As forecast right here on markvoganweather.com, May is turning out to be a cool and wet month with the BBC and Met Office now confirming this. Impressively, Cardiff has seen 125mm of rain through the first 18 days. Their average is just 72mm and keep in mind that’s we’ve over 12 days remaining of May!

The 30 and even 90-day anomaly is now coming up and above normal for the W and NW UK/Ireland.

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This I believe is setting the tone to an overall cooler and wetter warm season, however it doesn’t mean that we won’t have a summer as I believe there will be spells of ridging and summer warmth. In fact that might not be too far away based on current model projections… but the current setup with high pressure to the SW always trying to push north and low pressure between Iceland and Norway always trying to push south, this is likely to be the battle we get this summer. A more typical summer pattern compared with the past two warm/dry July’s. The wet ground is likely to reduce summer maximums, especially over Northern Ireland, Scotland and the north of England by a good 4-5C off 2013 and 2014 values when we consistently saw 25+ with 30C being reached. A lot can be said for amount of water in the ground!

Highs on July 23, 2014

High & Low Battle For The Bank Holiday Weekend!

As for the upcoming bank holiday weekend, it looks to be one of mixed fortunes with high pressure strengthening to the west of Ireland while low pressure holds between Iceland and Norway, always trying to drop fronts into Scotland. This battle will continue. One day the high wins and another it’s the low with much of England and Wales fairing quite well since your closer to the high. For Northern Ireland, Scotland and northern England, fronts are never too far away unfortunately as we’ll continue to see through the rest of this work week.

GFS surface through the next 7 days (below). Through the rest of today into tomorrow, a cool NW wind will continue to push heavy, thundery cells SE over the UK during daylight hours (when instability is greatest). Local flooding possible within these localised but widespread downpours.

The atmosphere settled down Thursday (ridge builds) before another front sweeps SE Friday (low wins again) followed by further blustery, intense showers on a NW flow. Saturday sees the ridge throw it’s next punch…

The same fight continues into next week.

Break In The Cool & Wet On The Horizon?

I am keeping a close eyes on this pattern because although I believe the outlook is a cool and wet one, we can often get a break for say 5-7 days and the models are hinting at ridging building in off the Atlantic day 5-10 and beyond.

GFS ensemble 5-day mean 500mb height anomalies.

EPS control also sees a northward push of the storm track that could clear Scotland, bringing a welcome break from the persistent wind and shower activity.

This ridging trend may fail to materialise as it’s done so already this spring but I refuse to just say wet all the time as weather patterns even when overall cool/wet, never stay that way throughout. I shall be issuing my June outlook early next week but it looks like May has turned out quite well after an April that stayed drier than I thought it would.

See today’s video for a look at June and July.

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