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This is an in-depth Met Office UK Weather forecast for the next week and beyond. Winter 2026 went on a little too long for some of us with relentless rain and little sunshine. But how does it stack up to recent winters and what does climate change have to do with it? Bringing you this deep dive is Met Office meteorologist Annie Shuttleworth.
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00:00The spring sunshine may finally be here, but some of us are still recovering from the wet and dull winter
00:06we've just had.
00:07It wasn't the record breaker many of us may have been expecting, but it was an exceptional winter in many
00:13ways.
00:14Welcome to this week's Deep Dive. I'm Annie Shuttleworth, Met Office, Meteorologist and Presenter.
00:20And in this show, I'm joined by Mike Kendon later on, Climate Information Scientist here at the Met Office.
00:27Now, we'll be taking a closer look, a deep dive into the winter stats, how it stacks up compared to
00:34previous winters and some of the major events that happened over this winter.
00:38Now, if you're new to the Deep Dives, make sure you subscribe, share this video with anyone you think might
00:44enjoy it.
00:45And don't forget to leave your comments. We do read them and we will be answering some of your questions
00:49in this week's Live on Friday.
00:52Now, before Mike joins me, I'm going to go through a few of the details of what the weather pattern
00:58was through much of the winter that brought some of us a fairly exceptional winter.
01:03Now, here I have a chart put together by Dan Holley, Chief Meteorologist here at the Met Office.
01:09I'm going to explain it, but it essentially shows us the dominant wind directions throughout January and February as a
01:18whole,
01:18because our weather pattern was really stuck in a rut.
01:21So on the far left hand side here, this is the average wind directions and strengths for January and February
01:30as a whole.
01:32This is the 1991 to 2020 average.
01:36Now, you don't need to look at the details too much, but it's generally just the pattern that we need
01:40to focus on here,
01:41that the wind direction usually comes from the south, west or west.
01:46You can see that focus of these circles more dominant in the southwesterly and westerly sectors of this circle.
01:54And the next circle I've got here in the middle shows the observed wind directions for 2026 January to February.
02:05The colours show you the date.
02:06So the paler blue are from the 1st of January, go to dark blues all the way through to pink,
02:12which is late February.
02:14And the pattern is quite obviously very different to usual.
02:19It's worth saying that no one January, no one February really does fit that average setup.
02:25Obviously, every month, every year is different.
02:28You don't often get a completely spot on average month.
02:31But those averages are useful when comparing data over lots of years.
02:38Now, the main thing you can see here is that we've got this big section over in the south-easterly
02:45portion of this graph,
02:47showing that we had really dominant south-easterly winds for quite a long period of time.
02:53Now, south-easterly winds are a pretty unusual direction, especially during the winter,
02:58but especially for a long period of time, it's something that you only really see for a few days at
03:03a time.
03:04Now, the colours show that we had them from late January, that's the yellows, all the way through until the
03:11middle to late February.
03:13So that's a three-week period where we had those south-easterlys dominating.
03:19And then this third graph shows you how basically the difference between these two, the anomaly of this year compared
03:27to average.
03:29And this is the, on the, on the, you can see in the red here, we've got that we've got
03:35more than usual,
03:37those south-easters, as I said.
03:38There's also something here showing we had more north-westerlies as well,
03:42because we had that period of north-westerly winds, that cold spell in the early part of 2026,
03:49which you can see here, those light blues, those pale blues,
03:52showing us that in the first part, the first few weeks, we had that really cold spell
03:56that actually did bring some of us a pretty dry start to the year.
04:00So there was some sunshine, but for a lot of January and February,
04:04these south-easterly winds have dominated.
04:07Now, these dots are not just showing the wind direction,
04:10they're showing the different weather types.
04:14So this is using the Lamb-Jenkins weather types,
04:17and it's come, the data's from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
04:22So it's much the same as the decider data you may have seen on deep dives before,
04:27characterising weather types into certain patterns.
04:30So they've looked on every single day and put them into those different characteristics,
04:34and that's what's indicating where those dots sit exactly.
04:38But south-easterly weather types have dominated through the bulk of winter,
04:44at least the latter part of winter,
04:46and that has meant that it has been an exceptional winter for some areas.
04:51Now, Mike Kendon joined me later or earlier on today to talk about more details about this winter.
04:59Mike, thank you so much for joining me today.
05:02You're a Climate Information Scientist here at the Met Office, is that right?
05:06Yes, that's right.
05:07So I work in a small team called the National Climate Information Centre,
05:11and we're responsible for monitoring the UK's climate.
