Cumulus Support

With just 24 days remaining of 2020 it was interesting to note that my actual rainfall matched the average down to one hundredth of an inch up to midnight on 7th December. My rainfall has never been closer to average than this. Are other UK sites showing the same?

What a wonderful world !

Ray, what do you use for your mean values? A calculated mean from your station stats using a fixed number of years, or some met office regional values?

I have used met office values because when you start you obviously do not have any averages to work from, and have just kept using those.

That's exactly what I did Mark.

Although there isn't Met Office figures for here, I live right in between Swanage and Bournemouth - 10 miles either way. Both have Met Office observational sites. I took their temps, sun hours, rainfall data and created an average between the two. I use that average to pit my data against. It works very well!

A useful resource for this sort of thing is the climate section of the Met Office web site. Here you can find averages from various sites. There is also a section that contained maps of average data, which is useful if you don't live near a site that supplies climate data. To navigate to the maps:

• Click on "UK climate averages"
• Search for a site (any one will do)
• Select the "Average maps" tab

You can then select the climate variable, the averaging period (i.e 1981-2010), the period for display (i.e. month, season, year) and your region. You then have spatial climate data - albeit averaged between sites, but with allowances for topography, etc.

If I move to a new site I use these maps as a starting point and then make adjustments using any nearby sites, and topography.

Mark,

Sorry for the delay in replying. I used the data that Freddie linked to. Specifically...
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/c ... /gcqrqyr80

I selected Woodford 1981-2010. It’s only a couple of miles from me So is ideally placed. Pity it closed around 2013 or so.

Mapantz wrote: ↑Thu 10 Dec 2020 12:41 pm That's exactly what I did Mark.

Although there isn't Met Office figures for here, I live right in between Swanage and Bournemouth - 10 miles either way. Both have Met Office observational sites. I took their temps, sun hours, rainfall data and created an average between the two. I use that average to pit my data against. It works very well!

Your station has recorded nearly 10” above the average in 2020. That’s astonishing!

RayProudfoot wrote: ↑Thu 10 Dec 2020 10:46 pm Your station has recorded nearly 10” above the average in 2020. That’s astonishing!

Yep - Feb/Mar were exceptionally wet months down here, with lots of flooding. August saw nearly 5" of rain over the space of ten days. October then turned out to be the wettest month I had recorded.

December is now shaping up to be above average, with a lot of rain to come over the next week to ten days.

Mapantz, just goes to show how varied the weather is around this small island of ours.