Today will see the north-west England and Wales region reach its wettest December on record still with 5 days of the month to go. Many places in this region, even away from the high ground, could see over 100mm between now and the end of the year. For example Kendal has 50mm+ expected today and again on the 30th.
The chart linked below shows the total rain in the NW England and Wales region up to Christmas Eve as 187mm. The current record for the whole of December is 202mm in 1986. Records go back to 1873. You can see from the chart we are trending well above the previous record shown by the sandy area on the chart. The rainfall as a percentage of average for this month will be over 200% and that is averaged across the whole region. Many individual stations will have much higher anomalies.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/charts/daily_plots/HadNWEP_Dec2015.gif
Many other parts of the UK are only seeing rainfall close to average this month so the NW has definitely taken the brunt of it. This will partly be due to the long fetch south-westerly's which enhance the orographic effect on the high ground of North Wales and NW England.
Some astonishing rainfall totals this month so far:
Shap (249m asl) 712mm (330% of the long run total for the whole month)
Keswick (only 81m asl) 494.6mm
Edited by user
26 December 2015 09:44:16
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