05:13And today we're going to be talking about the monitoring of the winter we've just experienced.
05:18Not the record breaker we were all expecting, or many people were expecting,
05:23but certainly an interesting one.
05:25Yeah, absolutely.
05:26I mean, every winter is different, as we all know,
05:32and the winter just gone was no exception.
05:35And certainly it was a very unusual winter with some significant impacts in some areas.
05:40Yeah, so today we're going to chat about what the setup was through the winter,
05:45some of the details of the stats, any records that were broken,
05:49and some of the big events as well.
05:51So let's get started and chat through what the pattern was,
05:55because it was a pretty repetitive pattern, wasn't it?
05:58Those that watch the deep dyes regularly will remember us talking about the weather setup,
06:02and it didn't change a lot, did it, through winter?
06:04Yeah, I think really, you know, if we focus on thinking about the second part of the winter,
06:11so particularly January through to February,
06:13the weather seemed to get very much stuck in a rut.
06:17And this chart kind of illustrates this.
06:19So this is showing mean sea level pressure relative to what we'd normally expect,
06:26so anomalies across the North Atlantic.
06:29This is actually covering January, but February is likely to look extremely similar.
06:35And the bar at the bottom shows you whether we are above or below average mean sea level pressure.
06:43And so you can see for the UK, much of the UK is very, very dark blue.
06:47So we had a deep, low-pressure anomaly across the UK and to the south,
06:53and red to the north, high-pressure anomaly up there.
06:58And that obviously related to the weather we experienced through that period.
07:03So we had low-pressure dominating, and it was slightly further south than usual, would you say?
07:10Yeah, so in particular, the weather we experienced is obviously strongly influenced
07:13by what happens with the jet stream up in the upper atmosphere.
07:18So people may remember, in fact, we've still got it,
07:24some severe wintry weather across the United States,
07:28with cold air moving very far south,
07:31and some quite severe snow storms over there.
07:35And what that tends to lead to is an amplification of the jet stream,
07:41a more powerful jet stream, because it tends to be driven by a large temperature contrast.
07:46So if we have cold air moving south,
07:49we get a large temperature contrast in the US and a powerful jet stream.
07:53And the jet stream was further south than usual, affecting the UK.
07:58Is that because the cold air was pushing further south across North America as well?
08:03Yes, yes.
08:04We have a slightly more southerly jet.
08:06Yeah.
08:06That's obviously associated with these areas of low pressure coming towards the UK.
08:11But then we had a blocking high pressure over Scandinavia.
08:14So what happened is as we get low pressure systems coming in,
08:18they tended to come up against that high and get stuck,
08:23which is why we tended to see the weather very much in a rut,
08:26with the same areas getting very persistent rain
08:29through really through from early January all the way through much of February.
08:34Yeah, I felt like we were just issuing warnings for the same places again and again,
08:39because the ground was just getting more and more saturated in those same areas.
08:43But and for some of us, it really did feel like the wettest winter.
08:47It felt like that, didn't it?
08:49It wasn't for the UK as a whole.
08:52But regionally, actually, if you look at things in more details for rainfall,
08:56there is a bit more to be said.
08:58I've got the rainfall anomaly maps here,
09:02which show the winter rainfall compared to average.
09:07Something we use.
09:07We're a good measure of rainfall.
09:09Yes.
09:10Yes.
09:10So we use period 1991-2020 as a standard 30-year period for averages for monitoring our climate.
09:24That 30-year period is following guidance by the World Meteorological Organization.
09:30So this map is showing across the UK spatially how much rain we've had relative to average.
09:37And you can see basically the key feature is that it's been very wet in a swathe really from Cornwall
09:45through central England and eastern Scotland and also the southeast of Northern Ireland.
09:50Yeah.
09:51And in contrast, we've had quite dry weather across the north and west of Scotland.
09:56And that really links back to the previous chart that we were showing with the low pressure down here
10:03to the southwest of the UK and really with, we're actually often in a southeasterly flow,
10:11bringing in weather systems from a rather unusual direction.
10:15Yeah.
10:15And so these areas kind of central England and to the east of Scotland and the east of Northern Ireland
10:22have tended to see a lot of rain from fronts coming up, you know, and hitting higher ground,
10:29causing what we describe as orographic enhancement of rainfall.
10:33So that's as the rainfall increases across high ground.
10:37Yeah.
10:37Which forms a barrier to the airflow and forces it to rise.
10:40So we've seen like these large temperature contrasts across Scotland.
