FAX charts looking good for warmth later next week. Wednesday shows a secondary low beginning to develop in the Atlantic that looks to swing NW (ending up near Greenland/Iceland) and encourage a plume of warm air arriving into the far SE, could be up to 27/28ºC by Friday.

Found this in my camera roll from earlier this week 😁

A nice view of a funnel cloud from a cell near Deal earlier this afternoon as a cell developed in the area, doesn't seem to have touched down, but definitely photogenic!

Playing with the 1851-2023 #hurdat database in #RStudio this evening, it's amazing how is crunches through millions of observations in 32 variables within a split second to produce geospatial plots. Atlantic tropical cyclone, #hurricane, and major hurricane heat maps (note the different scales)

The progression of a warm front can be seen quite clearly once you plot all the radiosondes that have been launched from the Reading observatory - a nice comparison with yesterday too (presumably they were testing!). A profile that's turning warmer and moister from the top down.

The observatory here in Reading is launching radiosondes this afternoon and I happened to catch a balloon being sent off. The data matches the pre-frontal conditions from the warm front well, cloud deck (which you can see) beginning ~800 hPa & drier tropospheric air above, which is moistening.

Seriously impressive rain column from the passing thunderstorm headed SE of Reading - downdraft madness

That was loud

Another showery day, you may get lucky with a rumble of thunder

'Popcorn' showers in CS England at the moment. Small, discrete cells with sharp edges, makes for some very photogenic skies.

MetJam weather influencer in full shine here

The most colourful UK weather account going 👍🏻

Incoming for Herne Bay and Whitstable

Herne Bay is a thunderstorm hotspot of the UK when I'm not there

Incoming shower doom from the NW

A nice 70% risk parameter for thunderstorms from the automated convective outlook by ASTORP.

A lot of showers are appearing on the radar and will make their way towards the SE during the course of today, likely peaking in abundance and intensity around 2 or 3 pm with some likely to be thundery.

Three constants in life - death, taxes and Eurovision

An air frost of -0.3ºC at the University of Reading meteorological observatory this morning was the tied fourth latest on record, dating back to 1908. Another interesting fact is that there were no 12th of May frosts from 1908 to 2009, and then three in 16 years.

A low of -0.2C overnight. That's the first May air frost I've recorded in this locality in 30 years!! @metjam.co.uk

A minimum of 1ºC this morning was the coldest May night in 5 years here in Reading (6th May 2021, -0.1ºC) and the fourth coldest 4th of May on record since records began in 1908. It would not surprise me if tonight's minimum was a little colder, last May air frost was in 2020.

A trough of colder air will move SE over the next few days and will bring heavy showers and colder temperatures as polar maritime air is introduced. The frost risk is most prevalent tonight with expected grass frosts widely (away from coastlines) and air frosts rurally.

Another rise in the Niño 3.4 anomalies from the Met Office forecast issued today and this seems to be a theme across models. The upcoming El Niño is certainly looking strong.

Two years ago tonight was the first time I had ever seen such a spectacular aurora - I am annoyed at past me for not bothering to try and defog the camera and pay attention to the pinched stars, but experiencing that first substorm is a rather fond memory that I will not forget.

Implementing HadUK-Grid data with annual maximum temperature from actual UK stations back to 1931 shows how closely related they are. The grid does seem to catch slightly higher maximums, but can also underestimate values (guessing from the lack of station digitisation in the past).

An impressive multicellular storm crossing the Thames Estuary on the 9th of May 2023, with a visible downburst seen as it passed offshore.

20°C here today - the little geese are enjoying it too

April was sunny across the entirety of the UK. The sunniest place, based on HadUK-Grid provisional 1 km data, was near Selsey Bill in West Sussex, with 281 hours of sunshine. The most anomalous was just NE of Darrington in West Yorkshire with 169% of the 1991-2020 average.

It’s always fun to look radar images from the past - this was nearly 3 years ago on the 9th of May 2023. I miss the convection 🤣

Upper trough moving through here in Reading currently, would guess it’s elevated based on the look of the skies with a fairly neat front to the north.

This might be one of the most fascinating satellite images I've seen of England from today's NASA Worldview - an incredibly diverse range of cloud features visible as we sit in an interesting pressure pattern.

Best thing to see on the way to my 9 am 😁

I am the whisperer of geese this evening

The latest ECMWF forecast for May has SST anomalies for the Niño 3.4 region near a mean anomaly of ~3ºC, a very strong El Niño that is unprecedented in modern times. Global temperatures are likely to spike to record highs in 2027 with immense pressure on global biodiversity.

Yesterday was the dullest day here in Reading in over a month with 1.3 hours recorded on the Kipp-Zonen sun recorder, the lowest since the 4th of April which recorded 0.9 hours on the Kipp-Zonen sensor.

Kestrels and augers - what a day

I already miss the sunshine

Rather friendly robin by the Whiteknights Lake this evening, think it wanted some food but that’s definitely the closest a robin has been to me 😁

A very nice funnel cloud seen by KentStormChaser from the Birchington multicellular thunderstorm earlier this afternoon at 14:40 BST - perspective from Sea Road is looking right into the hook seen on radar.

An idea of how things looked under that thunderstorm over Birchington earlier this afternoon filmed by my mate

Nice thunderstorm has developed over Birchington on Sea - been told it’s rather wet underneath with localised flooding

First showers of the day and they’re from a patch of convergence that I missed in East Kent, might be a cheeky funnel cloud under the bases of these especially as they intensify.

We’ve got some sunshine here in Reading, will it be enough for some showers to develop?

A convergence zone looks to stretch from Cornwall all the way to Norfolk this afternoon into this evening, sufficient surface heating may lead to some heavy showers developing with a chance of funnel clouds. It's worth keeping an eye out under the bases of intensifying showers.

I’ll be moving like this by the end of summer if we have multiple days of no storm shows

The elevated precipitation band that came through Reading had a little bit of structure to it - this is just a quick panorama from the Whiteknights lake with a shelf cloud visible.

The English Channel delivering a crushing to any thunderstorms making to the UK over the last couple days 🤣

High cloud from the thunderstorms in the English Channel is beginning to march in - lightning will probably be back home in Kent rather than here

Bit of a gritty squiggle as I’m not at my desk but the eastward expansion on radar is the main focus for anything electrical currently, suspecting further west will see very limited thundery activity once these precipitation bands hit land.

Remind me to never tweet at midnight again