GET SET, SUMMER’S HERE?
After a topsy-turvy start to the gardening season featuring record highs nudging 30C in mid-April to the sight of fast bowlers wearing woolly hats as the temperature for the final day of the current round of county matches last Monday, barely rose above 5C, we look set fair for a significant improvement from today and through the May Bank Holiday weekend. Friday will feature some light rain and drizzle in the northwest, but after a cloudy start for many, sunshine will develop, and it will be warm away from coasts.
Saturday through to Monday, cloudy starts will give way to warm sunny spells for many. It will become very warm (25C) for some, however along the coast it will be cooler, perhaps with sea fog.
With the jet stream having moved north, the forecast is for the warm, dry and settled weather to continue for much of the week ahead.
IT’S GRIM DOWN SOUTH
Meteorologists believe summers will be drier in Scotland and northern England than in the south by the end of the century.
Long-term projections from the Met Office show rainfall reducing in some parts of the north by up to 50 per cent, but it could be more extreme with greater risk of flash flooding
But the modelling predicts whatever rainfall remains in the north will be more extreme than current weather, bringing greater risks of flash flooding.
The south on the other hand is set for increased summer showers, which will also grow more intense.
Expected changes are being attributed to global warming and the calculations are based on the premise that increasing levels of greenhouse levels will continue being emitted.
Much of northern Britain is likely to see wetter winters if the climate change goes unchecked.
Heavy storms are projected to become more frequent by the end of the 21st century, the study found.
THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
2 MAY 1740; This morning fell a great deal of snow, which has formed due to a hard frost’ so reported Edinburgh’s Caledonia Mercury. That winter became the yardstick for severity unequalled until 1963
3 MAY 1986: Across, Scotland, Cumbria and North Wales, the fear was that It’s raining strontium-90 and other possible radio-active fallout as a result of the Chernobyl power plant explosion the previous week. As a precaution, restrictions on the movement of sheep on more than 9000 farms are imposed.
7 MAY 2000: Known as the Bracknell Storm, 65mm of rain fell in one hour and hailstones measuring 1.5cm were measured. The 1961-90 average for the entire month is only 56 mm and this comes after the wettest April on record when Bracknell had over 3 times its normal rainfall amount.
QUOTE
Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Oscar Wilde
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