10:44Just to give you an example of that, I think it's the first nine days of February,
10:50Aberdeen on the coast saw 120 millimetres of rain.
10:54Aviemore saw only about two millimetres of rain.
10:57So that's a huge difference in a short distance.
11:01And it's basically because of the mountains in between taking out much of that rain.
11:07And it's also kind of the opposite of what it usually is as well,
11:12in a way that you normally see weather coming in from the west, don't you?
11:16Like we've said the southeasterly winds were unusual because we normally see everything coming in from the west.
11:22So normally you get the same effect, but the other way around.
11:26Yeah, it's normally the other way around.
11:28And what's interesting is, you know, western Scotland here is climatologically wet,
11:34but it's actually, you know, much drier than average.
11:38And in contrast elsewhere where we seem to feel like we had relentless day after day of rain,
11:44some places in the west of Scotland had long periods that were actually dry.
11:49So there's a weather station on the coast in Wester Ross, a place called Ollby.
11:54I'm not entirely sure I'm pronouncing it.
11:56Correctly.
11:57But that recorded actually 21 days with no rain from late January through to mid-February.
12:04Yeah.
12:05You know, and this is an area where you would expect, in the normal winter, you'd expect.
12:09Especially at this time of year.
12:10Yeah.
12:10Sometimes you get beautiful weather there in springtime usually, don't you?
12:14But yeah, it hasn't been for those areas, the wet winter, they were probably expecting.
12:21No, I mean, I suppose what we've had is we've had persistence for a particular weather type
12:26instead of what we might more typically expect, which is a mixture of weather types associated
12:32with the normal variability that we experience in our climate.
12:35Yeah.
12:36So it was particularly January into February when we started to see that, when we got stuck
12:42in a rut, as you said.
12:43Let's have a look at the breakdown for each month.
12:46So this is December, doesn't look particularly, particularly notable.
12:51It was, it was a wettish month for some areas, a dryish month for others, but.
12:55I mean, December is obviously a wet month normally.
12:58Yes.
12:58But this shows, by and large, over the UK overall, the rainfall is not especially unusual for
13:05the time of year.
13:06Yeah.
13:07And then as we went into New Year, we had that, it's quite nice weather actually, at
13:11the beginning of the year, didn't we?
13:13It was cold and sunny, at least for a bit.
13:17I can tell you it was bitterly cold at times.
13:19I went walking with my family on top of the Lake District Fells.
13:22Yeah.
13:23In, I think it was the start of January, and it was really cold up there.
13:28On the top of the Fells, the day we were on the top, the air temperature was maybe minus
13:33three.
13:34The wind speed was gusting perhaps 50 mile an hour.
13:38Oh, wow.
13:38And that was cold.
13:39That's quite a wind chill.
13:40It was cold, but it was dry.
13:42It was dry.
13:43Yes.
13:43You could at least see, you have good views, I imagine.
13:47Yes, very nice.
13:48I mean, that's the benefit of when you're in a northerly airflow like that.
13:51Yes.
13:52You get nice, clear air, so lovely views.
13:54But we're very lucky, because obviously after that, the weather got into this very unsettled
14:00pattern, you know, and this map for January is really illustrating that, isn't it?
14:05Yeah.
14:06The dark blues being areas that have seen twice the normal rainfall.
14:10Wow.
14:11Yeah.
14:12Because, yeah, we've got 200% as the darkest blue.
14:15If it's white, it's around the average, basically.
14:18But really highlighting the south coast in particular and the northeast, which is when
14:23we started to get the repetitive days of rain.
14:28We started talking about endless days of rain through the year and also lack of sunshine
14:34as well.
14:35Yes.
14:35Particularly for Aberdeenshire, wasn't it?
14:38Yeah, we did.
14:40So we saw, you know, some areas 30, if not as many as 35 consecutive days with a millimetre
14:48or more of rain.
14:50Particularly, for example, across Cornwall, we just saw a relentless number of days where
14:55every day was wet.
14:56There's very little sunshine.
14:57And of course, that really links to what the weather feels like.
15:01It just, you know, it feels pretty relentless when you don't get a breaker of a day or two
15:07when it's dry with a little bit of sunshine.
15:09No.
15:10And then into February, there wasn't a huge amount of change.
15:13You've still got a similar pattern, but I guess it's spread up a little bit further
15:19into parts of the wetter weather.
15:21It is.
15:22So very wet, quite widely across central England.
15:27And I guess if we think about things like flood impacts, what's important there is to think
15:34about this rain is falling across, obviously, river catchments.
