Monthly Archives: April 2020

History, London weather, UK climatology, Weather

Two warm April days 128 years apart

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The synoptic pattern on Sunday, April 5th, was very similar to the pattern on Tuesday, April 5th 1892.

With so few planes in the sky because of the coronavirus lockdown it offered an ideal opportunity to compare temperatures and sunshine totals between now and then.

Sunday dawned sunny and clear and stayed that way until dusk, some 11 hours of sunshine recorded, exactly the same as 1892!

The temperature in Wanstead reached 22.3C, 0.9C cooler than what was recorded at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in 1892. This maximum was reached after an overnight minima of 5.3C, the same as the 41.5F recorded at Greenwich all those years ago.

Looking further afield, and at the spell over 3 days… markmpcc

4th

5thww

6th

 

 

 

 

London snowfall, London weather, UK climatology, UK snowfall, Weather, weather pattern

London’s colder than average months

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Last November was on the cold side prompting me to investigate whether we were about to record a third month in a row below average. December turned out to be mild and wet, the lack of snow especially stark in Scotland.

The findings of that study showed that any sustained period of colder than average months was more likely to happen during months of March, April and May, nothing unusual there, especially considering H.H Lamb’s weather types.

I decided to scrutinise further all the colder than average months in this area, considering the 1981-2010 average, back to 1981. This gave the below results.

neg anoms

The dataset covers 399 months, of which 200 were colder than average.

The overall picture shows that negative anomalies are becoming more and more rare, though with notable exceptions being March 2013, December 2010 and January 2010.

The only month that has showed any sort of consistent general decrease in negative anomaly is November.

*For good snowfall at this station needs a negative anomaly of 2C during the months of November, December, January and February.