Freak storms, flash floods, record rain – and there’s more to come in Britain’s miserable summer of 2012

Britain’s miserable summer likely to continue for at least 10 days as forecasters put blame on the jet stream By Alexandra Topping, www.guardian.co.uk
8 July 2012 Look through the window. It is likely to be raining. It has been raining, a lot, for the past two months. And the bad news is that it’s not likely to stop soon. More flooding could be on its way, after forecasters warned that the miserable weather – which has seen record amounts of rain fall in April and June, parts of the UK hit by freak storms, and flash flooding that has forced the evacuation of homes – is set to continue at least until the Olympics. This week, an area of low pressure will move in from the west, bringing showers and longer spells of rain across the whole country, according to forecasters. “The summer so far has seen a colossal amount of rain and the last 24 hours have been no exception,” said Brendan Jones, a forecaster with MeteoGroup. “The next couple of days aren’t going to be as bad as the last couple of days. There will be sunshine and showers for just about the whole country. The showers will be heavy and there will be thunderstorms as well. “Not in the next 10 days is there anything resembling reasonable summer conditions.” After a dry start to the week in the south, the rain across northern England will move south and turn to showers across England and Wales, according to the Met Office. But it will get worse – by midweek, northerly or north-westerly winds will make us feel chilly, and by Thursday and Friday there are likely to be widespread heavy and thundery showers. Plus ça change. […] As Michael Lawrence at the Met Office put it: “These areas of low pressure are hitting the UK as a whole instead of giving us the glancing blows you would usually expect in summer.” And what a summer. More than twice the average rainfall hit the UK in April. June was the wettest since records began, and the start of July has seen a month’s rain fall in 24 hours in some parts of the south-west. The bad weather has stuck and shows little sign of shifting, according to Helen Chivers at the Met Office. “The jet stream can get bends in it, it can get distorted, which can move us into a blocked pattern, like the dry weather we saw in winter … and the wet weather we are seeing now.” What is affecting these changes in the jet stream is the million-dollar question, said Chivers. Variations could be caused by temperature changes in the Pacific, but meteorologists are also studying how shifts in the Earth’s temperature, caused by global warming, affect weather conditions. “A lot of work is being done into the decrease in Arctic sea ice,” said Chivers. “Essentially, if you warm up a sea, you change the temperature differential between the poles and the tropics and that in turn influences the jet stream. Research has already shown the influence on north-west Europe winters, making them drier and colder, but what happens in the summer is still relatively unknown.” […]

Freak storms, flash floods, record rain – and there’s more to come