Hot!

Well, very warm.
Two days have touched 26.9C which is hardly record breaking - but such a change compared to recent years especially 2012!
So far 14 days with no rain recorded which is a station record and perhaps will soon become something of a concern.

While the good weather has been ideal for hay-making, grazing is fading fast especially on banksides.

There are signs of a breakdown which may be rather thundery from as early as Wednesday next week - however some models build high pressure back again quite rapidly.

European weather

While usually this blog confines posts to local conditions and events, it has been a very strange spring through Europe - and parts of North America at least have been cold later than normal too.

The exceptional rainfall has caused severe flooding especially in Southern Germany and adjacent areas.
This has been caused by a very 'stuck' system funneling rain and cool winds from the north into conflict with moisture laden warmth from the south.

The pattern is not unusual, but the persistence and intensity of precipitation has been exceptional.
Meanwhile the same system has brought unheard of late snowfalls to The Alps, Pyrennees and even southern Spain.

Good link here:
http://www.planetski.eu/news/5022

Meanwhile we have been on the northern side of the jetstream in a chilly but sunny anticyclone.
Temperatures to 10th of June have continued the theme of recent months at some 2C below average, but it has been very dry especially compared to June last year - which by now was above 60mm compared to 0.2mm this year!
There is still not much to suggest a big change, but the next few days will be less settled, with some rain  likely, and we will lose the onshore winds so temperatures may creep to more like average with less of the chilly nights.

Web cam

Just trying something out here, I bought a couple of IP cams cheaply on ebay but one of them had an intermittent problem in that when the overnight IR lights were on it would conk out after an hour - not sure if it overheated or what.

While in theory I could have returned it, since it was basically working I ended up investigating the internals and then after a bit of thinking time I de-activated the IR lights by bypassing the light level sensor (by soldering a link across the terminals).

So now it should run OK but will be dark image overnight.

http://postimg.org/gallery/c6nqcbji/

This means it can be used through glass without reflection issues so I'm considering using it as a weather webcam.

The image quality is not that good though, and to avoid overloading the ftp connection I'm just uploading a jpg image every 5 minutes rather than proper streaming.

I'll probably use a different view to this if things run OK for a few days.

Here's the trial page and latest uploaded image below
http://weather.westerdale.info/cam/

updates every 5 minutes

Late April snow

Hail and west snow gave a brief cover this morning, 27th April.

Even the nearest field was white briefly.

Yo Window update

I noticed this had stopped updating so installed the latest version which has subtle changes.

ScreenSaver Forecast by yr.no

March figures

A month rivaling December 2010 in how far the temperature deviated from the mean.
http://weather.westerdale.info/climatedataout32013.html

The first week was not unusual but around the 10th some very cold air arrived from the east and is more or less still with us 1st week of April.
The second half of March is probably the coldest such period in at least 100 years (1892 may have beat it)

March and indeed April will often have a few snowy days often associated with a brief Northerly.
This period has been quite different with a long fetch easterly bringing exceptional cold air for the time of year across most of Europe.
Germany for example has also been extremely cold.

Paul Hudson now says it has been the coldest March since 1892
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Latest-weather-climate-news

Cold March

With wintry weather likely to dominate until at least the last day or two, this will be the coldest March for many years - probably since 1979.

At the moment the mean is running at about 2.2C which is 3.5C below normal.
It's also below January's mean, which is unusual considering that month was near average. March is noted for having cold and snowy events and they can be as severe as anything through winter - but usually they are short-lived affairs and the most characteristic weather type is drying winds often from a rather chilly North Westerly direction.
Apart from 4 or 5 almost dry breezy days near the start, this March has been very disappointing.

 On balance, good weather in April might be preferred over what happened last year with a pleasant March then a cold, wintry wet April!
Paul Hudson suggests it will be the coldest since 1969.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/More-snow-as-March-set-to-be-coldest-since1969