The meteorological spring runs from March 1st to May 31st. The season coincides with a big transformation in the weather. At the start of the season cold periods are relatively frequent and March often brings more snow than December. However, very warm or even hot spells are possible in May.
Winter 2021/22 has been milder and drier than average so far. Overall UK rainfall totals for December were 90% of the average and the mean temperature of 5.3C is 1.1C above the 1991-2020 average. January has been dominated by high pressure so there have been long dry periods, particularly in southern and central regions.
At the moment the medium range computer models are suggesting that pressure will remain higher than average during the early part of February, although there are indications of things becoming somewhat more changeable at times.
Spring rainbow over Berkhamsted
Publicly available data from most of the seasonal models now covers the three month spring period.
M/A/M = March, April, May
The Climate Forecast System v2 is available on TWO. View the latest CFS v2 charts.
At this stage aggregated temperatures for March, April and May are considered more likely to be above average than below. The seasonal models do not show a clear signal for precipitation anomalies at this stage.
Tentative suggestions for the coming spring are:
1) Over the 3 month period temperatures are more likely to be above average than below
2) There is no clear signal for precipitation to deviate significantly from the 30 year average
It is worth noting that spring 2021 was quite cold overall. It brought the coldest April since 1989 and the coldest May since 1996. On the other hand the March mean temperature was 0.9C above the average. Since then most months have been warmer than the 30 year norm.
The TWO seasonal forecast will be updated to cover the spring months on February 28th.
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See the Model inventory for the full list of model charts and data