Jump to content
Snow?
Local
Radar
Cold?
IGNORED

Driest, Warmest And Sunniest Place In The Uk


Alex

Recommended Posts

Posted
  • Location: Chelmsford
  • Weather Preferences: Hot and dry summers with big thunderstorms.
  • Location: Chelmsford

I'm interested to know which places are the above

My guess is warmest: Central London

Driest: Essex

Sunniest: South coast somewhere

Please can ppl confirm these.

Also interested to know which place has best combination of all 3?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Near Heathrow, London
  • Weather Preferences: Mediterranean climates (Valencia is perfect)
  • Location: Near Heathrow, London

The area which i live in (near Heathrow, SW London) is probably the warmest part of the UK or somewhere near here in London, except during winter. It's pretty much the only part of the UK where in the summer you are guaranteed warm weather (not sun or dryness though) Most days in summer are from 21-25C and it rarely falls below 20C during what I call high summer - July to mid August. I think I read on another weather website UKWW that in the new 81-2010 averages for Heathrow, the average July max is now about 23.6C or so which is defintely the highest in the country. This area also regularly records the warmest temperatures during hot spells, and averages 4 30C days a year.

My guess for the driest is also somewhere in the south east, most likely in Essex somewhere. Most areas down here average about 600mm a year so somewhere around here is a good bet! Also for sun I would reckon somewhere on the south coast, probably near the Portsmouth area?

Sometimes the UK can be two totally different places as you go from NW to SE in summer, it is actually quite a difference in just a few hundred miles, the July mean in London is near to 19C, but probably a good 3C cooler in NW areas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire

The Met Office's mapped averages are a good source for this sort of question:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/ukmapavge.html

Warmest- Central London

Driest- Essex/Cambridgeshire

Sunniest- The south coast of the SE, I think Eastbourne and Hastings must be very strong contenders. If you include places off the UK mainland then Jersey is the sunniest.

It is difficult to find a hotspot that combines the three because within south-east England (the driest and sunniest region) sunshine and rainfall totals at individual locations are actually positively correlated, with the south coast being much wetter and sunnier than areas further inland. Central London has to be top for the combination of heat and dryness but sunshine wise it isn't actually much sunnier than the Tyne and Wear coast for example, due to its inland location and urban influences which increase the overall amount of cloud cover.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Truro, Cornwall
  • Weather Preferences: Winter - Heavy Snow Summer - Hot with Night time Thunderstorms
  • Location: Truro, Cornwall

Lol i knew rob the fool would post in here. :lol:

Here can be very dry at times and probably isnt far off SE levels most of the time. In terms of this region around here and through the Severn valley area tend to be the warmest.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Edmonton Alberta(via Chelmsford, Exeter & Calgary)
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine and 15-25c
  • Location: Edmonton Alberta(via Chelmsford, Exeter & Calgary)

The area which i live in (near Heathrow, SW London) is probably the warmest part of the UK or somewhere near here in London, except during winter. It's pretty much the only part of the UK where in the summer you are guaranteed warm weather (not sun or dryness though) Most days in summer are from 21-25C and it rarely falls below 20C during what I call high summer - July to mid August. I think I read on another weather website UKWW that in the new 81-2010 averages for Heathrow, the average July max is now about 23.6C or so which is defintely the highest in the country. This area also regularly records the warmest temperatures during hot spells, and averages 4 30C days a year.

i would agree with this..i was living in Ruislip before moving to Canada..i also grew up in essex and is usually fairly dry compared to other parts of the UK

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Shrewsbury
  • Location: Shrewsbury

Lol i knew rob the fool would post in here. :lol:

Here can be very dry at times and probably isnt far off SE levels most of the time. In terms of this region around here and through the Severn valley area tend to be the warmest.

The lower Severn Valley to be precise- Worcester/Gloucester as well as the Wye valley around Hereford/Ross always seem so much warmer and sunnier than here in summer (compare Ross on Wye and Shawbury on the Metoffice historic data page). I've often wondered where in the UK has pretty dependable warm, dry sunny summers and does well for snow in winter? The Chilterns maybe, or the higher parts of Kent?

