Weather-history

Pretty active this morning with hail showers

Some surprising stats for our region as regards to exceptionally wet Aprils. The wettest April on record is 1970, which is not a year I suspect many would choose if they had to guess. There have been only 6 years where at least 100mm was recorded and neither April 2000 nor 2012 reached that mark. For England and Wales as a whole, they are the two wettest Aprils on record. Two that did get to the 100mm mark were surprisingly April 1947 and 1949. Another surprise is that April 2005 was almost as wet as April 2012. Got to say I don't recall much about April 2005 apart from that very short wintry interlude at the end of the first week.

A short-eared owl on Chat Moss, a number of them decided to winter on the Moss.

26 years ago, the heaviest snow I have seen during April.

The two thing that stood out for me from that summer of 2009 were the amazing noctilucent cloud displays and the volcanic sunsets. Both visually beautiful. Funny old summer, it wasn't brilliant but IMO, better overall than its two predecessors.

The current regional rainfall total is ridiculous for April. We are not even halfway through April and we are already in the top 40 wettest Aprils on record for the region after just 11 days. April is one of the driest months of the year on average for our region.

Tipping it down!

Countryfile gave its summary of summer 2002

Believe it or not, the period July 2023 - to now, is wetter than the whole of last year and last year was the 6th wettest year on record for the region...

Got to say I don't recall this event but it looked very potent for the time of the year

Already a wetter than average April for the region. Hopefully this washout period will be coming to an end soon.

Rain Lady https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/monthly/HadNWEP_monthly_totals.txt

Rain Lady I’m using the Met Office’s own regional divisions as you then compare with previous years.

The grim stats 1264.5mm since the start of July last year until the 4th April for the region. There were only 8 years that were wetter than this for the region. Just 8 years and that is a 12 month period.