Worryingly Wet & Worryingly Sunless

[kold weather]

 Weather-history

Absurdly wet period. I've got to imagine we are closing in on a 12 month rolling record.

I had hoped we would be well behind Mar 23 but even though it is behind its by a modest amount.

A wetter than normal May-June might well seal the deal on not only the wettest jul-Jun but the wettest rolling 12 months. Especiàlly if April morphs into another real wet one.

[B87]

Heathrow rainfall now standing at 84.6mm. The record wettest March 2001 saw 95.3mm, and looking at the forecast for the last few days of the month, I'm pretty sure that March 2024 will take the unwanted record.

[Downburst]

Just read of one farmer who grows spring greens of various types. He has 100 Bulgarians arriving next week to pick the first crop as normal for this time of year. Anyway, the problem is the plants were never even planted yet never mind ready to start picking. Other facts and figures on tillage status in Ireland for barley oats and wheat, beans etc are off the scale bad. It is estimated two full weeks of dry weather is needed and another plough, and that isn't going to happen in time. Will be an odd year this year for sure. 

[B87]

If Heathrow gets another 5.2mm, it will equal the wettest March on record. 5.3mm needed to be THE wettest.

[Scorcher]

Sunshine will likely be close to 90 hours here after today. We might not end up far below average in the end. 65.6mm of rain so not that wet either.

It seems like NW England has done quite well this month compared to most areas.

 

[reef]

 Scorcher We've really caught up in the last two weeks aswell. Up to 91 hours to the 29th. The average is 123 hours so with today and tomorrow we should at least reach 100 hours. below average but nothing like as bad as it was looking at mid-month.

[Scorcher]

 reef 10 hours of sunshine here yesterday which has taken us over 90 hours for the month. The average here is only around 100 hours for the month so we will end up around average with this morning being clear.

I didn't expect to get anywhere near average halfway through the month.

Who would have thought the current charts would produce the sunniest weekend since the first half of September...

[Weather-history]

 Scorcher

Still a 100mm month for the region as a whole.

[jules216]

Its Been a while since Scandinavian high vanished in June 2023. Who would have thought that the pattern would be so persistant after then.

[Scorcher]

 Weather-history Just shows how much wetter much of the region is than the flatter parts of south Manchester/Cheshire.

Hawarden near Chester has only recorded 73.8mm as well.

Interestingly, Hawarden has been considerably duller than Rostherne across the month, with 77.1 hours of sunshine at Hawarden vs 90.8 hours at Rostherne.

 

[Weather-history]

We need to break out of this god awful wretched pattern, this has been going on for 9 months with only brief breaks, the sea-level and 500mb anomaly charts from start of July last year to 28th March.   . 

 

Horrific!!!!!

Edited March 31 by Weather-history

[Scorcher]

 Weather-history Really shocking. I just hope the pattern flips in time for May and we get a 2018 style pattern. Surely the law of averages suggests this pattern must break soon...

[ANYWEATHER]

The Potato famine in Ireland was also in part  due to excessive moisture and rainfall during the mid-1800s. It wasn't only Ireland that had the potato famine effects. Not sure if there are any comparable and reliable rainfall  records from back then ,but it was excessively wet from reports at that time ,rather like we are in today.....

[Weather-history]

 Scorcher

Contrast this with highly blocked July 1995-March 1996 period.   I think there were about 100 days where our region recorded 0.00m of rainfall

There have only been since 6 such  days since the 14th June last year

[TEITS]

What is so striking about this weather pattern is where this rainfall has fallen. During a typical unsettled spell of weather my location often remains one of the driest. The last 6 months my location has seen 200% of its normal rainfall and yet locations such as SW/W Scotland have seen only 30-50% of its normal rainfall.

[WYorksWeather]

 TEITS Yep, it's been noted in quite a few of the Met Office forecasts that the southerly tracking jet stream is leading to some slightly more unusual low pressure paths. I'd typically expect my location to do fairly badly out of this sort of pattern, and indeed we have, but it's been a below average to poor March for rainfall, not ridiculous.

Meanwhile for areas further south, pretty much unredeemable - absolutely ridiculous amounts of rainfall, with the centre of several fairly deep lows tracking that way, which is unusual.

