Hottest ever Easter?

[shewhoguards]

What do we think? Lies, or should I start planting my courgettes and cucumbers in a hurry?

Easter weather forecast: Britain set for HOTTEST EVER Easter as temperatures set to rocket | Nature | News | Daily Express

[Alison]

Even if it's true it could be freezing the week afterwards.

[marcofez]

Even if it's true it could be freezing the week afterwards.

So true!!!!

[Penellype]

There are a group of these so called "experts" who seem to like providing extreme forecasts for the tabloid press, which is utterly irresponsible as it can frighten people. The same names crop up again and again in the articles. This one seems more than likely to rank alongside their previous spectacular forecasts, including:

Winter 2013-14 – “100 days of snow” – one of the warmest winters on record.
Summer 2014 – “4 months of hot sunshine” – summer was warm, but not as hot as 2013, and August was below average
Winter 2014-15 “To be coldest for a century” – judge for yourself. (Maybe they meant parts of North America).

I suppose by the law of averages they should manage to get it somewhere near right at some point, but personally I wouldn't trust their predictions as far as I could throw York Minster.

[veggiechicken]

Alongside that forecast is this one UK weather: Warm weather U-turn as Britain faces Russian chill | Nature | News | Daily Express

Don't rush with those courgettes

[Penellype]

Alongside that forecast is this one UK weather: Warm weather U-turn as Britain faces Russian chill | Nature | News | Daily Express

Don't rush with those courgettes

Mmmm, that was published on Friday, so we are now in the 4th day of bitterly cold easterly winds from Russia.

Q.E.D.

[Thelma Sanders]

If anything, comparing this year with past records, this one looks to be a cool late Spring. It's running up to 2C colder on some days.

No direct sowing of peas and planting of early potatoes on St Patrick's day this year, for me

[solway cropper]

The man who dares to the forecast the weather is doomed to fail. Best bet is to just look out the window each morning and take it from there.

[Penellype]

The CET (Central England Temperature) gives an idea of how things are faring compared with the average. So far for March the CET is 1.1 degrees above average, following a very slightly above average January and a near average February. However we did have a warm spell near the beginning of the month and it is rather cooler now. This is typical of spring where you can get huge fluctuations from day to day, making it quite hard to know which coat to wear, let alone what to plant.

The forecast models are not particularly in agreement about what happens after this week at present, with a large amount of scatter. To be frank, they are not doing a particularly great job of forecasting even the current day's weather, with some rain in the midlands yesterday completely catching them out, and a forecast for cloud here today whereas we had hazy sun for most of the day.

The charts I like to use to make my own "forecasts" are changing notably with each "run" (4 times a day) - for example yesterday lunchtime the chart for upper air temperature showed an almost flat profile running just around average. Today the chart looks like a mountain range, with below average at the moment rising about 5 degrees by Thursday, staying there for much of the weekend and then dropping like a brick this time next week, after which it becomes a chaotic jumble of coloured lines. No doubt the next run will show something completely different, although almost all of the 20 different lines show the sharp drop next week. This is the point where the westerly winds, bringing wetter and windier weather look set to return.

[daviddevantnhisspiritwife]

^ I use Accuweather.com minutecast and radar for my obsession with not using the tumble drier. Anyhooo , I find most forecasts very inaccurate (BBC etc) - and tend to check what is happening on there which removes a little of the chance. But my understanding of these things is rather feeble.

It's not just the Mail and Express with the shock headline weather stories... Have you read the Independent recently (online) ? Sorry OT.

[DannyRam]

I remember in the first week of June (I think it was 1976 - could have been 77) it snowed on Tuesday and a heat wave started on Friday and went through to September.

[Kristen]

Thanks very much for posting the Daily Express link as I hadn't seen it (I don't waste my money on it)

In the past they have been 100% wrong on long range weather so armed with their latest forecast I can now plan according which is brill

[Kirk]

Yet another "Hottest Ever".
Gets a bit monotonous after a while, just about every summer is supposed to be the hottest ever and they often end up as coldest, stormiest, wettest.

I suppose that eventually one will be hot, but that really is the laws of chance. And if we have a hot spell we are not allowed to actually just enjoy it, apparently we are all supposed to be damned and feel utterly guilty for causing it. Not allowed to just get out and enjoy it.

[Thelma Sanders]

We seem to have had a lot of cold East winds this year, when our 'normal' winds are SWesterly.

The SE corner doesn't get included in CET, so think the warmer temperature shown doesn't reflect conditions here, at all.

[Jay22]

Well our weather comes straight off the Atlantic so I can confidently predict it's going to be wet, wet, wet!