UK weather: Flooding concerns remain after record January rain
Why is it so wet?
A blocking area of high pressure formed in Scandinavia around January 17th and is still there to this day.
This prevented low pressure areas from moving beyond the UK, so they began to move slowly, bringing very wet weather with south-wet winds to the south of the UK and south-easterly winds to the north of the UK. This wind pattern is responsible for the distribution of rain.
It is worth noting that not everything gets wet.
Northwest England and western Scotland have been much drier than usual in January, with parts of the Highlands recording just 1mm of rain so far this month.
Scandinavia’s high pressure blocking area will finally move this week, allowing our weather to cool down further with some snowfall in the north later this week.
Next week our weather patterns will become more typical of certain times of year, with the Atlantic jet stream turning to the north-west of Scotland rather than taking up an unusual position near Morocco.
There will still be rain around as we expect in winter, but some of the wettest weather will return to western Scotland. The rain will not be as heavy in eastern Scotland. It won’t rain every day in the south west of England, there will be drier, sunnier days between our weather systems.
There are hints that a high pressure area may come to our shores towards the end of February and weather conditions may calm down a little. It’s a long way off, but considering how wet and boring it’s been in recent weeks, we at least deserve it.
