Thanks Gav for those updates.
One thing which has surprised me from the second half of this morning's spring update video was the fact that January of this year was listed only at number 16 in the list of driest Januaries on record.
I know that this is based on the records for England and Wales, and this does show that it wasn't actually quite as dry over that part of the world as what it was here, perhaps due to weather systems taking a much more southerly track on quite a number of occasions (which is something which we wouldn't really be expecting to see with the positive NAO which we have been consistently experiencing throughout this winter (that is something which would be more likely to happen with a negative NAO)).
I have studied the latest Met Office anomaly maps as compared against the 1981-2010 averages for rainfall, and this does indeed show virtually the whole of the UK (with the exception of the extreme north of Scotland) as being drier than average. What is interesting though is that the driest anomalies for that was once again concentrated right here in SE Scotland where I live. That is also borne out by the actual data which I have been reporting for here in Edinburgh on various other threads on this forum (such as the daily CC and monthly PW threads) which show that a total of just 10.2 mm of rain was recorded at Edinburgh Gogarbank during the whole of January, along with 12.2 mm at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh.
For what is actually the wettest month of the year on average according to the 1981-2010 averages, this shows that January was an extraordinarily dry month here. Edinburgh Gogarbank is a relatively new station compared to the one at the botanic gardens in Edinburgh (I think that it might only have been there since around 2005) and so, it was actually the driest January on record at that particular station. According to the official Met Office statistics for January which were also released at around the same time as those anomaly maps, the East of Scotland had its 4th January on record going all the way back to 1910.
So far, this month hasn't started off on a particularly wet note either despite the unsettled spell which we have been experiencing just recently which culminated with the presence of Storm Erik. Yet as a result of that unsettled spell, we have already had far more rain during this month so far than what we had during the whole of January so the fact that this hasn't been a particularly wet month either so far, shows just how dry January was in this part of the world.
Now, you have mentioned that things could get critical in terms of possible water shortages if there is another hot and dry summer this year which is preceded by a dry spring. However, I am assuming that you are basing that once again on the rainfall figures for England and Wales. Yet, the east of Scotland has been even harder hit by those more recent drier conditions than what England and Wales has as I have explained above.
On that note, here is the latest water scarcity report from SEPA which was produced on 25 January 2019. For months, these reports have been making it clear that an abundance of winter rainfall was crucial in terms of the groundwater levels being able to recover and yet, that all important much needed winter rainfall just hasn't happened. As a result of that, the warning risk for NE Scotland in particular, has now been raised fro its previous low level to medium.
Given that we have been hit much harder hit by the dry weather than England and wales, I would have thought that the situation might actually start to get more critical here well before that happens down south, so I'm wondering what your own thoughts on that might be.
Edited by user
10 February 2019 12:15:51
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Reason: Not specified
The north of Edinburgh, usually always missing out on snow events which occur not just within the rest of Scotland or the UK, but also within the rest of Edinburgh.