15:37If we have large river catchments, like, for example, the River Severn, then those catchments
15:44will take quite a long time to respond to rainfall.
15:50But when you get a large amount of rain over a large area, the ground is saturated.
15:55It really builds up and you end up with a situation where you have flooding.
16:00And of course, once the ground is saturated and you get day after day after day off rain,
16:05you only need a little bit more rain to cause some quite significant further flood problems.
16:09Yeah, something that usually wouldn't be an issue, wouldn't prick your ears,
16:13you wouldn't put your ears up if you heard it.
16:15If when you've got conditions like that, you think anything could tip this over the edge.
16:19It's absolutely critical for hydrology is what we describe as antecedent conditions.
16:23So the conditions across the catchment prior to the rain arriving and there may be situations
16:32where the same amount of rain, if the catchment is relatively dry, it has the capacity to absorb that.
16:39Whereas if the ground is completely saturated, the rivers are already running very, very high.
16:45That same amount of rain will just very easily cause flooding across the floodplain.
16:51Yeah. And we did have a few events, didn't we, that did cause some major flooding that we'll talk about
16:57in a minute,
16:58some of the major storms.
16:59But before then, let's just show how that stands.
17:02So that's kind of how Westwood was compared to average.
17:05But in terms of records, so how do we measure records, first of all?
17:10Yeah, OK. So we're showing all these nice maps.
17:12So it's worth just mentioning that all of these maps are based on a data set called Had UK Grid,
17:20which the team I'm in, National Climate Information Centre, we maintain this data set.
17:25So this is one kilometre resolution gridded rainfall data for the UK.
17:32We grid temperature as well and sunshine as well.
17:36So daily rainfall.
17:39And essentially what we are doing is we are estimating rainfall totals in millimetres at every one kilometre grid point
17:48across the UK
17:50by taking the observations from the network of rain gauges across the country.
17:56So the full network of rain gauges across the UK is about 2,000,
18:02although for maps that are produced in near real time, it is actually less than that.
18:08It's more like 1,000.
18:09OK.
18:10But that gives us the ability to look at what's happening spatially across the UK.
18:17And this data set Had UK Grid, we have records extending back to the 19th century.
18:24So obviously a key application of that is to use the climate series that we can obtain for that,
18:33things like national series for the UK or regional series.
18:36We can look at these to see, to understand what is the observational evidence for climate change in the UK
18:44in the context of those long term records.
18:46So that's just to mention how we produce that.
18:49Where that's come from.
18:51Where that comes from.
18:51And yeah, and we can compare years to years and exactly UK level records, but also regional records.
18:58Yes.
18:58And I suppose the key thing is that we're comparing one year against another on a like for like basis,
19:04even though the network of rain gauges or weather stations might have changed over time.
19:11Because we are interpolating the data onto a grid.
19:18Yeah.
19:20What we will see in terms of statistics from that grid will be independent of any changes in the network
19:27on which it is based.
19:28OK.
19:28Yes.
19:29So that's why, yeah, you can compare years.
19:31It gives us more accuracy in that.
19:33So this shows us the rainfall amounts of the winter as a whole, but how that ranks in that league
19:40or in that series.
19:42Yes, that's right.
19:43And so we had a couple of counties that actually saw their wettest winter on record, didn't we?
19:49Yes, we did.
19:49Yes.
19:49I mean, so this is showing that the wettest is dark, the darkest blue.
19:55The next blue is second to fifth wettest.
20:00And then we've got the next blue is sixth to tenth wettest.
20:05And I think after that we're into the wettest third of the series.
20:09So these series run back to 1836.
20:13I would say before about 1850, 1860, there's more uncertainty with these county level series because of the density of
20:23rain gauges that make up the network reduces going back in time.
20:27But this is certainly very useful for giving us an indication of how extreme the rainfall was.
20:32So we can see that for Cornwall, we had, I should also say this is provisional data because we will
20:41update these figures once we have the full network of rain gauges, the full network of data come in, which
20:49also needs to go through quality control as well.
20:52So that's something else I should mention.
20:53Rigorous checks, aren't there, which is important because we base such information on how our climate is changing on all
20:59of this data.
21:00But I think the main thing I'd say is just trying to step back and look at this from a
21:05wider perspective, we can see a large swathe from the Midlands down to Cornwall has been very wet and the
21:14wettest on record for Cornwall.