The sunniest spots often seem to be the western half of the south coast (Torquay, Weymouth etc), but the warmest temp in summer is invariably in Londonshire nowadays. Looking at the yearly max temps on Trevor Harley's site it's clear that since 1990 it's been nigh on impossible to see the top reading outside the SE, whereas before it sometimes was in the Midlands, Yorkshire, even Scotland and Wales a few times.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire

I've often wondered where in the UK has pretty dependable warm, dry sunny summers and does well for snow in winter? The Chilterns maybe, or the higher parts of Kent?

It's difficult to say because winter snow tends not to be reliable other than in parts of Scotland and north-east England, and those regions are not among the UK's sunniest. Norwich for instance has pretty dependable warm dry sunny summers, plenty of thunder activity to go with them, and on average it has fairly snowy winters, but it isn't reliable for snow (in some winters, such as 1998/99 and 1999/00, it ranks among England's snowiest cities, while in others, such as 2006/07 and, ahem, 2010/11, it keeps ending up too far north/south/east for everything). Personally I prefer to have the knowledge that even a mild winter will typically have at least one decent fall (as is true of Tyne and Wear) but where do you get that and get good summers? I think you'd have to move to the continent.

In contrast, for the "traditional" preference of mild moist (but not extortionately wet) frost-free and snow-free winters and warm dry sunny summers with a low frequency of thunder, it's quite easy to find a hotspot- somewhere around Southampton maybe (Plymouth is rather wet in winter, while Hastings gets lots of snow from easterlies and has thundery summers).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Cleeve, North Somerset
  • Weather Preferences: Continental winters & summers.
  • Location: Cleeve, North Somerset

Bristol must have some of the most interesting and varied summers in the country, being in the southern half of the country, but to the west of it. It ranks as quite a sunny city and somewhere half way between the wettest and driest places. Bristol also does well for thunder in rPm spells from the SW (06/7/08, 24/7/08) and hot spells from the SE (24/6/05, 28/6/05) and ESE (25/6/09, 09/5/08) and occasionally ENE (10/5/06) but not so from the S interestingly.

Snow-wise, Bristol is either perfect, a near miss or miles away. From the east, unless it's a real beasterly, we don't get much snow (in the first spell of cold in early December, the snow Bristol got was about 1cm when the winds turned northerly for a day); but we do often end up colder than the E with air having travelled across the country. From the S, it all depends on how far the precipitation gets, ideally a SE-NW alignment is favoured and we can end up with loads. Alternatively, the cleanest snowfalls (a la 17th Dec 2010) come from the NNW-WNW. NErlies aren't great here.

So a varied city is Bristol. We can either have great summers for storms or terrible depending on the dominating weather pattern.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Derbyshire Peak District. 290 mts a.s.l.
  • Weather Preferences: Anything extreme
  • Location: Derbyshire Peak District. 290 mts a.s.l.

Based on the 1941-70 averages, and assuming if temperatures have increased they have done so proportionally, the warmest place in mainland Britain is somewhere around Penzance which had a mean annual temp' of 11.3c, this is 0.3c higher than the annual mean at St James's Park, London.

With regard to the mean annual maximum then St James's Park and Kensington Palace tie on 14.5c, compared to 14.2c at Penzance.

If we include the islands then The Scilly Isles have an annual mean of 11.6c but Jersey is warmest of all at 11.9c with a mean annual max' of 14.5c, the same as central London.

With regard to sunshine then Dunbar in south east Scotland has a remarkably high average of 1514 hrs, almost 300 hours more than areas around Glasgow but generally 250 hours less than coastal areas of south east England.

Folkestone has an average of 1749 hrs and Margate around 1620.

The highest totals on mainland Britain are on the coast of Sussex and Hampshire down to east Devon. Brighton has an annual average of 1747 hrs and Hastings 1739 hrs but Eastbourne is top of the shop with 1841 hrs.

Ryde on the Isle of Wight has an average of 1760 hrs and Ventnor, 1829 hrs, similar to that at Brighton and Eastbourne, but Shanklin is sunniest of all with 1907hrs.

