June 2008

May statistics and summer blog.

May this year can be classed as average with no big surprises. It was however, much better than last year when almost monsoon conditions led to endless rain. This year May produced 70.6mm of rain at Cwmparc, compared with 175.5mm May 2007.

A quick look at the charts show things as to be expected with May being the warmest, overall the calmest, and the driest of the year to date. The hottest day of the year was also marked with a maximum temperature of 27.4C on the 11th. May this year were also 0.8C warmer on average to last May. The coolest night time temperature of 3C was recorded on 19th. There were no days with a maximum daytime temperature below 10C although May 16 only struggled up to 10.4C. There were ten days when a temperature of 21C or greater were recorded through the month. No air frost were recorded.

Strong sunshine hours showed on the graph as 68 hours. This cannot be compared to last year at Cwmparc station as this ability was only added April this year. However, with the amount of rain that fell in May 2007 I suspect that on the whole this past month were sunnier than last year.

What has been apparent this year is the abundance of Thunderstorms in Wales compared with the last decade. My view is this is a shift of pattern caused by a general cooling of the Earth as a whole. The cooling is continuing and this past few weeks some cold records have been broken in the Southern Hemisphere - where of course they are just entering winter. Hobart in Australia recorded record cold night temperatures during May of minus 6C, although things have warmed up somewhat since then. More records are in my mind waiting to be broken, and these will be reported on this blog.

Closer to home I would expect this summer to be much more like what I would call 'the summers of old'. Summers in the 60's and 70's were often as now, with warm spells followed by short rainy periods, and punctuated with humid warm to hot weather that were often broken by violent thunderstorms. With this in mind, and mindful of the present cooling I predict a mixed summer, with plenty of warm weather, but also with plenty of heavy showers or thunderstorms. With this mix I would also expect a heatwave or two through the summer with temperatures rising to 27C or above for several days in a row, but when this happens expect the ending to be with a bang and flash as thunderstorms break the heatwave. This does though give the added problems of flash flooding occuring in places through the summer.

As ever I am watching the weather being experienced worldwide, and where a story breaks, be it warming, or cooling, you will find a mention of it on this blog.