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Friday 24 June 2016

2016 Mid-term Es (& Weather) Analysis

We're about half way through the 2016 Es season, so time to post my personal opinion on this year's Es season. These are my own experiences and differ from other DXer's experiences.

Like last season, this year's Es have been the worst and the best for me. "The worst", based on the sparse number of openings, the lack of intensity/lower MUF of the openings and the number of stations received. "The best" because of the frequent double-hop conditions to Turkey, plus the phenomenal opening to Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East on May 29th! So the contrasts have been quite extreme.

Being on the east coast places me closer to the European action, so I am often lucky to experience some Es openings which don't penetrate further inland.

What I am still struggling to get my head around is the fact that I have received Turkey more than twice as often as I have received Italy this season and almost four times as frequently as I have received Spain! That just doesn't happen .... well, clearly it DOES happen. This is the nature of sporadic E. You just never know what to expect, even when you think conditions are poor. It only takers a few minutes and the Es clouds can develop in the right places. But such DX is rare.

Also, just like last summer, there have been more Es openings in Eastern Europe and which didn't reach this far west, so DXers in eastern parts of Europe may argue that their season has been OK, but even there, you can see that the openings have been less frequent.

There have been many days with no Es at all here. The same could be said for the sun. Yes, I am going to moan about the weather. Cold northerly winds have often dominated our weather here on the Lincolnshire coast. The sun has been quite scarce too, with many days of cloud cover. Unusual for the east coast.

We sometimes use the term "British summer" hee to describe the weather. This is usually taken to mean "two sunny days then a thunder storm". That's about right, but storms never seem to come overhead in Skegness and are drawn into the Fenlands or into the Wolds. We are exposed to many elements in these Islands due to our geographical location. It can be oppressively hot due to high humidity levels sometimes, or the opposite, though we don't really have extremes here. It's a fairly 'temperate' and pleasant climate on the whole. Not too hot and not too cold. Personally, I do not like hot weather.

The eastern side of England usually benefits from drier, sunnier weather than the rest of the UK. Not so this season! Weather systems have been in the wrong place, so we have had a lot of cold northerly winds for most of the British summertime. It's been hard to believe that the east of England has been struggling to reach 9C at times when it should have been more than double this.

So, in conclusion, it's largely "RUBBISH" but with rare and unusually good highlights. The season has a few weeks to redeem itself, but I am not holding my breath.

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