Weather ... again

[Lori]

Moderate winds and steady light rain all day so far. High temp 14c. What a difference a day makes. Was gorgeous, sunny and 24c yesterday.

[glazedallover]

A bit of sunshine and stayed dry, but since when did the prevailing winds shift to easterlies ? Getting on my bleedin' nerves.

[Polly]

We’re a bit fed up of easterlies, too - lovely sunshine, 16C but bitterly cold wind.

[MAD87]

Supposed to go up to the 'dizzy heights' of 21° this afternoon, but I'm wearing my wardrobe this morning.

[Polly]

Another lovely sunny day with a high of 19C.

It’s forecast to be 22C tomorrow - I think the seasons have been mixed up, and can’t believe we’ve had so little rain in March and none forecast for 10+ days! Maybe they’ll announce a drought shoertly!

[exile]

Real concern here since our reservoirs are largely in the sky - the downside of living up a mountain.

[Blaze]

We've had endless easterlies too but it's been beautifully warm out of the wind. The grass is growing like mad and all the bald patches made by our two mad dogs are at last growing over. We've had barely a drop of rain for the last 2 weeks but general water levels are fine. Wall to wall sunshine forecast for next week but with the continuing easterlies, it will only be warm out of the wind.

[Polly]

Not 22C as forecast up to yesterday, but 21C was fine - except that we had a fair bit of cloud, rather than the beautiful blue expanse we've had for the last couple of weeks and which was still forecast this morning.

However the wind was much less chilly today, so no coat was needed at all.

So much lush green to be seen around the country lanes and I’m expecting a bumper crop of sloes as the bushes are heavy with blossom. Is this the year I finally get round to making sloe gin?

[Blaze]

We had a storm yesterday evening which rumbled around for about half an hour or so then faded away with a little rain. About half an hour later, it came back with a vengeance and at last we had the rain we are beginning to need. It hasn't rained for weeks and the ground is like concrete (sand and clay so not surprising). The light show all around was stunning, it lit up the bay of Mont Saint Michel and the contrast of the grey sky and milky green sea was beautiful. There was a really big flash and crack of thunder ..... and it all disappeared and silence reigned once again.

[exile]

Although it has been a rather dry winter and spring, we have had regular sprinklings recently - April showers in May.

Our weather tends to be unstable and I have often said that we are on the edges of 4 weather systems
Atlantic fronts often reach us as they die away
Continental climate with cold winters and often hot summers
Mediterranean - which hits us less with the hot summer than the tail end of Mediterranean storms during autumn and spring
Alpine - which impacts mainly in summer with those hot days broken with a thunderstorm in late afternoon or evening

This leads to forecasts more than a few days away being changed on a regular basis. One of the more bazaar examples was with Meteo France over the weekend, where the departement was on yellow alert for storms last Monday but we had none forecast - nothing specially wrong with that since storms do not necessarily cover the whole area, but for the next day we had storms forecast at the end of the day, but no warning given for the departement as a whole.