UK winter nowhere near a record breaker despite relentless rain and storms, says BBC

Credit: BBC

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While some parts of the country have had a very wet winter and significant flooding, others have actually been drier than normal, as Ben Rich explains. Blocking patterns in the jet stream again.
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If you have been hit by relentless rain and flooding this winter you might well be expecting the weather to have broken some records.

Provisional statistics from the Met Office show that is not the case, with rainfall so far this season, for the UK as a whole, just 9% above average overall – wet, but far from the wettest.

However those national figures mask some huge regional variations. Some parts of southern England are on course for their second-wettest winter on record, while much of north-west Scotland has been significantly drier than normal.

It is largely down to a blocked weather pattern that sent rain into the same parts of the country repeatedly for much of the winter and left others predominantly dry.

Relentless rain for some – but not all
Meteorological winter runs until the end of February – so there are still a couple of days of potential rainfall to count.

However, the Met Office has crunched the numbers up until 25 February and revealed that southern England has already had its seventh-wettest winter since records began in 1836.

That figure may change with more rain in the forecast for the end of the season.

England overall has had 35% more rainfall than it would expect in a typical winter, with Northern Ireland 25% wetter than normal and Wales 14% above its usual rainfall figure.

But Scotland has actually had 16% less rainfall than in a normal winter – despite some parts of the east being very wet indeed.

These variations in rainfall can largely be explained by a so-called blocked weather pattern which left our weather stuck in a rut for most of January and February.

The jet stream sent areas of low pressure spinning in from the Atlantic, but their progress was blocked by an area of high pressure that became slow-moving across Scandinavia.

Full article here.
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Image credit: BBC