UK Weather - Spring 2016

[Simon Culling]

A line of thunderstorms developed yesterday tea-time (Mon 23rd May) along a convergence zone from the Pennines southwards to North London with the storms moving southwards - which is an unusual direction for the UK. They produced a fair bit of lightning and some localised hail accumulations and a weak tornado in Leighton Buzzard in North Bedfordshire, not far from me. The storms passed me by on my eastern side but still produced a few c-g strikes and a brief heavy shower and cooled the air to 10*C.

The weather has turned a little cooler today with NE winds off the North Sea but it should warm up this Bank Holiday weekend with some thunderstorms about.

The map below shows the location of the 700 or so strikes recorded yesterday courtesy of LightningMaps.org and Blitzortung.org

[Simon Culling]

Yesterday (Weds 25th May) was a cold and cheerless day here in Milton Keynes with gloomy skies, a little drizzle and a maximum temperature of just 11*C in the nagging northerly breeze. It was even colder down the east side of England with some low max temps for late May of:

7.8*C at Fylingdales Moor (N Yorks)
8.2*C at Emley Moor + Bingley (both W Yorks)
8.5*C at Loftus (Northumberland)
9.3*C at Leek Thorncliffe

Closer to me, High Wycombe + Woburn both only reached 10.9*C and Bedford just 11.2*C. The cloud has broken today and it will become considerably warmer over the next few days with the chance of a few thundery showers moving north from the Continent.

The CET for May was 12.5*C (+1.5*C) up to the 25th and the EWR was 45mm up to the 24th which is 69% of the monthly average.

[Simon Culling]

The weather did warm up a bit, but it was a case of 'West is Best' with all the sunshine and heat over the western side of the UK and much cloudier weather in the east and more central parts. Some coastal and convergence showers broke out Friday through to Sunday as quite humid air was drawn in from the Continent where incidentally it has been very stormy indeed. Something like 300,000 lightning strikes were recorded over Europe on Saturday (28th May) and near to 200,000 on Sunday. Anyone watching the tennis at Roland-Garros in Paris will have seen the heavy rain on both days and quite a few people have been struck by lightning in both France + Germany.

The low pressure responsible for the European storms (1001mb over N Germany) is now moving westwards and will bring rain to the UK from the east on Tuesday and Wednesday but not the strong storms. It will also bring in the cold air off the North Sea - Yippee!

[Simon Culling]

There were some significant contrasts in the weather across the UK today (Tuesday 31st May), which is meteorologically speaking, the last day of Spring. With a low (1008mb) over the Benelux counties and a high (1034mb) near Iceland we had a northerly flow over the UK which gave a cold wet day to the eastern half of England but plenty of warm sunshine to the SW of England, Wales and western Scotland. The rain was heavy and thundery in the east (storms imported overnight from Belgium/Denmark giving 50-60mm in places) with highs in the range of just 10-12*C, but the sunshine gave a max of 24.2*C at Bishopton (a suburb of Glasgow).

Here in Milton Keynes we had 25-30mm of rain and a max of just 11*C, but just 125km away to the east in Hereford it was dry with some hazy sunshine and a max of 21*C.

Not much improvement as we go into the first few days of Summer, but the blocking high to the NW looks set to move east into Scandinavia at the weekend which will herald a southerly flow and some quite warm and humid air with the prospect of some thunderstorms.

[Simon Culling]

The final CET for May was 12.5*C (+1.4*C) which makes 4 out 5 warmer than average months so far this year. The EWR was 62mm which is 94% of the monthly average. This is the first drier than average month since October 2015.

For the UK as a whole, the spring was on average for temperature and rainfall, but was a little sunnier than average. This hides a few details though as Scotland was quite dry compared to England being mostly wetter than average. Furthermore, the UK temperatures are compared to a 1981-2010 average whilst the CET series uses 1961-1990 as its base. You might have thought that the leading UK met agency might use a consistent data source?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/ ... 016/spring