[Dave K]

Oh no, not another one I hear you cry

Well "Boggy Britain" seems to have put the mockers on rainfall for large parts of the country, so after 6 months I will probably end it and see if the fates can give us a really dull wet summer with a sunshine challenge instead

If this goes ahead it will be for the extended summer period of May to September and I'm open to ideas and suggestions, so get them in now and not after I start it

There are two ways of doing this, one is to use the same method of finding the 10 sunniest places and awarding points from 10 to 1as in "Boggy Britain". This would have to use synop reports from OGIMET only because although there are other stations available through the Meteogroup site at http://www.weatherca...bsid/99008.html for example it would be too tedious to find them and collate the daily totals manually every day.

The second is to select only a fixed number of stations around the UK and simply add up the sunshine hours total cumulatively, which would allow using a few stations only available on the Meteogroup site.

It would be nice to have sunshine hours as a % of the possible to allow for the difference in daylight hours south to north but too complex, as would only counting what some folks insist on calling "usable hours" of sunshine only! Also we can say that it will not determine the argument over "the sunniest place in the UK" because the choice of sites will be limited to what is easily available only. Also please don't complain to me about lack of geographical spread because I know some regions have under representation for sunshine reporting but that's down to the UKMO.


So I'm open to thoughts about it...

For info, the following UKMO sites + a couple of others report sunshine through synops:

SCOTLAND		WALES		ENGLAND
Tiree		Valley		Woodford
Glasgow Bishopton		Bala		Leeming
Prestwick RNAS		Aberporth		Filton
Eskdalemuir		St. Athan		Church Fenton
Edinburgh Gogarbank				Boulmer
Leuchars				Shawbury
Aberdeen / Dyce				Nottingham Weather Centre
Aviemore				Wittering
Stornoway				Brize Norton
Kinloss				Coleshill
Kirkwall Airport				Waddington
Lerwick				Leconfield
				Lyneham
				Wattisham
NORTHERN IRELAND				Yeovilton
Belfast / Aldergrove				Bournemouth Airport
				Camborne
				London / Heathrow Airport
OTHER				Odiham
Saint Helier				Manston
Isle Of Man / Ronaldsway				Herstmonceux
				Charlwood

[DG57]

We'll never be fed up of challenges, we want challenges till ad nauseam! This one is pretty daring and will probably be difficult to set up, as you describe it.

I'm looking forward to seeing this!

...hope we will have a really good, good summer this year. I remember how bad last July was. Fortunately, we had a very good spring and a very good autumn, in 2011. But it's always better to have good weather in summer, to enjoy it the best possible.

[Paul Domaille]

Shame they don't report Guernsey, there is always some rivalry between Guermsey and Jersey over av temps and sun hours !

[Dave K]

Paul Domaille, on 22 February 2012 - 19:31, said:

Shame they don't report Guernsey, there is always some rivalry between Guermsey and Jersey over av temps and sun hours !

Yes and we won't be able to compare Eastbourne and Hastings with the Channel Islands either, more's the pity - I think Jersey or Guernsey might wrap that one up Guernsey Met Office does give the daily data in its annual report for 2010 and maybe at some point for 2011 too - which is online and free UKMO please note - but not on a day-by-day basis sadly as far as I can see.

MorganeLanesle, on 22 February 2012 - 19:04, said:

We'll never be fed up of challenges, we want challenges till ad nauseam! This one is pretty daring and will probably be difficult to set up, as you describe it.

I'm looking forward to seeing this!

...hope we will have a really good, good summer this year. I remember how bad last July was. Fortunately, we had a very good spring and a very good autumn, in 2011. But it's always better to have good weather in summer, to enjoy it the best possible.

I guess we should hope for the ideal of rainy nights and sunny days

It's my intention to keep it as simple as possible and for the UK only, but since Icebox Europe should end by May ( unless the climate goes all ice age on us) it could be possible to run a very limited project for Europe too. Since Ogimet doesn't provide ranking function for sunshine, we could pick maybe the sunniest place over 30 years recent climate for each of Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece which reports through Ogimet and have a league table for that too. I will look at that possibility in the European Chat thread later.

[Ian Williams]

Good luck on this one Dave, personally i would prefer to see total sun hours over a point system but whatever`s easiest i guess

[skanky]

Big Dave, on 22 February 2012 - 18:15, said:

Oh no, not another one I hear you cry

Well "Boggy Britain" seems to have put the mockers on rainfall for large parts of the country, so after 6 months I will probably end it and see if the fates can give us a really dull wet summer with a sunshine challenge instead

Why not do a could amounts challenge? The place with consistently the most sunshine?
Should guarantee a '76 like summer.

[DG57]

Big Dave, on 22 February 2012 - 19:52, said:

It's my intention to keep it as simple as possible and for the UK only, but since Icebox Europe should end by May ( unless the climate goes all ice age on us) it could be possible to run a very limited project for Europe too. Since Ogimet doesn't provide ranking function for sunshine, we could pick maybe the sunniest place over 30 years recent climate for each of Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece which reports through Ogimet and have a league table for that too. I will look at that possibility in the European Chat thread later.

