April drier and colder than average

After the wettest April on record in 2012, provisional full-month Met Office figures show this April has been slightly drier than average in the UK.

Rainfall throughout the UK was 64 mm this year, compared to the 1981-2010 average of 72.7 mm. That’s considerably less than the 128 mm we saw last year.

There were big regional differences in April rainfall this year. Scotland saw 121.2 mm of rain which is above the 91.1 mm average and Northern Ireland saw 75.2mm, almost spot on the 75.0 mm average.

However, both England and Wales saw well below average rainfall. Wales had 50.3mm, compared to an average of 89.3mm, and England saw 30.4mm, compared to an average of 58.7 mm.

The month was characterised by generally cold and dry weather, following on from the theme set in March. Despite this, April registered as only slightly colder than average with a mean UK temperature of 6.3 °C, which is 1.1 °C below the 7.4 °C long-term average.

This is the same mean temperature as recorded in April 2012. To find a colder April than the last two years, you have to go back to 1989 – which saw a mean temperature of 5.5 °C.

Scotland saw the coldest temperatures compared to country specific averages, with a mean temperature of 4.8 °C, which is 1.3 °C below average – and is the same temperature as recorded in 1998.

The warmest day of the month was 25 April at Faversham in Kent when the temperature recorded was 23.1°C.

In terms of sunshine, Scotland was sunnier than the rest of the UK with hours of sunshine totalling 170.9, followed by Northern Ireland with 168.0, England at 167.7 and Wales at 162.7 hours.

This compares with only 127.9 hours of sunshine in April last year throughout the UK. The sunniest April in the last 10 years was 2007 with 203.5 hours.

	Mean Temperature		Sunshine hours		Rainfall
Apr-13	Actual	Diff to Avg	Actual	Diff to Avg	Actual	Diff to Avg
	degC	degC	hours	%	mm	%
UK	6.3	-1.1	168.4	114	64	88
England	7.2	-0.9	167.7	108	30.4	52
Wales	6.4	-1.2	162.7	105	50.3	56
Scotland	4.8	-1.3	170.9	127	121.2	133
N Ireland	6.5	-1.1	168	115	75.2	100

How wet has 2012 been? Is it a record breaker?

Provisional figures from the Met Office from 1 January to 26 December 2012 show that some parts of the UK have already had their wettest year on record.

New records have been set in England (1095.8 mm), northern England (1253 mm), E and NE England (1042.1 mm), Midlands (1048.2 mm), and East Anglia (788 mm), in a series that goes back to 1910.

A further 46 mm of rain is needed from 27 to 31 December for this to be the wettest year on record for the UK overall – the UK has had 1291.2 mm of rain from 1 January to 26 December. The wettest year on record for the UK is 2000 with 1337.3 mm.

2012 rainfall anomaly 1 Jan to 26 Dec

In terms of temperature and sunshine the year as a whole is set to be unremarkable, both being around normal. However, overall 2012 is set to be cooler than 2011, but warmer than 2010.

	mean temperature		sunshine duration		precipitation
1 January to 26 December 2012	Actual	Difference from 1981-2010 average	Actual	Percentage of 1981-2010 average	Actual	Percentage of 1981-2010 average
	degC	degC	hours	%	mm	%
UK	8.7	-0.1	1354.1	99	1291.2	112
England	9.5	-0.1	1467.1	98	1095.8	128
Wales	9.1	-0.1	1354.0	97	1649.5	113
Scotland	7.3	-0.1	1186.8	100	1546.3	98
N Ireland	8.9	0.0	1234.0	98	1134.8	100
England & Wales	9.5	-0.1	1451.5	98	1172.2	125
England N	8.7	-0.1	1357.0	99	1253.0	129
England S	9.9	-0.1	1525.4	98	1012.6	128

More about the record breaking year of 2012

Last night’s coldest temperatures

As the recent cold spell continues, last night saw some cold temperatures across the UK with widespread frost across parts of the country, with the coldest place being Shap, Cumbria where it fell to -7.0 °C.

The table below shows the top twenty coldest places recorded by the Met Office last night.

SITE NAME	AREA	MIN TEMPERATURE (celsius)
Shap	CUMBRIA	-7.0
Benson	OXFORDSHIRE	-6.7
Braemar	ABERDEENSHIRE	-6.6
Eskdalemuir	DUMFRIESSHIRE	-5.8
Ravensworth	NORTH YORKSHIRE	-5.8
Redesdale Camp	NORTHUMBERLAND	-5.8
Leeming	NORTH YORKSHIRE	-5.7
Carterhouse	ROXBURGHSHIRE	-5.7
Newton Rigg	CUMBRIA	-5.4
Bainbridge	NORTH YORKSHIRE	-5.2
Bridgefoot	CUMBRIA	-5.1
Pershore	HEREFORD & WORCESTER	-5.0
Tyndrum	PERTHSHIRE	-5.0
Keswick	CUMBRIA	-4.9
Hurn	DORSET	-4.8
Spadeadam	CUMBRIA	-4.7
Chillingham Barns	NORTHUMBERLAND	-4.7
Saughall	AYRSHIRE	-4.6
Topcliffe	NORTH YORKSHIRE	-4.6
Aboyne	ABERDEENSHIRE	-4.5