Shanklin is second only to Jersey which has an annual mean of 1941 hrs.

For comparison Teignmouth records 1713 hrs, Torbay, 1760 hrs, and the Isles of Scilly, 1841 hrs.

Edited by Terminal Moraine
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Skirlaugh, East Yorkshire
  • Location: Skirlaugh, East Yorkshire

Based on the 1941-70 averages, and assuming if temperatures have increased they have done so proportionally, the warmest place in mainland Britain is somewhere around Penzance which had a mean annual temp' of 11.3c, this is 0.3c higher than the annual mean at St James's Park, London.

With regard to the mean annual maximum then St James's Park and Kensington Palace tie on 14.5c, compared to 14.2c at Penzance.

If we include the islands then The Scilly Isles have an annual mean of 11.6c but Jersey is warmest of all at 11.9c with a mean annual max' of 14.5c, the same as central London.

With regard to sunshine then Dunbar in south east Scotland has a remarkably high average of 1514 hrs, almost 300 hours more than areas around Glasgow but generally 250 hours less than coastal areas of south east England.

Folkestone has an average of 1749 hrs and Margate around 1620.

The highest totals on mainland Britain are on the coast of Sussex and Hampshire down to east Devon. Brighton has an annual average of 1747 hrs and Hastings 1739 hrs but Eastbourne is top of the shop with 1841 hrs.

Ryde on the Isle of Wight has an average of 1760 hrs and Ventnor, 1829 hrs, similar to that at Brighton and Eastbourne, but Shanklin is sunniest of all with 1907hrs.

Shanklin is second only to Jersey which has an annual mean of 1941 hrs.

For comparison Teignmouth records 1713 hrs, Torbay, 1760 hrs, and the Isles of Scilly, 1841 hrs.

When you compare the 1961-1990 and 1971-2000 averages on the Metoffice climate pages, London has warmed pretty rapidly in recent times compared to parts of the south-west. I think the urban heat island effect has more than offset that 0.3C difference:

1961-1990:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/6190_1km/MeanTemp_Average_1961-1990_17.gif

1971-2000:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/7100_1km/MeanTemp_Average_1971-2000_17.gif

Its interesting if you compare the two average charts for rainfall and sunshine too. On average its got slightly sunnier nationwide but also marginally wetter with more days of >10mm of rainfall and less with lighter rain.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Shrewsbury
  • Location: Shrewsbury

It's difficult to say because winter snow tends not to be reliable other than in parts of Scotland and north-east England, and those regions are not among the UK's sunniest. Norwich for instance has pretty dependable warm dry sunny summers, plenty of thunder activity to go with them, and on average it has fairly snowy winters, but it isn't reliable for snow (in some winters, such as 1998/99 and 1999/00, it ranks among England's snowiest cities, while in others, such as 2006/07 and, ahem, 2010/11, it keeps ending up too far north/south/east for everything). Personally I prefer to have the knowledge that even a mild winter will typically have at least one decent fall (as is true of Tyne and Wear) but where do you get that and get good summers? I think you'd have to move to the continent.

Looking at some stats, even the highest parts of the SE seem not to be guaranteed snow every single winter (Whipsnade had no snow lying in 1989/90 or 1991/2; did anywhere in southern/central England have any in 1991/2?).

It seems you need an altitude of at least 1000' to be guaranteed at least one day of lying snow every winter in the southern half of Britain, yet the eastern part that has recently hogged the best summer weather nowhere reaches that. As there seems to be a secondary centre of warmth around the lower Severn/Wye valleys which can sneak onto the right side of those SE/rest divides (how much warmer and sunnier it it in Hereford/Worcester/Gloucester than here in summer, and all the high temps at Cheltenham), I think the best place for reliable winter snow/summer sunshine and warmth might be some of the higher ground near here, like the very top of the Cotswolds, or the easternmost slopes of the Black Mountains.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Motherwell, Lanarkshire
  • Location: Motherwell, Lanarkshire