Oh, even if it's UK-restricted, it's already very good. Anyway, I will follow this thread as I do with the other UK ones.

[Paul Domaille]

Yes and we won't be able to compare Eastbourne and Hastings with the Channel Islands either, more's the pity - I think Jersey or Guernsey might wrap that one up Guernsey Met Office does give the daily data in its annual report for 2010 and maybe at some point for 2011 too - which is online and free UKMO please note - but not on a day-by-day basis sadly as far as I can see.


Quite right, one of the things Guernsey MetO does well, an excellent and detailed free annual summary. Daily, Monthly and Annual sunshine totals are given. It used to cost about 15 quid for a printed version up until a couple of years ago. Current daily data is available for the previous 24 hours on the "yesterdays stats" on the website, but that of course changes daily!
Good luck, these wettest/hottest etc you and Ian have been running are really interesting.
Cheers,
Paul D

[Martyn Wells]

Dave - your commitment to these projects is truly admirable

[Dave K]

Martyn Wells, on 22 February 2012 - 21:31, said:

Dave - your commitment to these projects is truly admirable

Thanks

Ian Williams, on 22 February 2012 - 20:19, said:

Good luck on this one Dave, personally i would prefer to see total sun hours over a point system but whatever`s easiest i guess

If a league table of sun hours is preferred, then that would mean choosing a set number of UKMO stations to give a fair geographical spread although as I mention some areas are badly under-represented (e.g. NW England and NI). Since we can't really use this to settle arguments about the sunniest place in the UK then IMHO the best way for the challenge to run is to select sunshine recording stations which are closest to the most heavily populated areas so we know what the majority of people are experiencing. 20 or fewer would be manageable.

[Rupert Wood]

A splendid idea Dave! I didn't see Bognor on your England list - is it still reporting? Older league tables (eg 1971-2000) seem to show it as the sunniest site in the UK, outside of the Channel Islands .

This post has been edited by Rupert Wood: 23 February 2012 - 18:23

[Dave K]

Rupert Wood, on 23 February 2012 - 18:23, said:

A splendid idea Dave! I didn't see Bognor on your England list - is it still reporting? Older league tables (eg 1971-2000) seem to show it as the sunniest site in the UK, outside of the Channel Islands .

I think Bognor has a manually read met station, possibly reporting only monthly and the stats don't seem to be available online.

Eastbourne - another claimant to the title - has a station which "meets UK met office standards" but is only listed as a manual reporting station too by the UKMO although Eastbourne council do publish the data on their site monthly.

I want to keep daily data and do updates here at least twice a week though so manual/monthly reporting stations are out unfortunately.

[Dave K]

Bumping this in case anyone who hasn't seen it want some input.

If the preference is a fixed number of stations and actual hours rather than a points system I have kind of identified some key stations to include to make sure that we have a decent coverage of the largest urban areas, as I mentioned some areas are ill-served though so I'm sorry if there isn't one in your back yard .

Kew Gardens ( from weathercast data) : for Greater and Central London
Herstmonceux : for for SE England - would have Eastbourne if it reported daily but sadly not
Bournemouth Hurn : for Bournemouth/Poole/Southampton/Portsmouth
Filton: Bristol & Gloucester
St Athan: for Cardiff and S Wales
Coleshill: for Birmingham area & Coventry
Nottingham WC: for Nottingham, Derby and Leicester
Woodford: Manchester and Liverpool
Leconfield: For Humberside and Yorkshire East Riding
Church Fenton: for Leeds & Bradford, S and W Yorks.
Durham (from weathercast data): for Tyneside & Wearside
Glasgow Bishopton: for Glasgow city and area
Edinburgh Gogarbank: for Edinburgh city area
Aberdeen Dyce: for Aberdeen
Belfast Aldergrove: sadly just the one for the whole of NI


That's 15 places and I can have a maximum of 5 more to keep it manageable. For example, some of the areas not really represented by above:

East Anglia: Could have Wattisham or Norwich Airport (from weathercast)
Far SW: Camborne or from weathercast data Bude or North Wyke which is near Okehampton - can't believe that Plymouth & Exeter have nothing local!
Channel Islands: St Helier
North Wales: Valley
Scotland: Lerwick, Tiree, or Eskdalemuir to see how dull it really is!

I'm open to ideas here and hopefully this is of some interest - otherwise I shall just impose something upon you anyway

[Dave K]

OK for a bit of Friday afternoon fun, can anyone guess the sunniest location of the last 6 days ( synop stations reporting sunshine only )?

[Dave K]

Well I abandoned this as a formal project through apparent lack of interest, and tempting the mocker gods - which I think has happened anyway. A quick compilation of sunshine hours for the first week of May ( thanks to http://www.met.reading.ac.uk/~brugge/CURR.html ), and unless you are in one of a few parts of Scotland it makes very depressing reading. Many places in the SE have had only around 15 - 20% of the normal for this week!