The tables below show a breakdown of the coldest three places for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

England

SITE NAME	AREA	MIN TEMPERATURE (celsius)
Shap	CUMBRIA	-7.0
Benson	OXFORDSHIRE	-6.7
Ravensworth	NORTH YORKSHIRE	-5.8

Scotland

SITE NAME	AREA	MIN TEMPERATURE (celsius)
Braemar	ABERDEENSHIRE	-6.6
Eskdalemuir	DUMFRIESSHIRE	-5.8
Carterhouse	ROXBURGHSHIRE	-5.7

Wales

SITE NAME	AREA	MIN TEMPERATURE (celsius)
Tredegar Bryn Bach Park	GWENT	-3.6
Libanus	POWYS	-3.3
Llysdinam	POWYS	-3.1

Northern Ireland

SITE NAME	AREA	MIN TEMPERATURE (celsius)
Katesbridge	DOWN	-3.5
Aldergrove	ANTRIM	-1.0
Lough Fea	LONDONDERRY	-0.7

The latest forecast from the Met Office shows that it is likely to stay cold with temperatures falling below freezing across many parts of the country over the next couple of night. Temperatures are expected to fall to similar lows tonight, with it perhaps a little colder still on Saturday night.

A full and regularly updated forecast is available on our website.

How wet has this September been?

The latter part of September saw some exceptional rainfall in parts of the UK which caused disruption and flooding at times.

With such a great deal of rain falling in a short period of time, some people have asked whether it will make September one of the wettest in our national records going back to 1910.

Provisional early statistics up to 26 September show this isn’t the case, however, with the month looking set to be slightly wetter than average – but by no means a record breaker.

Up to the 26th, UK rainfall is 96.3 mm – which is 100% of the full month average. After 26 days we would, assuming rain falls fairly evenly through the month, expect this to be around 87%.

Of course, rain doesn’t always fall evenly throughout a month – as we saw this September. The first three weeks saw relatively little rain in many areas, but then a particularly active weather system brought four days of persistent heavy rain.

Northern parts of England were particularly badly affected by this, as you can see in the rainfall map below. In the map you can see a band of blue colours across northern England denoting above average rainfall for the month, whereas much of the country is coloured white to denote near-average amounts.

Two brown areas, one across central Scotland and the other in East Anglia, show it has been drier than average here – even despite the heavy rain in the latter part of the month.

 

Temperatures up to the 26 September are also fairly ordinary, being slightly below average. Mean temperature for the UK is 12.2 °C, which is 0.5 °C below the long-term average for the month.

While September looks set to be slightly wetter and cooler than average, the good news is sunshine hours were slightly up – with the UK having seen 126.1 hours of sunshine, 101% of its whole-month average.

Again, we’d expect it to be around 87% after 26 days, so we’re ahead – but not by a record-breaking amount.

So this September is set to go down as a fairly average month overall, but – as is often the case – this belies some very stark contrasts and some less-than-usual weather.

Met Office provisional 1-26 September figures

	mean temperature		sunshine duration		rainfall
	Actual	Difference from 1981-2010 average	Actual	% of 1981-2010 average	Actual	% of 1981-2010 average
	degC	degC	hours	%	mm	%
UK	12.2	-0.5	126.1	101	96.3	100
England	13.2	-0.5	145.2	106	80.6	116
Wales	12.1	-0.8	124.5	97	115.3	99
Scotland	10.4	-0.5	98.6	94	117.2	86
N Ireland	11.8	-0.5	105.3	93	94.0	103
England & Wales	13.1	-0.5	142.3	105	85.4	112
England N	12.4	-0.4	124.0	98	121.4	150
England S	13.7	-0.5	156.4	110	59.0	93

Is it the wettest UK summer on record?

This summer started with the wettest June in the UK in the national records which go back to 1910 and was followed up by a wetter than average July (16^th wettest), so are we set for the wettest summer on record?

Officially, in meteorological terms, summer runs from the start of June to the end of August – so there are still a few days to go for this year.

The Met Office holds many different climate datasets but uses the UK national series that goes back to 1910 when referring to records.

In this dataset, the record to beat was set in 1912, when the UK had 384.4mm of rain – although we don’t have to look too far back to find a very wet summer, as 2007 is third in the rankings with 357.8mm. The 1971-2000 average for the UK in summer is 226.9mm.

