In June we did mark Farm Safety Week (16th-20th July) by urging farmers to ‘look out and look up’ and not dice with death by staying safe around overhead power lines. Read more about our important safety message here.
Let’s find out if the sunshine will remain from MeteoGroup senior meteorologists Matt Dobson and George Goodfellow.
A look back
Last month when we looked back at June's weather, we noted that it had been a very dry month for the North West with temperatures well above normal for the time of year. It will probably not come as much of a surprise that most of July has seen this extremely dry and very warm weather continuing across the region (and across most of the UK too). It hasn’t been wall-to-wall sunshine though, and there have been a few wetter days. Temperatures have also dipped nearer to normal at times.
The first couple of weeks of July were very dry, with no rainfall at all recorded until the 12th, and the showers which moved through the region on the 12th and 13th were fairly hit and miss, with many places remaining dry. Grass became brown and tinder dry. Reservoir and river levels were also running well below normal. From Monday 16th onwards, the rest of the month saw occasional showers and a bit more cloud cover.
A similar pattern was seen with daily temperatures. Up until the 13th, the maximum temperature in the region was generally in the mid-to-high twenties Celsius. After the 13th, things became a little more variable, but there were some very warm days.
Apart from the high temperatures and drought, there was been no severe weather across North West for most of July. However, in the last few days of the month, the heat was swept away by a series of active fronts and low pressure areas that were flung across the UK by a potent jet stream. Welcome rainfall was recorded across all parts during the weekend of 28th and 29th. There were some isolated thunderstorms on Friday 27th, but the most violent storms developed on the eastern side of the Pennines, where giant hailstones, flash flooding and frequent lightning hit parts of Yorkshire.
A look ahead
It is quite unusual for the North West (and more widely over the UK) to experience three consecutive very warm and dry summer months. Of course, it does happen from time to time, as we saw in 1976, 1983 and more recently in 1995. These are often the summers we confine to the memory bank and dream about when we are enduring a cool and wet one, such as summer 2007 or 2012! August's weather tends to stick in the memory for many of us, as this is when the long summer school holidays occur and also when quite a few us take day trips or holidays in the UK.
This month, it does look as though the North West will see a more variable and changeable pattern of weather than we have been used to during the summer so far, with a succession of low pressure troughs and high pressure ridges moving from west to east over the UK. The high pressure areas will lead to some fine, dry and warm weather, with one of these on the way for the first weekend of the month (4th/5th). However, with the north Atlantic jet stream likely to be a little closer to northern UK than we have seen recently, then this will push occasional periods of cloud, rain, blustery winds and lower temperatures across the North West.
Overall, the month as a whole over the North West should still end up drier, warmer and less windy than average, but with less chance of sustained periods with no rainfall at all.
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