When Will It Rain Again?Added : Sunday at 12:25 This is a very common question coming into Metcheck HQ at the moment, especially from growers and farmers. The October 2016-March 2017 period has been the driest winter period for 20 years, with April and early May doing nothing to improve the rainfall situation.
May is traditionally one of the driest months of the year as high pressure often sets up home close to or the north of the UK feeding in chilly but mainly dry east or north-easterly winds and this year has been no exception so far with today's synoptic chart demonstrating nicely this exact situation:
Now some of you may say "hold on a second MetchecK, there's weather fronts over the country" and indeed there are. However these are very weak affairs bringing little more than persistent cloud cover, as demonstrated by this morning's satellite and radar images:
The coming week will see some changes as that high to the north weakens and low pressure begins to encroach from the southwest. The start of the week sees those rather cool north-easterly winds continuing to feed in:
However by Tuesday those winds ease as the high pressure ridge slips a little further south. Meanwhile a large area of low pressure is sitting away to our southwest:
The ridge of high pressure keeps many places settled on Wednesday and into Thursday, but by late Thursday low pressure is beginning to push up from the south with easterly winds picking up ahead of this system:
Very little rain until Thursday at the earliest then for most parts of Britain and Ireland, but model output does show some rain pushing northwards into southern Britain during Thursday night into Friday, although nothing particularly heavy is indicated:
This does potentially take us into a more changeable pattern of weather for next weekend with showers or longer spells of rain circulating around low pressure to our west or northwest, so there may be some relief on the way although whether rainfall amounts will be great enough to ease the drought worries is another matter altogether:
Another mainly dry week coming up for many parts of the country then but later in the week there is an increasing risk of some showers or rain spreading up from the south - we will have more details on this as the week goes by.
METEOROLOGIST: BARBER |