Negative temperature record alert for tonight/tomorrow night

[stephenprudence]

Goggle that just suggest either you're a much hardier fellow than most people on here, or that your garden is an exceptional heat trap.

This does not say to me t-shirt weather, even near Preston.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/ ... 1-2000.gif

In fact if anything the minimums around Preston were lower than most places in the northwest of England!

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/ ... 1-2000.gif

That said sunshine was better on the Lancashire coast than it was further south.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/ ... 1-2000.gif

Again more air frost in the Preston area than anywhere else in NW England.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/ ... 1-2000.gif

Rainfall was significantly lower the average north of the Merseyside border..

so yes actually Goggle you have had better weather than most of NW England, but it hasn't been any warmer there (outside of your garden), in fact it's probably been cooler.

[stephenprudence]

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/ ... 1-2000.gif

the west of the Uk was widely below average. The east was around average in April.

[jezza]

It hasn't been particularly cold here, just wet and windy.

[pdid]

It was a average April, it`s just that we all have short memories and only remember the great April we had last year.

Like I`ve said in numerous other threads, bar the odd day I can not complain about the weather i`ve had this April.

[GoggleboxUK]

When it comes to reporting statistics yes, I agree but your forecasts do tend to invariably suggest the worst case scenarios.

Even through April I have done most of my gardening outside in a T-Shirt and remained reasonably warm and, without exception, dry.

I often think that those living in foreign countries, or even down south, must read your forecasts and visualise the whole of the NW wearing duffel coats and wellies.

Statistically April has been cold and wet because we've had a very low low and a few very heavy rainfall days but the real picture is very different to the point where I don't feel I can complain at all.

Things seem about average.

Things might be average for you in the Arctic wastelands of the Northwest certainly not been average here

Harry

See, this proves my point. I live 30-odd miles further north than Spephen and people think it's an arctic wasteland.

For most of the year so far the NW has been on a par or better than the south. We had a longer, warmer heatwave in March and that followed a warmer, drier February than most of the UK.

During that cold spell I didn't get lower than -6 and had 9 consecutive days above 20c, including 2 days at 25c, in March.

The average that I talk about is based on UK averages, not worst case scenarios and arctic imagineerings of the North.

I totally agree with Dave, I garden based on what actually happens and use my instinct rather than panic every other day because someone manipulates a statistic or 2 and comes up with plant armageddon.

[stephenprudence]

Goggle give us an example of when someone has manipulated a statistic, an example, a quote and a date please.

If you are making accusations against anyone, you need to provide evidence.

[Dave Brown]

Goggle give us an example of when someone has manipulated a statistic, an example, a quote and a date please.

If you are making accusations against anyone, you need to provide evidence.

Behave yourself Stephen I know what he means.

I have said before, that I find these topics depressing and the weather rarely turns out as bad here as suggested for 2 to 3 weeks before hand. That is why I really only take notice of the 2 day forecast.

[GoggleboxUK]

Goggle give us an example of when someone has manipulated a statistic, an example, a quote and a date please.

If you are making accusations against anyone, you need to provide evidence.

I'm not meaning to sound like I'm slating anyone Stephen but threads like this one are a classic example:

http://www.hardytropicals.co.uk/forum/v ... 74#p296640

As someone suggested on that thread, the camparison is tenuous at best.

It may have been me.

[stephenprudence]

I explained it wasn't a comparison with a view to comparing it to this year, just a comparison of interest. The idea was the see how synoptics could evolve from a similar situation. At no point was it to represent a view of how it could happen this year.. it was just a matter of interest with, what I thought was a fairly unbiased look at that year.

I chose 1974 because it had the most similarity in terms of synoptics to this year, however I wasn't aiming to suggest this summer would follow in the same direction, because the chances are it won't

To me manipulation of statistics is when someone selects charts to suit their interest. For example, finding the hottest charts of 1974 to somehow suggest my location was the warmest in Britain. Really those charts were just picked as a representation of the different stages of evolution of that particular pattern.

I hope that explains it better.

[billdango]

I don't know about the rest of the Country but its been a pretty awful April down here in Southampton?

Looking back through my weather diaries I find that I have to go back to the mid eighties to find anything as bad as this year.

