Sunday 3rd May
The warm sunshine on Saturday lifted the temperature to a high of 20.4C at 14.40, being 3.1C above average. From early afternoon the cloud began to thicken ahead of a small depression arriving from the south that produced the first spots of rain at 15.45 and more consistent, but light rain, from 16.30 for around an hour. Around midday the rain radar showed a very angry area of red, indicating heavy rain moving north, but as the weather front crossed the coast, sadly for gardeners and farmers, the front began to thin and break up as it crossed our area resulting in just 3.4mm ot precipitation. This was useful too wash dust out of the air and refresh the surface of plants, but sadly not enough to get down to the roots of crops. Much more rain fell to the west and east of our area, a pattern I have seen before under these conditions. The low of 10.4C was 3.4C above average, a mild night.
Sunday was cloudy at first but just after 08.00 the sun began to break through the cloud as the residual cloud began to move away. The barometric pressure at 08.00 read 1009.9mb as the centre of the depression crossed the UK, the lowest pressure since 12th April. The rain radar at 08.30 indicated a disturbed area of heavy rain over Brittany heading northeastwards, that just might, on it western edge, bring shower activity this afternoon, but it is too far off to accurately predict its exact track over the UK. The sun is likely to disappear towards midday as cloud builds again from a disturbed area heading northwards us from France. The Met Office forecast light showers arriving mid afternoon, however, the BBC weather forecast using the Met Office data, predict thundery showers, that are usually hit and miss over an area.
The next couple of days will bring unsettled weather with an Atlantic flow of air thus sunshine and a few showers, hopefully. By late on Monday the low pressure will have emigrated to Scandinavia and allow a high pressure system to edge in from the Atlantic. This will once again see the wind arrive from the north, later on Monday, being a cooler direction will mean the coming week will see temperatures around our possibly below the early May average. By Thursday there will be an easterly component to the wind direction, thus continuing cool but thankfully, at the moment, the surface pressure charts do not indicate strong winds as last week.