James Peacock
@peacockreports.bsky.social
440 followers 58 following 1.6K posts
Head Meteorologist at MetSwift, working to revolutionise delivery of weather information. LinkedIn: https://t.co/pUCAQfAfRP
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
peacockreports.bsky.social
For 1st March to 9th October, 2025 is the driest on record, 8.9 mm below the 2nd driest (1990).

2025 has delivered 192.9 mm, which is just 49.7% of the average.

These to-date totals will be interesting to review in a week's time, as no measurable rainfall is forecast.
peacockreports.bsky.social
In early October, 2022 became the driest-to-date on record in my local area.

For up to 9th October, 2025 has 89.2 mm more, but is only 22.2 mm above the 5th driest on record.

For rainfall since 1st February, 2025 is 2nd driest & only 9.9 mm above the driest (1959).
peacockreports.bsky.social
This takes the 2025 season to 11 named storms just ahead of the 1981-2020 median date.

Of the past full seasons with at least 18 named storms (i.e. in top 10%), none in the IBTrACS v4 database were on fewer than 12 at this stage.
peacockreports.bsky.social
The forecast map for Karen is a novelty: A brief existence playing out fully to the north of the Azores.
peacockreports.bsky.social
Occasionally, convection at the centre of a broad low manages to disconnect from weather fronts & become a subtropical or tropical cyclone over the mid-latitude North Atlantic.

Such was the case last night, resulting in the designation of subtropical storm Karen by the NHC.
peacockreports.bsky.social
Confidence then decreases steadily when looking through next weekend, with signs that Atlantic westerlies may try to 'overrun' the high (force it to head back south-eastward), bringing wetter, windier weather to NW Europe, but with no consensus on how quickly that occurs.
peacockreports.bsky.social
These omega formations have a habit of retrograding eventually, i.e. the high heads to the west or northwest instead of east or northeast.

Forecast models agree on that happening later next week, but disagree on the finer details of high position & shape.
peacockreports.bsky.social
Over the next five days the high will remain similarly positioned, drifting just a little northward, while lows dig down to its west & east, establishing an 'omega' formation that tends to be difficult to shift.

NW Europe temps on the warm side by day (for mid-Oct), cool nights.
peacockreports.bsky.social
There's a strong high over NW Europe today.

In south-western UK, sea-level pressure is now widely reading 1034 mb (interestingly a tad higher than last night's GFS run predicted), which is the highest reading in that area since the first two days of March (peaked near 1037 mb).
peacockreports.bsky.social
The latest two deterministic GFS runs have had little to no rainfall for southern UK & most of France during the next 15 days.

Not saying this will be the outcome, but it's quite a sight given the time of year.

A key time looks to be later next week when it might turn more unsettled instead.
peacockreports.bsky.social
Checking in on the Pacific typhoon season (West Pacific basin - northern hemisphere).

For the typhoon count, 2025 took longer to get going than many recent years, but has been at the races since mid-September & is now 4 ahead of the 1981-2020 median.
peacockreports.bsky.social
Here's a scatter view of the same data, where the diagonal line represents a 1 to 1 ratio i.e. every hurricane hits the continental US at least once.

By this measure, the most malicious seasons could be considered 1956, 1964, 1985, & 2002.
peacockreports.bsky.social
...in that despite being the most active Atlantic season since 1969, it didn't even have a single US landfall from a system at tropical storm strength, closest call being from Marco which weakened to a depression just before landfall.

Alas, it was a different story in Mexico.
peacockreports.bsky.social
The total lack of continental US hurricane landfalls so far this season got me wondering where it currently stands versus historical seasons.

Turns out it would have to produce 4 more hurricanes without any such landfalls to be a record-breaker.

1990 was truly extraordinary...
peacockreports.bsky.social
Here's by number-to-date methodology applied to named storms affecting the UK since routine naming began in September 2018.

Some of these storms were named by other organisations in Europe.

Evidently, they mainly occur August-April (yet official season starts September 🤔).
peacockreports.bsky.social
I'm glad UKV & GFS were well out for my local region (central-southern England) this afternoon.

Instead of very cloudy & 14-15°C, it's been sunny spells & 18-19°C.

One of the largest errors I've seen at such short lead time.
peacockreports.bsky.social
The main feature I've not yet found a way to bring across from my Excel version is setting the bar for specifically the current season's current tally to be a gradient that fades to zero opacity, while leaving the other bars alone.
peacockreports.bsky.social
Been working on & off on a code-generated version of my 'tally timeline' view of tropical cyclone seasons.

Once complete, this will allow me to produce them very quickly for any basin.

Here's an example for the East Pacific.
peacockreports.bsky.social
Despite it happening at some point in the month almost every year, I again found myself remarking how warm the sun can still feel on a calm day 😅
peacockreports.bsky.social
Less typical of 2025, that peak intensity *might* occur while directly affecting land areas.

Given the propensity this year for somewhat sheared Atlantic tropical cyclones (as Jerry shall be) to find a way to escalate rapidly anyway, this system bears watching closely IMO.
peacockreports.bsky.social
Tropical storm Jerry was designated by the NHC at 15:00 UTC.

This is over a fortnight later than the 1991-2020 average for the Atlantic hurricane season's 10th named storm.

As is typical of 2025, Jerry's peak intensity forecast could be summarised as "probably a hurricane, who knows how strong".
peacockreports.bsky.social
With a very dry outlook for potentially a fortnight or so, this October has a shot at being the first widely drier than average one in southern England since 2018.

Yes, it's really been that long!

2019: Wet
2020: Very wet
2021: Very wet
2022: Near average
2023: Very wet
2024: Wet
peacockreports.bsky.social
That long-standing nemesis, the stratiform cloud bank. Spoiler of many a would-have-been-fine day here due to topographic effects.

This time, it did at least wait most of the day before turning up.
peacockreports.bsky.social
Despite the cool-feeling weekend, the Hadley mean Central England Temperature to 5th Oct is 1.4°C above the 1991-2020 average.

The forecast is on the warm side, but not exceptionally so - anomalous warmth is mainly in the daily max temps, min temps near or a bit below average.
peacockreports.bsky.social
If my appreciation of warm sunny days was plotted on a graph, it would have two peaks, one around March, the other October.

Both for the sunshine being comfortably enjoyable all day, March for how it feels after winter, October for being some of the last such days of the year.