[quote name='Summer of 95' I think the best place for reliable winter snow/summer sunshine and warmth might be some of the higher ground near here, like the very top of the Cotswolds, or the easternmost slopes of the Black Mountains.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Shrewsbury
  • Location: Shrewsbury

It might be stretching it a bit on the warmth stakes, but inland parts of the north-east of Scotland, particularly those which benefit most from the Fohn/rain shadow effects of the Cairngorms (Braemar, Aboyne etc) are usually good for reliable sunny and warm spells (a decent chance of some 27C-plus days) and have reliable snow in winter (average 56/59 lying annual snow lying days at Braemar/Balmoral)). The closest thing the British Isles have to a continental climate (although admittedly still not all that close!)

Statistically, I don't suppose its all that warm or dry really compared to southern England, but it seems that way if, like me, you're used to spending most of your working life in west central Scotland and your leisure time in the mountains/uplands!

The west/east contrasts across the Highlands can be amazing from what I've experienced, and seemingly can be relied upon. In 1996 I spent a week in the Cairngorms wearing shorts and getting sunburnt, while you could see the rainclouds out to the west. Yet in April 2003 I experienced temps in the mid 20s C in Fort William (in April!), when it was by all accounts wet and cold on the east Scottish coast. When you have a westerly or easterly wind, it seems like a case of "if you don't like the weather, travel 20 miles".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Derbyshire Peak District. 290 mts a.s.l.
  • Weather Preferences: Anything extreme
  • Location: Derbyshire Peak District. 290 mts a.s.l.

When you compare the 1961-1990 and 1971-2000 averages on the Metoffice climate pages, London has warmed pretty rapidly in recent times compared to parts of the south-west. I think the urban heat island effect has more than offset that 0.3C difference:

1961-1990:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/6190_1km/MeanTemp_Average_1961-1990_17.gif

1971-2000:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/7100_1km/MeanTemp_Average_1971-2000_17.gif

Its interesting if you compare the two average charts for rainfall and sunshine too. On average its got slightly sunnier nationwide but also marginally wetter with more days of >10mm of rainfall and less with lighter rain.

Interesting Reef, and I think you're right. I'll try and dig out some stat's for individual stations relating to a more recent 30 year average, all my detailed stuff relates to the 1940-70 average.

A comment on Summer of 95's post above is that the very top of the Cotswolds might be a bit too windy to really get the benefit of summer warmth, althought I suppose if the sunshine totals are high that might also counteract the wind.

I'd agree about 1000! being the lower limit for a guarantee of at least one day of lying snow in winter. The lowest number I've recorded in the last 48 years is 2 in 1997/98 and 3 in 2007/08, winter being counted as Dec'-Feb'.

Taking the entire winter season from October to May the lowest number is 6 in 1997/98 and the only others below 10 are 8 in 1991/92 and 2006/07 and 9 in 1992/93.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire
  • Weather Preferences: Sunshine, convective precipitation, snow, thunderstorms, "episodic" months.
  • Location: Lincoln, Lincolnshire

For those more used to cool cloudy climates parts of Yorkshire (e.g. Leeds, York, Sheffield etc) may come out rather well if it's warm dry sunny weather but fairly reliable winters for snow that you're after. The summers are certainly appreciably warmer and more thundery than is the norm anywhere in Scotland or Tyne & Wear/Northumberland/Durham, and sunnier than anywhere in those regions except coastal fringes. In addition those coastal fringes have the downside of more sunless days because on convective days coastal influences often keep the coast in the clear (which isn't necessarily a good thing if you're a convective storm enthusiast!), while when the winds are off the sea you often get low cloud, making sunshine more "all or nothing".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Posted
  • Location: just south of Doncaster, Sth Yorks
  • Location: just south of Doncaster, Sth Yorks

regarding your comments about the cities in parts of Yorks Ian, I suspect you are missing the days of nasty persistent flow off the North Sea for places like Sheffield. It seems to suffer almost as badly as Doncaster in that respect. Not sure about Leeds or York, they have more protection, to some extent, from the high ground to their east. NE flows are probably worst for those two but I am not sure about that.

Interesting posts from TM and Reef.

Edited by johnholmes
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...