LOCATION	SUN HRS	MAX/DAY
Tiree	78.6	14.9
Kinloss	55.7	14.8
Stornoway	53.3	14.5
Aviemore	51.0	10.2
Lerwick	46.6	10.9
Ronaldsway	44.8	13.0
Kirkwall	42.6	13.8
Prestwick	42.0	11.6
Magilligan	38.4	12.7
Valley	38.3	10.3
Cork Airport	36.4	11.2
Leuchars	35.2	8.9
Shannon Airport	34.5	10.4
Aberdeen Dyce	33.2	11.8
Camborne	32.9	12.7
Belmullet	30.4	9.1
Eskdalemuir	30.1	11.2
Aberporth	29.3	11.1
Dublin Airport	27.7	10.6
Aldergrove	27.1	7.6
Edinburgh Gogarbank	26.8	8.5
Boulmer	26.7	9.9
Church Fenton	25.8	9.4
St Athan	22.4	7.6
Casement Aerodrome	21.3	7.0
Woodford	20.1	6.7
Waddington	19.0	9.1
Leconfield	17.6	6.8
Coleshill	16.9	8.7
Shawbury	16.1	8.9
Leeming	16.0	9.6
Wittering	14.0	7.2
Manston	13.9	7.9
Filton	13.8	5.8
Bournemouth Hurn	12.4	8.2
Nottingham Wea Cen	12.2	7.2
Lyneham	11.5	4.8
Brize Norton	11.2	5.4
Herstmonceux	10.3	6.6
Odiham	10.1	5.0
Heathrow	8.6	5.3
Wattisham	6.3	3.2
Charlwood	5.9	3.1

[Chris Alder]

An epic failure on sunshine totals down here in the first week of May. Only 12.4hours out of a rounded 100hours possible is incredibly poor even by the UK's dreary average sunshine records.

[Dave K]

Chris Alder, on 08 May 2012 - 12:20, said:

An epic failure on sunshine totals down here in the first week of May. Only 12.4hours out of a rounded 100hours possible is incredibly poor even by the UK's dreary average sunshine records.

You think that's bad, only just got into double figures for this month here in the last few minutes this afternoon

[Dave K]

And the challenge is...can any of these locations manage to reach 100 hours by the end of May?

The bottom 10 synop stations for sunshine hours after 10 days, makes for sorry reading. Always a bit difficult to find hard info for sunshine records for a range of locations, but 1932 was a spectacularly dull one and probably the worst May with Kew reading just 114 hours.

		Tot Sun Hrs	Max/Day
1	Charlwood	7.9	3.1
2	Wattisham	9.2	3.2
3	Heathrow	11.4	5.3
4	Herstmonceux	12.0	6.6
5	Lyneham	13.7	4.8
6	Odiham	14.8	5.0
7	Manston	15.4	7.9
8	Brize Norton	16.0	5.4
9	Bournemouth Hurn	17.9	8.2
10	Filton	21.0	6.7

[Dave K]

Quite a big increase in the sunshine hours totals for even the dullest 15 locations in the synop list in the last few days, but nonetheless the totals still around 40 - 50% of what they should be for the first half of May - at least it is not exclusively the south and east of England now. Rather less likely now that anywhere will come in at under 100 hours for the month although it is a rather cloudy outlook still. These should be the totals as at 06z today, the 17th:

	LOCATION	TOT Hrs	Max/Day
1	Wattisham	51.2	10.8
2	Charlwood	51.3	11.4
3	Heathrow	52.8	10.6
4	Odiham	59.7	11.7
5	Eskdalemuir	61.8	11.2
6	Edinburgh Gogarbank	62.5	11.3
7	Herstmonceux	63.0	13.3
8	Leeming	63.2	10.7
9	Lyneham	63.6	11.7
10	Nottingham Wea Cen	66.9	10.5
11	Brize Norton	67.4	12.1
12	Wittering	67.4	10.0
13	Bournemouth Hurn	69.7	12.9
14	Aberdeen Dyce	70.2	11.8
15	Coleshill	71.1	11.1

[Dave K]

May 2012 continues to be pish for sunshine in many places, although this coming week should make a big improvement. An honorable mention for Tiree though which has reported 157.7 hours! List of synop stations reporting <80 hrs to 06Z on the 20th:

		Total Hrs	Max/Day
1	Charlwood	55.7	11.4
2	Heathrow	55.8	10.6
3	Wattisham	57.9	10.8
4	Odiham	62.3	11.7
5	Lyneham	65.6	11.7
6	Leeming	66.5	10.7
7	Nottingham Wea Cen	67.9	10.5
8	Brize Norton	69.1	12.1
9	Wittering	70.4	10.0
10	Eskdalemuir	70.8	11.2
11	Waddington	73.2	10.2
12	Leconfield	73.6	10.1
13	Bournemouth Hurn	75.7	12.9
14	Woodford	76.3	10.9
15	Shawbury	76.3	10.1
16	Edinburgh Gogarbank	76.5	11.3
17	Coleshill	76.6	11.1
18	Casement Aerodrome	78.2	11.9
19	Aldergrove	79.0	9.9