Do you ever remember what the sun looks like at this point? (Picture: Metro.co.uk)
It’s hard to remember the last time we left the house without an umbrella – or kicked ourselves for forgetting it.
After a weekend of yellow warnings for 80mm of rain and 60mph slamming southwest England and Wales, more are in place today and tomorrow.
The rain alert for tomorrow covers a patch of the northeast Midlands and east and northeast England, with the region set to be soaked by 80mm of rain.
And this all comes after even more were issued earlier last week.
So the question on everybody’s minds is a simple one: Is it ever going to stop raining? Before you read on, a casual reminder that this is talking about the UK.
Why is it raining so much?
‘It’s the luck of the natural weather draw,’ says Jim N R Dale, a senior meteorologist at the British Weather Services, the nation’s oldest independent meteorological company. ‘I.e, low pressure as opposed to high pressure.’
‘Pressure’ doesn’t mean the clouds are being peer-pressured to dump rain on us.
The atmosphere above your head exerts pressure on the Earth’s surface and when the air is warmed up, it begins to ascend and leads to low pressure below. When the air cools, it sinks, leading to high pressure.
Low pressure often brings miserable weather as warmer air holds more moisture. As it rises, it forms clouds which can soak it all up like fluffy sponges.
There’s been a large low-pressure system out in the southern North Sea for some time. The jetstream, a band of strong winds blowing from west to east about 30,000 feet from the ground, isn’t helping either, explains Jo Farrow, a forecaster with the independent weather service NetWeather.
‘Mid-September wasn’t too bad but this past week has been very wet,’ she says.
These swirly of red, orange and yellow represent the jetstream today (Picture: NetWeather)
‘The jetstream has moved about a fair bit this month but this week it has been just to the south of Britain with low pressures taking their time to move by.
‘Whenever weather systems get stuck or are slow moving we might see severe weather.’
When will it stop raining?
Sadly, forecasting the weather is easier said than done. An astronomer can predict the path of planets for centuries to come as the sun’s brawny gravitational pull makes it easy-ish to predict.
Weather, on the other hand, doesn’t have a cut-and-dry way of being anticipated (no pun intended). As the Earth wobbles and slingshots around the sun, all while the moon lurks just behind it, the planet’s atmosphere becomes a massive mess of wind, rain, air pressures and temperatures.
In other words, none of the forecasters Metro spoke with could say with 100% accuracy when it’ll stop raining – but they do have a decent idea when.
‘A high pressure will build over the UK midweek,’ explains Farrow. ‘This will help clear away Monday’s rain, although taking its time on Tuesday from eastern England.’
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Source:: Metro
