UK weather: Flood fears remain after record rainfall in January
Why so wet?
Around January 17, a high-pressure blocking area developed in Scandinavia, and remains in place to this day.
This prevented areas of low pressure from moving out of the UK, so they became slow-moving, resulting in very wet weather, with south-westerly winds to the south of the UK and south-easterly winds to the north of the UK. This wind pattern is responsible for distributing rainfall.
It should be noted that it was not wet everywhere.
North-west England and western Scotland have had a drier than usual January, with parts of the Highlands recording just 1mm of rain so far this month.
The Scandinavian high pressure area will finally move away this week, allowing our weather to turn colder with some hill snow to the north later this week.
Our weather patterns next week will become more typical for this time of year as the Atlantic jet stream returns to the northwest of Scotland, rather than taking an unusual position near Morocco.
There will still be rain as we expect in winter, but some wetter weather will return to western Scotland. The rain will not be severe in eastern Scotland. In southwest England, it won’t rain every day, and there will be drier and sunnier days among our weather systems.
As we approach the end of February, there are hints that a high pressure area may be visiting our shores, bringing about more stable weather conditions. It’s a long way to go, but it’s the least we deserve given how humid and wet these past weeks have been.
