The Grand National And The Boat Race

The April event season begins tomorrow with the three day Grand National meeting at Aintree, and the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race takes place at 5.55pm on Sunday.  So, what does the weather have in store?

The Grand National opening day looks like having a bit of a damp start as showers, maybe with some thunder and hail mixed in arrive tonight, and will continue to linger close to Aintree tomorrow, so showers, again potentially thundery, are possible during the afternoon and into Friday morning.  Ladies Day offers a glimmer of brightness as the day goes on, once the early rain clears it should be a reasonable day and improve into the afternoon though it will feel a little chillier at around 12-14c.  

Which brings us to the main event - the Crabbies Grand National - and it's looking like a slightly chilly, damp day with temperatures around 10-12c, but feeling cooler in any showers and a southerly breeze.  In total we're looking at around 10mm of rain between now and the race, though if a storm does arrive this could increase - it's probably not enough to drastically affect the going which is currently good to soft on the National course, but any stubborn showers on Saturday might soften it up a bit more.

The latest Aintree forecast can be found here

On to the BNY Mellon Boat Race, and while the rain isn't so important the wind can come into play, but Sunday looks like it'll have a southwesterly breeze so it shouldn't create too many issues.  For the spectators it does look like it'll remain dry and reasonably mild on the latest data - but it's still a few days away so plenty of time for things to develop weather wise.  A central forecast for Chiswick can be found here.

picture credit : By davehighbury (DAVID HOLT) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/zongo/2131504879/) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons