On the meteorological calendar, we end winter today and commence spring tomorrow.
Winter 2015-16 will be remembered not for it’s cold and snow but warm and wet. The bulk of the warmth came during December, coinciding with the likely peaking of this years record tying El Nino which overwhelmed the entire hemispheric pattern.
Nov-Dec
Although January was warmer than normal, it was closer to the average, February cooler still and looks to be ending about average but the tremendous front end warmth set the tone for this winter overall.
Record warm winter for London Heathrow.
Despite a cooling trend mid and late winter, this winter looks to fall into 3rd place for UK warmest and was warmest on record for both England and Wales. This is because much of the ‘colder weather’ has been focused over Scotland.
In terms of rainfall, despite a new 24-hour rainfall record being set in Cumbria with tremendous flooding in parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire, it was Scotland who endured their wettest winter on record and it was a tie for the wettest in Northern Ireland.
From Met Office
Looking at the Central England Temperature (CET), the longest temperature record in the world, this winter’s figure of 7.0C currently makes it the warmest in the series (back to 1659), beating the previous record of 6.8C in 1868-69.
MO Stats
Early | Mean temperature (deg C) | Sunshine (hours) | Rainfall (mm) | |||
winter 2015/16 | Actual | Anomaly (81-10) | Actual | Anomaly (81-10) % | Actual | Anomaly (81-10) % |
UK | 5.6 | 1.8 | 137 | 87 | 515 | 156 |
England | 6.6 | 2.4 | 162 | 92 | 333 | 144 |
Wales | 6.4 | 2.2 | 127 | 79 | 757 | 174 |
Scotland | 3.7 | 1.0 | 101 | 78 | 756 | 161 |
Northern Ireland | 5.4 | 1.1 | 121 | 82 | 489 | 156 |
No doubt about it, it was warm this winter but it was warm back in 1868-69 also.
Scoring Forecast Against Reality
Winter forecast. Released back on Nov 1.
One aspect I would say I was most disappointed about with this year’s winter forecast was that I feel I likely overplayed the cold potential and underestimated the intensity and duration of warmth. I always feared the degree of influence from the El Nino but swayed colder for mid and late winter which was wrong. Yes it cooled but not as much as I had forecasted.
As we look towards March, it’s interesting to see the BBC and Met Office now mentioning the prospects of March being coldest with stratospheric warming influence. I’ve been mentioning this for over a week now…
See this morning’s video for more thoughts on how the winter went.
[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]
[/s2If][s2If current_user_cannot(access_s2member_level1)][magicactionbox id=”18716″][/s2If]
Recent Comments