Looking at this year, we have the figures for June and July, but for the UK as a whole we currently only have data up to 15 August – which show rainfall had been slightly below average to that point.

That means we can say with some certainty that we have seen 300.8mm of rain so far this summer (145.3mm in June, 115.9mm in July, and 39.6mm to 15 August), ranking 20^th in the records.

There has been a fair amount of rain since then, so that ranking is sure to have climbed – but it’s not possible to say until all the numbers have been crunched at the end of this month.

It’s important to remember that the UK total rainfall is effectively an average of the rain that falls across the whole of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland – so looking at one station, or even one country, isn’t a reliable indicator of how much rain we’ve seen for the UK as a whole.

We can say that this summer is likely to be one of the wettest on record – some may argue that, as it’s already in the top 20% in records dating back to 1910, it already is one of the wettest on record.

We can also say that this year has continued a disappointing run of UK summers which started in 2007 – all of which have seen above average rainfall and, with the exception of 2009, below average sunshine hours.

However, we cannot say where this year will finish in the rankings or whether it will challenge the record set in 1912. For that final assessment, we’ll have to wait until after the end of August.

You can see a discussion about the causes of this year’s unsettled summer in an article posted earlier on our blog.

Another wet and windy June weekend

It has been reported that this weekend’s weather is a once-in-50 year occurrence. In reality, last week’s weather was much more significant with winds recorded up to 84 mph and rainfall of 127 mm in parts of Wales. Although we are in for some wet and windy weather for the next couple of days, by Sunday and for the start of the new working week the weather looks set to be quieter with more sunshine, fewer showers, lighter winds and a warmer feel.

We have seen some more wet and windy weather this week, with heavy and persistent rain affecting many areas last night. However, rainfall totals and wind speeds have not been as severe as they were this time last week, when we saw disruption in west Wales and, later, south-east England.

Satellite image 15 June 2012 showing wet and windy weather over the UK.

The current warnings in place for Wales, the Midlands, northern England and Northern Ireland may seem to last for a long time as they are out for a 48 hour period. However, as Met Office Severe Weather Warnings are based on the impacts of the weather, it is important to ensure the public are aware of how long the worst of the weather will last. The longest warning issued by the Met Office was for the very cold snap in the winter of 2010/2011, where much of the UK was blanketed in yellow warnings for Ice untreated roads and pavements. These warnings were in place for as many as five days in a row.

Very mild start to November

The first part of November has been very mild, dry and quite sunny across the UK, according to provisional Met Office climate figures.

The UK average temperature for 1-15 November was 9.4 °C, which is 3.5 °C higher than the long term average. The warmest district of the UK so far this month has been East Anglia where the average temperature was 11.2 °C, some 4.5 °C above the long term average for the area.

We would normally expect the first half of November to be warmer than the second as we transition towards winter (which, meteorologically speaking, starts in December). However, even bearing this in mind, the temperatures seen in the first half of this month have been much warmer than normal.

Rainfall amounts have been well below normal across the UK for the first half of the month. The UK has seen 25.6mm of rain so far which is well below the level you would expect at the mid point of the month.  Northern Scotland has seen the driest weather with just 10.9mm of rain being recorded, a mere 6% of the monthly average.

Rainfall 1-15 November 2011

As you might expect from the low rainfall amounts we have also seen a fair amount of sunshine during the first half of the month. The UK has seen 61% of average for the month with 35.9 hours and Northern Ireland has seen a full months worth of sunshine in the first 15 days with 55.4 hours.

	Average temperature		Sunshine hours		Rainfall
Location	1-15 Nov 2011	Difference from 71-00 monthly average	1-15 Nov 2011	Percentage of 71-00 monthly average	1-15 Nov 2011	Percentage of 71-00 monthly average
UK	9.4 °C	3.5°C	35.9	61 %	25.6 mm	22 %
England	10.2 °C	3.8 °C	29.2	45 %	26.9 mm	32 %
Wales	9.5 °C	3.0 °C	43.5	75 %	36.3 mm	23 %
Scotland	8.1 °C	3.4 °C	41.3	86 %	20.3 mm	12 %
Northern Ireland	9.0 °C	2.9 °C	55.4	100 %	27.7 mm	25 %

For the UK, the warmest November on record was 1994 with an average temperature of 8.8C; and the driest was in 1945 when 22.1 mm fell.

However, with more than two weeks of weather still to come and temperatures expected to return to more normal levels before the month is out, it’s too early to say where this November will sit in the record books.

 

Latest update as post-tropical storm Katia reaches the UK

The deep area of low pressure which contains post-tropical storm Katia  was, at 9 am, centred approximately 200 miles northwest of Sligo, Ireland with a central pressure of 966 hpa. This can be seen on the satellite image below – the swirl of cloud to the west of Scotland/north of Northern Ireland is the low pressure system which was Katia.

