UK weather: Flooding concerns remain after record January rain

Why so wet?

Around 17 January a blocking area of high pressure developed in Scandinavia and it’s still there to this day.

This has prevented areas of low pressure from moving beyond the UK, so they’ve become slow-moving, bringing very wet weather, with south-west winds to the south of the UK and south-easterly winds to the north of the UK. This wind pattern is responsible for the distribution of rain.

It’s worth pointing out that it hasn’t been wet everywhere.

North-west England and west Scotland had a much drier January than normal, and parts of the Highlands have only recorded 1mm of rain so far this month.

The Scandinavian blocking area of high pressure is finally going to budge this week, allowing our weather to turn colder with some hill snow in the north later this week.

Next week our weather patterns will become more typical for the time of year with the Atlantic jet stream returning to the north-west of Scotland, rather than taking an unusual position near Morocco.

There will still be rain around as we’d expect in winter, but some of the wettest weather will return to west Scotland. The rain won’t be as extreme in east Scotland. In the southwest of England, it won’t rain every single day, there will be drier and sunnier days between our weather systems.

Heading towards the end of February, there are hints that an area of high pressure may visit our shores, bringing some more settled weather conditions. It’s a long way off, but it’s the least we deserve given just how wet and dull it’s been over recent weeks.