21:16But all of these county areas between, say, the second and the fifth wettest on record, also very wet in
21:24counties in eastern Scotland, areas like Angus, for example, and also very wet in county down in Northern Ireland.
21:34Again, that's reflecting the way we've had some quite persistent rainfall in that area, for example, particularly across the Mourne
21:41Mountains.
21:41Yeah, so it was the wettest for a few counties and in the top five for quite a few areas
21:49as well, across parts of England in particular and as well, yeah, some areas of Northern Ireland and Scotland.
21:56So for those that have felt like it's been the wettest winter, like it pretty much has been for some
22:01areas.
22:01I think this is where this is the limitations of a UK figure.
22:05Yeah, because obviously the weather we all experience is is where we happen to be located.
22:12So if you actually were living in the Isle of Skye, you probably felt like you had a pretty, you
22:18know, nice, dry, quite sunny winter.
22:23Yeah.
22:24Whereas if you're in down in Cornwall, it's felt extremely wet and very relentless.
22:29Yeah.
22:30And actually, what's interesting is that northwest to southeast contrast in rainfall patterns that we've seen this winter in the
22:37UK is a pattern that is quite commonly you quite you do quite commonly see that.
22:42And this really relates to the spatial sail of the UK and and, you know, how it is affected by
22:49small changes in the position of weather systems.
22:52Jet stream, the wind direction.
22:54Yeah, we're an island affected in all different directions and each direction brings something different.
23:00Usually it's from the west, but this this winter is from the south and east.
23:04We've got as well, which which from what you were saying, it really depends on where you are as to
23:10how you feel.
23:11So the winter, the wettest winter on record was 2014 for the UK as a whole.
23:18And but was that the wettest winter for how many regions?
23:23Yeah, it's a great question, isn't it?
23:25So hopefully this graphic is trying to get that point across.
23:29So the colours here are referring to the the year of the wettest winter across different parts of the UK.
23:37Yeah.
23:38So I'm not very good at describing colours and just sort of lightish, lightish brown colour down here.
23:45Orangey, I'd say that one, yeah.
23:47Orangey, okay, orangey, hand up here.
23:48That is winter 2014.
23:49So that is December 2013.
23:52Yeah.
23:52So February 2014.
23:53And people might remember that winter where we had a really a relentless succession of deep low pressure systems every
24:01few days,
24:02one after the other, after the other coming in and caused some really severe flooding.
24:08For example, in the southwest across the Somerset levels and more widely.
24:12And that's that's the wettest winter on record for the UK.
24:15That's actually before we started naming storms.
24:18We started naming storms in 2015.
24:21So I wonder how many there would have been.
24:22There would have been a lot of named storms for that winter.
24:26So that's the wettest winter down here and up here.
24:29And let's say this, our series goes back to, the winter series goes back to 1837.
24:36So that is really a long-term context.
24:40If we look at the darker brown, I guess that's darker brown in northern England.
24:45Terracotta.
24:46Yeah, that's the Terracotta.
24:48That's 2016.
24:51So that's from December 2015 to February 2016.
24:56And again, people in Cumbria might remember the very severe flooding from Storm Desmond in December 2015,
25:04where we saw there's a rain gauge at Honestor Pass, which recorded 340 millimetres of rain within a 24-hour
25:11period.
25:11We actually had a record set for the UK of the wettest consecutive two days of record over 400 millimetres.
25:22So huge amounts of rain, very severe flooding, for example, in parts of Cumbria from that winter.
25:28But what's interesting is, you know, these winters, they cover fairly substantial areas.
25:33So winter 2014 is here.
25:36Yeah.
25:37Winter 2016 is up here.
25:39So there is some spatial kind of coherence in this map.
25:42And, you know, it's not lots and lots of individual colours.
25:47You know, as you perhaps expect, several counties, for several adjacent counties, the same winter as the wettest winter on
25:56record.
25:57Yes, because I guess it's, and as you've mentioned, it's kind of key events that often bring, like Storm Desmond,
26:05for example.
26:05Without that, we wouldn't maybe have had a quite, well, we wouldn't have had as much rainfall, but it's those
26:10that sort of topple things over the edge to make them more exceptional and a record breaker.
26:15And we have had some major events or some notable events, certainly this winter.
26:21We've had a few named storms.
26:23I've got some bits of just some of the key things from the winter.
26:28So we'll talk about the storms, first of all, that we've had as we were talking about those.
26:33So this is the storm naming list to date, how far through we've got them.
26:37We have been affected by a few.
26:38Obviously, it's been a very busy storm season for sort of Iberia in particular.