[Metwatch]

From the guy who manages the station in Coventry this morning:

Quote

"In the past 6 months there has been 633.0mm of rain from October to March. With rainfall records dating back to 1870, this is the wettest such 6 month spell in over 154 years!"

The October - March 91-2020 average for reference is 348.4mm. That is more than ridiculous now.

[raz.org.rain]

 Scorcher the Cheshire area often doesn't fit into that stereotype of northern English weather, it's often much drier and warmer than surrounding regions. The rain shadow effect of the north Wales mountains probably contributes a lot to this,

[reef]

It is now the second wettest 9 month period on record here. July 2023 - March 2024 has seen 766.8mm of rain. The only period to record more in a 9 month period since 1980 was June 2019 - February 2020 which saw 809.8mm. It then went bone dry after that though, with just 34.2mm in the next three months, which will not happen this time by the looks!

For reference, the annual 1991-2020 average here is 659.8mm.

Its worth noting the driest 9 month period is slap bang in between these two, which was November 2021 - July 2022 with just 293.6mm.

 

Edited March 31 by reef

[TwisterGirl81]

 reef we’ve had over 940mm of rain in Exeter since July. Our average yearly total is 829mm though we had been having many dryer years in the 700+ range so much so that I’d have expected at the next decades average we’d be in that rain ge rather then up in thr 800mm, it’s been a shock. Hopefully we have some moderately dry months from here on out and lots of sun!

Edited March 31 by TwisterGirl81

[Weather-history]

The sea level pressure anomaly chart since the start of September 2022 to current. 

 

 

Over 2000mm for the EWP in that  19 month period....and that includes a month (Feb 2023) that recorded only 16.5mm.    

Edited March 31 by Weather-history
.

[Scorcher]

 raz.org.rain I think anywhere from Manchester City Centre southwards should be considered in a separate category to the rest of the NW- especially in summer.

There's a massive difference even between places like Rochdale and say Altrincham or Wilmslow which are only about 20/25 miles apart.

Greater Manchester can be 25C+ at times in summer while places in Lancashire like Blackburn or Burnley are barely over 20C.

[WYorksWeather]

It's been a pretty pleasant weekend here - looks like we along with some southern coastal areas have had the best of what has (shock horror!) been 48 hours of dry weather. Fairly warm at times, plenty of breaks in the cloud. To feel really nice it'd have needed to be 3-4C warmer, but really not bad at all.

Of course, a bit of foreboding gloom as it got dark this evening, and we all know what is coming next.

Here is the GFS 12z accumulated rainfall chart this evening, through to mid April.

That would be absolutely horrific for a whole month total, let alone for the first half! Minimum 40mm everywhere, 70mm over the vast majority of the country, 100mm for the west, even 150mm possible for some. Absolutely dire throughout.

We have to hope this is overdone, surely. I mean it doesn't even matter what your weather preferences are at this point, even if you prefer cool and wet I can't imagine anybody could possibly want the level of flooding we'd likely see with a pattern like this.

[Summer8906]

 

This really is getting beyond a joke.

These synoptics have to end soon as I hate to think what will happen.

We are in really, really big trouble if this is the new normal for the UK. The country would probably collapse if we got prolonged spells of this kind of weather in the coming years, we have to hope that this is a 1963-like extreme aberration from the norm.

I will go so far now as to say this is the worst spell of weather of my entire remembered lifetime, going back to 1978.

And unless May is good I will declare "spring" 2024 as worst season of any name in my lifetime. At least in autumn and winter such conditions are not so ridiculously freakish and unseasonal. What we're seeing now seems as strange as 21c and sunny in Dec or snow to low levels in early July.

Edited March 31 by Summer8906

[Arctic Hare]

 WYorksWeather That legitimately frightens me. Unless we're incredibly lucky with the timing of rainfall events, that seems almost certain to bring yet another significant flood to Bewdley (which would be the *sixth* since autumn) and probably another 5 metre one. That's our unofficial yardstick for a severe flood. They're supposed to be rare. The last one was all the way back back in... January this year.

Going on my experience of this town, if that comes anywhere near to verifying then yes, you absolutely will be seeing a lot of pictures of severe flooding this April. What do we have to do to get out of this mess?