Another dry spell on the way for the UK
Despite a promising start to March, with the first week of the month bringing rain to all parts of the UK, the next week or so is looking largely dry – not welcome news for the areas suffering from drought.
On Monday, a band of rain brought a welcome 15-25mm of rain to the drought hit areas of central, eastern and southern England.
Parts of East Anglia had even more than this as the rain stalled and lingered for 36 hours. Norwich Airport had around 47mm of rain – the average amount of rainfall that would be expected for the whole of March.
Another spell of rain crossed the UK during Wednesday, but it didn’t deposit as much water because it moved through quickly, with most places seeing 2-7mm.
Wednesday’s wet weather may well have been the last spell of notable rain that most of us will see for at least the next week.
This is because an area of high pressure will build across the UK during the next few days, bringing another spell of dry weather. The high pressure will act as a block, deflecting rain bearing weather systems away from us.
A little rain may occasionally make it into Scotland and Northern Ireland, but even here it’s unlikely to amount to much.
Now you may be thinking that with high pressure across us there’ll be plenty of sunshine. However, this won’t necessarily be the case as there’ll be some old weather fronts trapped beneath it which could give quite a bit of cloud. If the cloud does break though, it’ll feel quite warm with temperatures reaching 13-17C during the next week.
Further afield, there’s another place that’s suffering from drought and on a scale much more severe than here in the UK.
Texas in the US has 50% or less of its average rainfall during the past 12 months, leaving the state in one of the worst droughts on record.
Image courtesy of NOAA showing US average rainfall over past year.
As of the end of February, around 67 per cent of the state fell into categories of drought considered severe, extreme or exceptional, with southern and western parts of Texas worst affected.
The lack of rainfall has, in part, been caused by La Nina, an ocean-atmosphere phenomenon which results in drier than normal conditions across south western parts of the US.
However, during the next five days, some intense rainfall is expected to fall across Texas, with some western parts of the state seeing 4-7 inches.
Image courtesy of NOAA showing forecast US rainfall (in inches) for next five days.
Given that thunderstorms will generate this rainfall, it could well fall in a relatively short space of time, with a risk of flash flooding. So although it will most certainly be welcome, it could well cause a few short-term problems.
You can of course stay up to date with the UK weather by visiting the Channel 4 Weather website and if you want to ask me any weather questions, you can contact me on Twitter – @liamdutton