26:43Again, that goes back to talking about the jet being slightly further south, of course.
26:49Yeah.
26:49And sea surface temperatures being higher than average as well across those areas.
26:54So more moisture in those storm systems as well.
26:56So they've had some exceptional rainfall.
26:58But, yeah, we've had one, two, three, four, five, six named storms affect the UK.
27:04Not all of them really notable ones.
27:09But from this winter, so we've got Storm Claudia was the first one.
27:13That was not quite from the winter.
27:15That was still in November.
27:16But that kind of set the scene for the wet weather across South Wales in particular, didn't it?
27:24Yes.
27:25And so, sorry, which is Storm Goretti?
27:28Storm Claudia, that one.
27:30Storm Claudia.
27:30Oh, yes.
27:30Sorry, I beg your pardon.
27:31Yes.
27:31So Storm Claudia, yes.
27:32It was very wet around then.
27:34And we kind of also got, we were having some very, very wet weather in late autumn.
27:40Yeah.
27:40Claudia in particular caused some quite severe flooding around Monmouth in South Wales.
27:47Yes.
27:47Actually, from this storm, we saw basically a front stalling across England and eastern Wales
27:57and kind of a slightly southeasterly flow.
28:02And the areas, upland areas in southeast Wales, particularly the Black Mountains, saw a lot
28:08of rain.
28:09And that came on top of what was already a very wet period.
28:14And, you know, so that, as I say, that saw some quite bad flooding in Monmouth.
28:19Yeah, so that shows that we were already in quite a wet period from the autumn, weren't
28:23we?
28:23And then through December, it wasn't, we had Bram affecting more northwesterly areas, I
28:28think it was.
28:29Yes, it did, yes.
28:29But that wasn't, you know, it was a storm.
28:32So it's very impactful weather, but nothing extremely notable.
28:36And then the next two storms that came in affected that similar southwesterly area, notably Goretti
28:45in the New Year.
28:47Yes.
28:48Which was a rare red warning we issued for Goretti.
28:52I mean, prior to that, we obviously had some drier weather briefly around Christmas to New
28:57Year.
28:58Yes.
28:58Which was maybe an opportunity for things to dry out a bit before we then got into this
29:02relentless cycle of low pressure systems.
29:05Yeah, of course.
29:06Really, of which Goretti was pretty much at the start of that.
29:10As you say, a red warning issued for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
29:16And, you know, I think it's always important to emphasise just how important this is as
29:23a tool, storm naming and these warnings for communicating, you know, the hazard to the public.
29:30And I'd certainly like to think that the number of fatalities that happen as a result of storms
29:36like this are much less as a result of these warnings issued because people are not, you
29:42know, they're not out and about if they take action and heed these warnings.
29:45Yeah.
29:46And actually naming the storms is really an integral part of that.
29:50Yeah, it gives us more consistency in delivering a message to the public.
29:54Yeah.
29:55Yeah.
29:55One of the key advances of naming storms.
30:01Yeah.
30:01So Goretti brought the 99 miles per hour at Scilly.
30:04I think it's the strongest gusts in 47 years.
30:0847 years.
30:08Yes.
30:09Yes.
30:09Yes.
30:09And obviously that we saw some, you know, large trees coming down from that.
30:15Yes.
30:15If you think about pictures in the media, for example, of St. Michael's Mount.
30:19Yeah.
30:20And some very strong wind gusts here.
30:23In many ways, this storm was quite similar to Storm Ciaran back in November 2023, which also
30:31affected the south coast of England.
30:33And I think what these storms really illustrate is that, you know, we are in the firing line
30:38of storms with these characteristics.
30:40If we have a low pressure system which really engages with the jet, we get what we call explosive
30:49cyclogenesis as the storm really, really rapidly deepens and intensifies.
30:54And we can see some very, very strong winds in a swath, you know, affecting the worst areas.
31:01And it's really critical understanding what the precise track is going to be, where whereabouts
31:08is going to be affected.
31:09And in this particular case, it was the far, you know, the far bottom of Cornwall.
31:15But of course, a much, you know, the really kind of notorious example, if you like, is October
31:221987 in the southeast of England.
31:25But, you know, we are in the firing line of storms like this.
31:29Yeah, and I think when you have something with Goretti, it was suspected to be a stingjet
31:33with Goretti.
31:33And it's such a narrow band of where it's going to affect.
31:37But also, I guess, with Cornwall as well, it's quite a narrow land mass as well.
