The UK in April

Mike Hulme on last month’s weather

 

DAYTIME TEMPERATURES

Like 1998, April 2000 was a cool, wet month over the UK. With the exception of the far south-east, daytime temperatures failed to reach the monthly average and some western locations were more than 1ºC colder than average. The first half of April was particularly cold, with the 3rd and 4th failing to reach even mid-winter daytime temperatures. The month finished on a milder note and the nation-wide average of 15.7ºC on the 30th April was, by quite some way, the warmest day of 2000 so far. Despite this cool month, UK temperature during 2000 has been more than 1ºC above the long-term average

 

RAINFALL

An extremely wet month and in relative terms the wettest month since this Guardian climate summary started in 1988 with rainfall 126% above the average. The whole country was wet, but especially in the south and in north-east Scotland - the north-west of the country was generally only 20 to 50% wetter than usual. Folkestone and Ross-on-Wye recorded nearly four times their usual April rainfall! The rainfall was quite well distributed through the month and the only dry spell was the 5th to 10th.

 

SUNSHINE

Not surprisingly with a wet month, sunshine totals were disappointing - the first cloudier-than-average month in the UK for nearly a year. Only a few selected east coast locations and Northern Ireland were sunnier than usual. Nearly 10 hours of sunshine were recorded on the 6th, comfortably the sunniest day in the UK since last July. Lerwick enjoyed more sunshine in April than did Guernsey.

 

Dr Mike Hulme is a Research Climatologist at the University of East Anglia

(more details at web site: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~mikeh/)

 

April 2000: Cool and very wet

Daytime Temperature: 0.7°C below average; Rainfall: 126% above average; Sunshine: 9% below average.

[all average figures are based on the 1951-80 average]

Mean monthly extremes:

 

Warmest Guernsey 12.4°C

Sunniest Folkestone 184 hours sun

Wettest Ross-on-Wye 161mm

Coldest Lerwick 7.3°C

Cloudiest Kinloss 108 hours sun

Driest Anglesey 67mm