Little rain on the horizon for many, as high pressure continues to rule, with April likely to end of up very dry away from the far west. This blog looks at how April has become drier over recent years.
There has been a large contrast in rainfall across the UK this month, SW England and SW Wales have been particularly wet, but other parts of England, more particularly the Midlands and eastern England have been very dry.
It is a well-known piece of weather lore that showers are associated with the month of April, but they have been distinctly absent from many areas. What rain there has been has fallen from slow-moving frontal systems across the west - which have brought the high rainfall totals across Ireland and parts of SW England, Wales, Cumbria and SW Scotland. Away from here, the weather further east has been heavily influenced by areas of high pressure (anticyclones) this month and this doesn’t look to change for the rest of the month and into early May.
High pressure looks to remain in control of UK weather for the rest of the month and into early May
An Atlantic frontal system bringing rain to Ireland today will try and make inroads across mainland UK on Saturday, but will stall and weaken across the west as it bumps into higher pressure close to the east, with rain fizzling out. Then as we head into next week, an upper trough will disrupt to the west of Europe, as it comes up against upper level high pressure over Europe. A cut-off low drops southeast into Iberia as a result, allow high pressure to extend west across the UK, ensuring a dry week for most. High pressure looks to move west or northwest of the UK beyond next week, perhaps bringing cooler air down from the north, but may be close enough to keep many dry.
Dry over the next 7 days
April is the driest month of the year for England on average and, since 2007, the UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark and the Baltic states all saw drier than average weather in April overall. Before 2007, dry and warm weather did indeed occur in some April months, but these events tended to be occasional rather than running over successive years.
In 2007, the average England and Wales rainfall was 13.2 mm, just 18% of the average. Since then: 2009 was wet in the west and dry in the east (like this month); 2010 was also very dry and sunny for England & Wales; 2011 very dry and sunny, also warmest April on record; 2013 England & Wales saw 57% of average rainfall; 2015 England & Wales saw just 29% of average rainfall; 2017 the UK was dry overall - with just 48% of the average, eastern Scotland particularly dry; 2019 was drier than average overall for the UK; 2020 sunniest April on record and also dry, with 40% of the average; 2021 very cold and dry with just with 33% of average rainfall; 2022 dry with 68% of the average rainfall.
2023 and 2024 bucked the trend, the former saw close to average rainfall and the latter was wetter than average, with the UK seeing 155% of the average rainfall, Scotland & northern England wettest, Edinburgh area seeing close to 200% of the average.
Dry conditions in spring across parts of Europe have been linked to a worsening of summer droughts since 2007. In April, if there is little rainfall to add moisture to the ground, then evapotranspiration of moisture from the ground from the warmth of the stronger sun tends to exceed rainfall input of moisture, so the ground can quickly start to dry out. Typically, over the last 140 years, droughts in Europe have been features of late summer or early autumn. However, since 2007, these have been exacerbated by a dry spring as well.
Blocking regimes continue to dominate over the Euro-Atlantic region in the ECWMF extended range forecast
In recent years, notably warm and dry April conditions were found to be heavily influenced by the persistence of a blocking anticyclone over the North Sea and Central Europe - as has been the case this month. These blocks interrupt the normal westerly flow which is usually accompanied by areas of low pressure moving off the Atlantic - bringing rain. But instead, these low pressure systems are pushed further north to the north of Scotland or further south across Iberia - which has had a very wet spring so far. Such a pattern is typical of a North Atlantic Oscillation Index that is often negative. Research has shown that the decrease in westerly flows with Atlantic depressions moving east across NW Europe could be linked to a reduction in the temperature difference between the high latitudes and the Tropics, which is associated with recent Arctic warming and a reduction in sea ice.
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