31:41So there was, I remember there being some uncertainty in whether where the narrowest band of the strongest
31:47winds were going to affect move across the land exactly.
31:50I mean, the other thing to say is, of course, that, you know, around coastal areas, coastal
31:59areas tend to experience the strongest winds.
32:02So if we look at the wind climatology for the UK, places like Cornwall are prone to very
32:09strong winds just because being on the coast, you know, out to sea, there is no drag from
32:16the land and the hills and so on.
32:21So...
32:21Less friction is...
32:22Yeah.
32:23Yes, less friction.
32:24And in fact, the highest gust speed on record for England used to be right down at Gwenaat
32:32Hebt, which is really near Land's End.
32:34More recently, it's actually moved to the Needles on the Isle of Wight.
32:38But again, these are both very exposed coastal locations.
32:41Yeah.
32:42So often they're not representative of what's happening in land, are they?
32:46But still for Cornwall, such a coastal region, to be honest, predominantly, there were huge
32:52impacts.
32:53And for the Silly Isles.
32:54Yes.
32:55And dangerous waves as well.
32:56Dangerous conditions on the coast too.
32:58Yeah.
32:58Yes.
32:59And it took, it's taken quite a while to, I think, repair all the damage from Goretti as
33:04well.
33:04After, like you were saying, with the antecedent conditions of the ground levels, how saturated
33:10the ground is.
33:11Similar in that when you see more windy weather coming through, it's like, well, there's,
33:18you know, there's been damage to wind in these areas.
33:20So these areas were more sensitive to, you know, less impactful, not named storms, but
33:25windier spells as well for at least a few weeks after that.
33:29I mean, we do see that.
33:30If you have storms one after another arriving rapidly in succession, you know, the clear up
33:36from one storm and maybe trying to get power back to people is then exacerbated and hampered,
33:42which was hampered by the fact that there's another storm coming.
33:46And of course, often these most severe storms happening at the, you know, at the time of
33:51year where you can get storms in the sequence in this way.
33:54So that can make it particularly challenging for people if they're, you know, if they've lost
33:59power for a prolonged period of time.
34:01And of course, the, you know, the age in which we live, we're all dependent on, you know,
34:07electricity, perhaps more than we used to be in the past.
34:09Yeah.
34:10Yeah.
34:10Very good point.
34:11And then we've had the most recent name storm was Chandra, which affected not far, well,
34:17places very close to Exeter.
34:18I know a number of Met Office employees were affected by the flooding.
34:22Yeah, there was widespread flooding in, in the southwest of England, actually a bit more,
34:28more widely.
34:29By this time, I think we're starting to see larger river catchments really responding as
34:33well.
34:33But certainly down in the, down in the Exeter area, some of these catchments on the south
34:38coast, the River Ex, just to the east of us, the River Otter, the River Axe, you know,
34:44we saw some quite severe flooding, unfortunately affecting properties.
34:47Yeah.
34:48What I would say is it's important to put this flooding into context, that, you know,
34:54we are talking about perhaps dozens of properties flooded, but we are not talking about thousands
35:01of properties flooded, as we've seen in the scale of the floods of summer 2007.
35:07Yeah.
35:07But obviously that is, you know, if you are one of the residents who's been affected by flooding,
35:13that's clearly no consolation.
35:15No, it isn't at all, but yeah, yeah, it was still relatively localized in some ways.
35:22So, yeah, we did have some major, yeah, some big storms that came through.
35:26We've talked a little bit about that nice cold weather, the clear weather we had at the
35:30beginning of January, but that also brought some pretty exceptional snow.
35:34Like snow is becoming less of a thing with climate change.
35:39We see less of these significant snow events, but it was some, we saw some really high depths
35:47of snow, particularly across eastern, the Grampians region in particular.
35:51We did, yeah.
35:51Yeah.
35:52And this was, so this is, here we've got the ninth to the sixth of January.
35:56So just after, oh, the sixth of January.
35:58Sixth of January.
35:59Excuse me.
35:59Sixth of January.
35:59The depths are at nine.
36:01Nine, yeah.
36:01Excuse me.
36:02Yeah.
36:03Yeah.
36:04But they, so they built up through the, through the new year period.
36:08And so some of the highest, what's the highest number we've got on here?
36:11Is that 52 centimeters?
36:1252 here.
36:13Yeah.
36:14And that's quite exceptional compared to recent years.
36:18Yeah.
36:18I mean, so our climate is warming.
36:20Yeah.
36:20And obviously that means that we are generally seeing a decline in the number of snow events
36:25across the UK.
