LEJOG weather

[tclay4]

Hi
I posted one on here a few months ago asking for advice on which direction to take and received useful advice so am not after that. What I need is information. Does anybody know how I can get statistics on wind direction in the UK over specific dates? We are doing the ride in Sept 2011 over 10-11 days and our only sticking point is that the guy doing most of the organising is the only one out of four of us who wants to do North to South. Yesterday he stated he would change his mind like the rest of us and start at lands end if I could prove to him that in the first 2 weeks of September the prevailing wind is from the SW in the UK. I know the figures are something like 70/30 for this over a whole year but I was wondering if anybody knows if the Met office or somewehere else keeps such data for specfic dates over the last 3 or 4 years and can I access this?
Hope you can help
Tim

 

[Ticktockmy]

What either way your ride, Sod's law states that the wind will spend most of the time in your face. Last year in September I come down from Durness and every day the wind was blowing which and every way. Mainly caused by how wind is channeled around the hills and mountains and valleys. So I would not worry too much about the wind, on the trip I flogged up the Drumochter Pass heading South into really strong head wind, once I went over the top, the wind was blowing just a strong but from behind me. which meant I sailed down into Blair Atoll and a smart old pace.
Some you win some you lose.

 

[ohnovino]

Average wind directions in September:

 

[ColinJ]

Interesting!

It's quite surprising how much the wind direction changes from one place to another but I suppose there are obstacles like the Lake District fells and the Pennines getting in the way and redirecting the airflows.

One thing is for sure - there aren't that many winds blowing down from Scotland!

 

[vernon]

I wouldn't be so obsessive about the wind direction because there's no long term guarantee that it will be in your favour on your chosen dates. What will your pal do if, on the chosen start date, the short term forecast is five or six days of head winds? Cancel? Atempt to get to the other end to take advantage of a tail wind.

Head winds do more to the state of mind than to hold progress back.

 

[snorri]

What vernon said.

It would be very time consuming working through historical weather data for numerous locations along your proposed route, assuming the data can be found, and it is just historical data, giving no indication of future weather patterns. Just a waste of time I think, we have to just accept that in weather related activities, Sods Law can rule..
This sounds like a fairly major disagreement in planning what should be a team effort.

 

[AlanW]

I did LEJoG back in August last year in eight days, for 6 1/2 days for had a great tail wind and great weather.

Apart from for 1/2 day PM about 6 days in, when we were riding through Kielder Forest we had a terrible head wind and torrential rain.

Then on the last day, we had 120 miles of the Mother of all headwinds, plus a real distinct drop in the ambient temperature plus horizontal rain.

The last few miles into JoG saw us struggling to maintain 7 mph.......downhill.

 

[delport]

Barely even noticed the wind,and i began at john o'groats and headed down to lands end.

I went in october, the weather was not bad at all comparing it to what happened 2 weeks after i got back, when parts of England were snowed in.

Overall i probably had 3 or 4 windy days out of 21.