The Met Office has said that 2019 was ‘a year of extremes’ as it issued a summary of the year which ended ‘a decade of records.’
Dr Mark McCarthy, head of the Met Office’s National Climate Information Centre, commented, “2019 will be remembered as an exceptional year for weather records, as it is unusual to get both the UK summer and winter high temperature records within the same calendar year. But this continues a pattern of high-temperature records in the UK over the last few decades, as a result of our warming climate.”
Although January started cold, February saw the warmest winter and February day on record with 21.2 °C recorded at Kew Gardens. Although spring rainfall was particularly low, the situation changed dramatically in June when Lincolnshire received 230% of the rainfall expected for the month, compared with the average between 1981-2010. Leverton in Lincolnshire recorded 101.2 mm on 10th June.
Across Lincolnshire, the rainfall wasn’t sufficient to break the June county rainfall record of 181.9 mm in 2007, but with 128.9 mm it was in fourth place in a series stretching back to 1910. New records were set for two-day and three-day total rainfall in Lincolnshire on 10-11 and 10-12 June respectively.
July also saw the hottest day on record in the UK (38.7°C in Cambridge) while Cheshire and other parts of the north west saw up to double the normal level of rainfall. Overall 2019 has also been the 11th wettest year on record, and at a local level some counties had annual rainfall figures in the top five years.
Photo caption: Key temperature highlights for 2019
Photo source: Met Office