I may be able to confirm this as soon as I get the statistics from the Southampton Weather Center next week.

For instance,The sunshine totals have been the lowest that I can remember for very many years[Southampton average for April...175 hours].

The rainfall has been the highest that I have ever seen for that month[AV...47.7mm].

And its been as windy as hell.

rgds billdango.

[Tom2006]

Stephen I know what Google is trying to say. You do have a habit of fearing the worst and I have lost count of the times you have predicted very low temperatures and quote rapidly falling hourly temperatures only for the actual figure come the morning to be no where near as low as you feared. That is natural though, when you, like me, and many others can't stand the thought of cold harming/killing our plants. I don't blame anyone of being pessimistic at the moment, even if they are not trying to be,because lets be fair, April and now May have been generally terrible. It has felt more like winter in the last 6 weeks than it did for much of winter!! Tonight is not going to be the bad night for cold, but tomorrow night does look potentially very damaging down the central spine of the country, especially the further north you go. The south and east, look to be saved by horrible low cloud, but I would gladly take that over the temperatures forecast here.

[GoggleboxUK]

There's an old saying that goes "There are lies, there are damned lies and there are statistics."

I think the trouble with statistics of any kind is they are able to be interpreted in many different ways.

For example (and this is not based in reality because I don't have access to the data) if we had 500mm of rainfall in April but it only rained on 6 out of 30 days then statistically both these satements are true:

1: April was mostly dry
2: April was very wet

Where optimism and pessimism creep into weather reporting is which of those statistic someone chooses as the focus of their post. Also, there is no way of conveying expression through text when communicating about statistics so, whilst you may feel like you are being very matter-of-fact and emotionless when recording the reader will not always read in that same fashion.

I think the best way of recording the weather is to present both sides of the coin but, at the same time, this also devalues the science. Nobody would listen to a weather forecast that said "Today might be overcast and 6c but it could equally be bright, sunny and 16c."

The thing that really seems to worry people is when reports of potential disasters are predicted by the models some 2 weeks in the future.

I see very little worth to gardeners in discussing something that has the likelihood of changing half a dozen times before it hits. Discussing such things on a weather forum may serve to broaden forecasters' knowledge and provide references that can be brought up 28 years later but here they are actually more likely to alter how people garden, stop people from buying plants or planting out and lead to indecison and confusin that could potentially be costly both in terms of cash and the enjoyment derived from the hobby.

I find it ironic that the reader can get as good a view of the current UK weather in various locations from the One Word thread as they can from reading highly scientific threads full of charts and statistics.

This is, of course, just my opinion and I'm not trying to devalue anyone's contribution but I sometimes think less is more.

[grub]

Folks I'm sure your all sane, after all I found this on the internet and I'm sure it can't be true

'Jesus created a set number of angels. all angels are male. 1/3 of all angels rebelled against Jesus. Jesus turned the rebels into spiritual darkness (aka demons) and expelled them from heaven down to earth. demons disguise themselves as ghosts, aliens in ufos, greys, spirit guides, ascended masters, pagan gods and goddesses, channeled entities, dead relatives during seances, ouija board movers, psychic's sources, astrologer's helpers, automatic writing spirits, & angels of light. demons dress in fake human skin and fly in ufo ships. demons will invite people to be healed in their ufo ships. whoever goes in to be healed by demons, comes out a spiritual zombie. demons have 4 ufo bases: moon, mountain kailas in tibet, mariana trench in pacific ocean, and lake baikal in russia.'

See!

[GoggleboxUK]

Oh crappe!

Here we are worrying about the weather and it all pales into insignificance when we discover our bananas may make it through the night unprotected only to have some feckin' demon land their spaceship on top of it!

[Nigel]

Nigel, the models will continue to jump around but as yet there is no signal for a pattern change so in the meatime, cool synoptics will continue for the forseeable future

Thats not strictly true Stephen, no signs of a pattern change as such, but as to whether its cold depends where the highs are. Therefore it could change to hot very quickly , a week ahead signs are there of the high moving to a favourable position.
I think this weather could easily change to a long hot summer in june , it only needs to stay this way but with the azores high building towards us rather than westwards and it would happen.
I reckon this is our best chance of a long hot summer for a long time.