around Wanstead. This data is freely available from the excellent Met Office library and is emailed via Excel spreadsheet. Rainfall stats include a near-complete daily archive, stretching from 1961 to 2003, from City of London Cemetery . Sadly the rainfall station, along with many others, ceased to supply the Met Office after cuts were made shortly after the turn of century. Prior to 1961 I have used monthly figures taken at the Greenwich Royal Observatory stretching back to 1881. Though this is 6 miles away the difference in temperature between the two areas would be miniscule compared with rainfall data and so can be used. I use my own stats for the period after 2003.
The Wanstead Weather live Twitter feed is one year old today. That’s over 8,700 tweets of hourly weather updates. In that time there’s been 59 air frosts, 632mm of rain, 165 rain days, 27 days with snow falling, 13 days with snow lying – a total of 14cm falling.
Highest max was 34C on July 22nd, lowest min was -7C on January 16th. A windrun of 25,741 miles shows that the anemometer has turned enough revolutions to have circumnavigated the globe, albeit at an average speed of 2.9mph.
It’s usually around this time of year that this area experiences its first air frosts – but a warm, wet October caused by an active Atlantic and a jet stream sitting close to us has meant that classic radiative cooling nights have been in very short supply. There’s been a couple of chilly nights – down to 2.6C on October 30th and November 5th – but to record an air frost the thermometer must read below 0 Celsius (32Fahrenheit).
The first frost last year was recorded on November 6th. Much hoar was seen around the shady banks of Shoulder of Mutton pond in Wanstead Park
Last year, Wanstead recorded its first air frost on November 6th (-1C). Looking back through the records to 1980 the earliest frost was October 17, 1992, and the latest was January 6th, 2004. Interestingly it appears that having frost in October can signal a mild winter to come!. The median for the first frost is November 16th – 18th. Forecasts for this week suggest we could be scraping the windscreens for the first time on Saturday, thanks to high pressure building in from the Atlantic and calming things down.
Indeed, the models today suggest there is a chance of a block forming in the Atlantic which effectively stops depressions from whistling in from the west, unlocking the door for cooler weather from the north or east. It’s a long way off in meteorological terms though.
Here is a list of first air frosts in Wanstead…
The ECMWF model shows high pressure ridging in from the Azores at the end of the week
I’m now starting to publish my monthly stats on this blog. This month was warmer than average with a mean temperature of 13C (1.2C above the 30-year average) – making it the 10th warmest in the series since 1881. Rainfall of 83mm was 127% of average.
Wanstead Flats has put on some spectacular Guy Fawkes’ nights over the years. I didn’t realise quite how many years until I stumbled upon this old British Pathe clip which shows nurses at Wanstead Children’s Home building a huge bonfire for the children in 1934.
The footage shows the nurses struggling to get the Guy atop the bonfire, using numerous ladders, while the children, including 12 sat in an old perambulator, look on. I don’t have the stats for what the day was weatherwise locally but the climate station at St James’s Park recorded a dull day with a high of 8.3C after an overnight low of 3.9C. That November was drier than average.
The Aldersbrooke Childrens Home for Waifs & Strays is still there in Brading Crescent on the Aldersbrook Estate, although the five lodges have been converted to flats.
The former Aldersbrook Children’s Home is still there in Brading Crescent but has been converted to flats
A bit of history…
In 1907, the West Ham Guardians purchased the Aldersbrook site. In 1911, five receiving homes were completed. The homes were called lodges and were: Elizabeth Fry Joseph Lister, Tom Hood, Edward North Buxton and William Morris
In 1913, a workshop, for training of the older boys and girls was opened. Skills learnt were in tailoring, carpentry, laundry work and needlework, under skilled industrial trainers.
In 1930, on the 1st April, the ownership of Aldersbrook homes and the leases of the Scattered Homes, were under the 1929 Local Government Act, and by agreement with the Essex County Council and the West Ham Corporation, vested in the East Ham Corporation who are required to continue to receive destitute children from the Essex County Council and West Ham, formally comprised in the West Ham Union area.
On 27th May 1933, the Aldersbrook Children’s Homes new nursery was opened. The County Borough of East Ham owned it. Alderman T.W.Burden, Chairman of the Public Assistance Committee, opened it. The Mayor of East Ham, Alderman G.H.Manser J.P, proposed a vote of thanks, which was seconded by Alderman C.W.Brading J.P, and supported by Alderman Mrs Taylor (East Ham) and Councillor G.Doherty, of West Ham. After the official opening, the older children (14 to 16 years old) of the homes put on the play “David Garrick”.
The superintendent of the home was W.T.P. Steele, and the matron was E.M.Steele. S.R.N. The building was described as being divided into three sections – ground floor, babies under twelve months and toddlers one to three years, first floor staff. Accommodation is given for ninety infants under three years. Wards are provided for these age groups were newly admitted children will be housed for three weeks before being sent to the general rooms. Two ranges of isolation rooms are also provided where “suspects” can be nursed to reduce the risk of infection. The south end of the building is allotted to the youngest or cot babies and comprising of long dormitory with sun rooms at the end, designed to catch the winter sun.
The programme went on to describe the building as being the most modern of children’s institutions. The building has a veranda at the front. The first floor has 21 separate staff bedrooms. The building had an oil fired heating system and flooring with fire resistant Terazzo material whilst the children’s play room and dormitories are protected by rubber flooring. The lighting and power points are controlled by locking device to prevent the children switching them on and off. The building was built by Messrs Hammond & Barr Ltd Chelsea.
The Nursery is now gone and the Aldersbrook estate covers the area, although the recreation Hall, the lodges (See photo) and the porters lodge are still there.
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