Summer’s arrival may feel more like winter’s chill
WELCOME to British Summer Time! The clocks may have gone forward by an hour overnight, but we are waking up in what will feel more like winter. After the springlike conditions of the past week, with temperatures of 18C (64F) taking the edge off the privations of lockdown, it is going to feel like one more unpleasant shock.
The cause of this return to Januarylike conditions just as we are about to step into April is high pressure to the north-west of the UK. It is dragging down a lot of cloud, as we saw yesterday, at the same time as generating stronger, colder winds that are heading in from the north and east and stripping the trees of their blossom.
The coldest part of the country will be anywhere along the eastern seaboard from Aberdeen down to Ipswich. The thermometer in the hall may read 7C (45F) but outside, with the wind chill, it will be more like 2C (36F). And if you stay in, London and the South East will manage 8C (46F), while over in the more sheltered west, expect 9C (48F) in Plymouth, Cardiff and Liverpool.
That high pressure system is going nowhere very fast, but as it starts to shift on Monday and Tuesday the winds will ease a little, allowing the temperatures to edge up, before a second gust of cold arrives later in the week that could even bring wintry showers back to the north of Scotland.
For keen weather watchers who are finding themselves with time on their hands during this shutdown period, help is being sought for a project that aims to transfer 200 years of handwritten rainfall records into digital records.
As the current health emergency shows, we rely on scientists to get it right, and for climate predictions they rely on data. If you can spare an hour a day in front of your computer with the Rainfall Rescue Project, contact https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/ edh/rainfall-rescue