Winds are strengthening,  with a recent gusts of up to 82 mph at Capel Curig in the mountains of North Wales. Elsewhere winds are widely gusting to 40 to 50 mph, with further strengthening expected across some northern areas through today.

Infra-red satellite image of storm affecting the UK at 9 am on Monday 12th September Source: EUMETSAT/Met Office

For the latest update for your area visit our severe weather warnings page. We’ll also be keeping you up to date on Twitter and Facebook. You may also like to follow Met Office storms on Twitter, who are tracking the progress of Katia and other tropical storms, hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones.

 

Related articles

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Spring rainfall shows big contrasts across the UK

Provisional Met Office climate figures for spring 2011 indicate that rainfall amounts across the UK have varied widely from north and west to south and east.

Even though further rain is expected across much of the country before the season ends, parts of the east and south are likely to be heading towards their driest spring on record. These records date back more than 100 years to 1910.

For statistical purposes, the meteorological spring is the combined months of March, April and May and provisional figures are from 1 March to 25 May.

The driest region has been East Anglia, where rainfall amounts show that only 17mm of rain has fallen, just 13% of the long term spring average which is 134.9mm.

However, at the opposite of the country, parts of north and west Scotland have had a wet season, with Argyll recording 538.6mm of rain, well above the long term average of 422.0mm.

This table shows rainfall figures for Spring across the UK. All figures are provisional up to 25th May 2011.

Location	Actual (mm) 1 March to 25 May	Percentage of 1971 to 2000 average	Long term spring average (mm)
UK	164.9 mm	71 %	231.7 mm
England	65.4 mm	36 %	179.4 mm
Northern Ireland	180.6 mm	78 %	232.2 mm
Scotland	336.3 mm	111 %	304.1 mm
Wales	128.6 mm	45 %	285.4 mm

This map shows rainfall figures for Spring across the UK as a percentage of the 1971-2000 long term average. All figures are provisional up to 25th May 2011.

The big differences in rainfall pattern across the UK, illustrate just how varied the weather can be over the country. ‘Blocked’ weather patterns have kept many southern and eastern counties dry but Atlantic weather systems and their rain-bearing fronts have affected regions further north and west.

Spring featured high temperatures especially during April, helping to make it one of the warmest springs on record. However, with several more days to go we need to wait until next week to see if it becomes a record-breaker.

Across the UK, the Bank Holiday weather forecast looks set to offer rather changeable conditions, with a mixture of bright or sunny spells but also some rain or showers at times.

Met Office in the Media: 21 April 2011

The weather for the Easter weekend continues to make the news right now with the Daily Telegraph reporting that ‘Britain heading for warmest Easter weekend on record‘.  It is true that temperatures are well above where they should be – the average temperature in London is usually 14 degrees at this time of year but yesterday we saw 26.5 degrees at Heathrow Airport.

As we head into the Easter weekend, the best weather is likely to be across England and Wales, with highs reaching the low 20′s. However, the high temperatures may trigger isolated heavy and perhaps thundery showers. Mixed fortunes are expected over Northern Ireland and Scotland, with sunshine but also some showery rain at times and cooler temperatures by Bank Holiday Monday.  The latest weather forecast can be found on our website.

As for records,  the warmest Easter in the UK in recent years was that of 21st/22nd April 1984, with the warmest day on Easter Saturday 21st April 1984, recording  23.7 C at Heathrow. Maximum temperatures across the southern half of the UK were widely 21 to 22 C.

23.6 C was recorded at Cilfynydd, Mid Glamorgan (S Wales), the highest Easter temperature in Wales in data from 1960.

Easter Sunday 22nd April 1984 was again very warm in the south of the UK, with 23.7 C again recorded at Rumleigh, Devon.

UK Smog Alert - The BBC has also reported on the ‘Smog alert in England and Wales‘, which follows the issuing of a warning from Defra. The high pressure system persisting over the UK is forecast to bring warm and still conditions to the UK over the Easter weekend. These conditions mean it is likely that the UK will experience a high pollution episode this weekend.  High pressure tends to trap air near to the surface allowing pollution levels to build up and with little wind there is not a great deal to move this around.

The Royal Wedding also remains of interest with the BBC looking ahead in ‘Royal wedding: What’s the weather forecast?‘.  It is still too early to say what the weather will be like in a weeks time, but you can stay up to date with our extended forecast for the 6 to 15 day period.  We will be providing a more detailed forecast on our Royal Wedding weather page from early next week and will also be providing video forecasts on the Met Office YouTube Channel.

Related Articles

• Britain heading for warmest Easter weekend on record (telegraph.co.uk)
• Easter set for sizzling weather (guardian.co.uk)
• Britain Easter weather: Mercury hits 26C and hot weather all weekend (dailymail.co.uk)
• Weekend a roaster as April high looms (thesun.co.uk)