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Thanks for your post Harry. I just love the weather maps your government produces. Such clearly drawn and labelled isobars! And great collaboration between the surface map and the radar overlay! I shared your post with a friend of mine over in Norway, esp. since I believe your map does show a bit of the Scandanavian coast. I am trying to get him to join us here, but that seems so difficult as all my “recruiting” efforts to get more on Weather Together have not been very successful. Keep posting those great maps, Harry and keep us updated on the weather “across the pond”. Thanks!

Thank you very much for that Kevin, I will translate that into a spreadsheet so I can do as much as I can in my weakened internet circumstances. This is the thermometer that I have bought https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-garden-digital-thermometer/p/0298564 and as you can see it has a shade above it (and it will be placed on a north facing fence), the rain guage is placed in a location that is in the open and away from trees and the wind guage will be taken at arm’s height.

The BBC have a recommendation of recording the maximum and minimum temperatures as well as the day’s rainfall at 0600 every morning (which is a little unlikely for me) so I will try for 0900 each morning starting on July 1st

So good to hear from you Harry, I presume at your new location. The thermometer looks really nice – nice digital readout at the bottom, otherwise the unit looks much like the old Taylor max min (sixes) thermometer many of my fellow local observers and I used many years ago. It had mercury in the tubes and you reset the max min with a magnet. We didn’t have any sort of digital readout on it back then. I will try and dig up a picture of it and share it with you.

Morning rain gauge reading daily will suit most hydrologic needs most likely. It will be interesting to compare your readings with nearby “official” observing locations in a few months or so.

Good luck with your new station and look forward to seeing your observations from it coming soon I hope. Thanks for posting the information and stay in touch!
Thanks,
Kevin

The thermometer is going to be hung in an alleyway that the house has (which is in shade 24/7) and therefore will record the actual temperature, however I cannot remember what height it needs to be. As I have said the rain guage in a place where nothing can drip into it and the wind guage (which needs a new battery already) will be hand held at the time of the recording of the temperatures.

Although I said that I thought 0600 was a little unlikely, thanks to the thinness of the curtains in the bedrooms, I woke up at 0530 on the day after we moved and therefore seem to have now defaulted from a 0700 – 0800 wake up / 2230 – 2330 bedtime to a 0500 – 0600 wake up and a 2200 – 2230 bedtime, whether that will be the case in July (or indeed the winter months) I cannot say.

Thank you very much for that. I will admit I am surprised that the instruction drilled into us as children “Always face a thermometer on a north facing surface” has been dumped, presumably of course if you have a Stevenson screen that doesn’t really come into it.

As you know my broadband at the moment doesn’t like pictures so I can’t show you where my thermometer is being located, but I can try and give you an indication. Next to our house, is an alleyway, that is surrounded by walls on both sides and a door onto a south facing street. This means that throughout the whole day no sun fills that alleyway at all, and it is there that I have placed the thermometer (case in point, today’s maximum according to it was 17.1°C (comparable to the 18°C recorded by the internet in Aberaeron) despite being on the ground (as I cannot find a hook or a nail to hang it on five feet off the ground)

Hi Harry! It is still preferred to have your thermometer in a shield facing north, but the most important thing to have it sheltered, even when it stays in full shade, as radiation still comes down on the unsheltered thermometer.

I don’t know how much, if any, you can see of this web page, but this is the link to the Taylor “sixes” style thermometer I was telling you about, with a magnet reset. It is being sold out of company “katom” which is located in the U.S.

https://www.katom.com/383-5458.html

I have been discussing your new station with my friend Ray Muller, who has an intense interest and knowledge of personal weather stations and really most all things weather. He was curious to know the details of exactly what kind of rain gauge and anemometer you have now – perhaps a website source for the particular instruments you have recently purchased if you can’t provide pictures. Ray has email but cannot access Weather Together. Do you have an email address you could send me? Ray might like to drop you an email if possible to express his opinions and information about your current weather station setup. BTW, right now I am watching a horse race from over in England, with the Queen in attendance- the Royal Ascot, the Group One Diamond Jubilee Stakes from the Ascot Racecourse in Ascot, England. Looks like a fine pleasant comfortable day at the racetrack today.

Thanks,
Kevin

Awesome post Karl! A couple questions:

1.) Any idea why the springs have become so amplified as of late? Maybe it could be because we’ve had some pretty big El Nino/La Nina swings, and the Neutral years we’ve had have been quite variable. 2007-2008 and 2010-2011 were both very cool springs and were moderate/strong La Ninas… I remember this because I’m a skier and the ski season lasted a long time! The graph also shows 2009-2010 (which was an El Nino) having a cool spring, which is interesting.

The most anomalous years are actually usually weak ENSO or Neutral years (2014-2015 and 2016-2017 are great examples), and many of our recent Neutral years have been very anomalous indeed.

2.) How did you get the 98% for global warming? Seems like a good estimate (I’d go a little higher personally, like 99 or 99.5, but that’s just an off-the-cuff guess).

Also, it would be interesting to find the correlation coefficient between average March/May rainfall and temperature. This can be easily compiled manually by fetching data from NOAA’s NOW data and then putting it into Excel.

1. I’m guessing that springtime amplification may have something to do with the jet stream. Remember, one supposed side-effect of a rapidly warming climate, is that the jet can get bent out of its “normal” shape when the global temperature is steady. That would mean more pronounced cool and warm anomalies – at least relative to the decadal temperature trend. (Not the 30- or 100-year averages, of course!)

2. I’m just using the number 98% as a metaphor for “It’s pretty damn obvious that it’s gettin’ warmer!” I haven’t actually looked at the future simulations/distributions myself. But the data over the past half century is telling enough.

3. While I haven’t done any R-squared ops for temperature vs. precipitation, I DO know that a lot of super-cool springs haven’t been exceptionally wet. (Spring 2011 was an exception.) My guess is that you need the somewhat warmer, muggier airmasses of the central Pacific if you want really heavy rainfall in the spring. The deep cold troughs out of Western Canada are just a little too crisp to soak us. (Kind of like how really heavy fall rains can occur in a mild ‘Pineapple Express’ pattern)

Hoping the days ahead bring more good weather for you! Mmmm, butter and eggs.

We had quite a variety of weather yesterday here in the Portland/Vancouver area. More rain than in the last 2 months and hail. I had hail up to 1/4” in the late morning, then possibly another round at noontime but I wasn’t home to observe it.

Snowing at Timberline this morning (4” as if 5 A.M.!).