36:26But the variability of our weather means that we still do see from time to time significant
36:32lying snow in the UK.
36:35So examples would be 2013, 2018, more recently, I think 2021 would be examples where we've seen
36:43some fairly significant snow across northern parts of the UK.
36:46And of course, this part of the UK is, you know, furthest north and east.
36:50This is most prone to snow.
36:53So I would say that depths of perhaps 30 centimeters or so are not really, especially unusual, although
36:58of course they cause significant impacts.
37:01But when we get day after day of snow accumulating from say snow showers in the northerly flow,
37:07and it's just fairly relentless with depths of 50 centimeters building up.
37:12These are, that, that, that sort of depth is for this area kind of about the most significant
37:17since December, 2010.
37:20So December 2010 was really exceptional for the UK.
37:24It was the coldest December on record for the UK.
37:26That's December, that, that, that temperature series goes back to 1884.
37:31Yeah.
37:31I would say that's all the more exceptional bearing in mind that our climate is warming.
37:36So it has already warmed quite considerably by the time 2010, December 2010 happened.
37:43But, you know, these, these depths are really, really significant.
37:47And of course, they cause large impacts.
37:50So in particular things like school closures, if schools are closed for a week, problems with transport,
37:56people being able to get around problems with isolated communities and so on.
38:01Yeah.
38:01So this was undoubtedly, you know, this was, this was unusual.
38:05These depths of 50 centimeters are really quite unusual.
38:08Yeah. And then when it starts to get warmer as well, I guess there's also the snow melt as well,
38:12that's considered from all of this.
38:13Actually, that is something, I mean, you know, this is one example of where we might argue that we are
38:21actually seeing less events of that particular type.
38:24Okay.
38:25Than we used to because of climate change is snow melt events.
38:28So in the UK, one of the most severe snow melt events occurred in March 1947,
38:35after the very, very severe February 1947, which is really, I think the most, you know, severe snowy spell or
38:45very, very widespread.
38:46Widely across the UK.
38:47Very large depths across the UK, some very devastating flooding in large areas as a result of that melting.
38:54And that doesn't happen so much now.
38:56No, because we don't.
38:57But I think because the UK is already in that kind of marginal temperature all through the winter of it
39:02being cold enough for it to snow in enough places.
39:05The snow situation is always so marginal.
39:08But I suppose what it does illustrate, though, is that, you know, there is the potential for impactful weather from
39:15snow still to happen,
39:17despite the fact that our climate is warming.
39:19So we still need to be prepared for it.
39:20Yeah, you can't.
39:20Yeah, things become more likely, but it doesn't mean you're not going to get cold winters at all, but they
39:26become less likely.
39:27But you might argue that it's more difficult to think about how you deal with events that are very infrequent.
39:35Yeah.
39:36As opposed to something that was perhaps considered rather more normal.
39:40So snow is a really good example, actually, that, you know, perhaps in the 1980s, fairly widespread snow across, for
39:50example.
39:51I mean, sorry, we're talking about Scotland here, but I was thinking more in the context of central England that
39:57we might, you know,
39:58it's not particularly unusual to see a week or a couple of weeks of snow, you know, lying snow in
40:05the winter in the historical record looking at that period.
40:09Now that is much more unusual, although it can still happen.
40:12So does that make it more impactful now than it did in the past because we're less used to events
40:18of that type?
40:19Yeah, it's often if something after if it's been suddenly often it's the first cold snap that can catch people
40:26more off guard is when you're not in the mindset of it.
40:29And I guess that's similar if it's something that doesn't really happen very often or only really happens like once
40:33in your lifetime.
40:34Yes.
40:34Then you're not going to be able to behave appropriately or know exactly what to do or you'll be caught
40:41more unawares.
40:42Oh, really fascinating. It has been an interesting winter then definitely.
40:47Yes, it has.
40:47Thank you for sharing all of those details and going over everything.
40:50We haven't gone over absolutely everything.
40:52It was also a bit of a dull winter and a relatively mild one as well.
40:56But you can find all the details in the press release and on our website as well.
41:01And thank you very much for joining us at home.
41:05If you've got any comments or feedback, make sure you leave them in the comments box below and make sure
41:10you share this video with anyone else you think might be interested.
41:12Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already.
41:16But yes, join me in giving thanks to Mike once again for joining us and sharing so much information, not
41:22only on this winter, but on all the winters that came before.
41:25You've amazed me with all of your knowledge.
41:27Thank you very much and see you again soon.
41:30Bye bye.
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