It's raining again

Tomorrow is St Swithun's Day (and my mum's birthday) and the British weather lore proverb says that if it rains on Saint Swithun's day, 15 July, it will rain for 40 days. I can assume that most of us in Britain are praying for a dry 15th July this year then.

Back in March we saw a total precipitation of 36.4mm of rain and 156.5 hours of sunshine across the month. It was also the fifth driest and third sunniest March on record.

 

So what has happened to the British weather since then! 

April 2012 was the coldest April since 1989 and the wettest since 2000. The increase in rainfall from March was a hugh difference; there have only been three wetter Aprils in 285 years of records in England and Wales.  

May ended up being an average month overall, the temperatures, rainfall and sunshine all near normal. However, it wasn't really normal as it was chilly through the first half of the month, unusually dull in the south and east for three weeks. It was only in the last ten days it turned abnormally warm and often sunny, and some high temperature records were broken.

As for June, it was the second wettest June since 1910 and the Met Office confirmed it had been the wettest April to June period in the UK since 1910. 

We're still in July and I am sure most of us have not seen any improvement, the rain still keeps falling. Some areas have massive floods, and we are being warned, at least in the South, to expect heavy storms, which seems ridiculous in our mid summer. 

Forecasters tell us it's the jet stream which is causing all this bad weather at present.

A jet stream, stuck in a rut, is often the cause of prolonged periods of similar weather conditions in the UK - ranging from exceptional sun and heat right through to long hard Winters like 1962-3.

The weather's onslaught on Britain this month is the result of a sluggish jet stream, a series of areas of low pressure and the time of year.

The cause of this is sluggish jet stream is thought to be because of the very hot temperatures in the USA (which have caused very serious wildfires this summer).  Normally you'd expect a hurricane to knock the jet stream back north in the USA – but this hasn't happened, it has been a very quiet start to their hurricane season.  The reason for this?  Weather scientists think that El Nino might be building in the Pacific, which in turn causes lower sea temperatures in the Atlantic.

Its all very complicated – can we expect a change soon – predictions say NO!

 

Please don't rain tomorrow.

Update:  Well it didn't rain here on St Swithun's Day so no rain for 40 days & 40 nights - probably just get it for 39 days instead :o/