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Alan Richards's avatar

Of course the Met office disagrees with you

“So there is some truth to the weather lore that April showers bring May flowers, as April does tend to be a showery month, and the warmth of May soon follows bringing the familiar colours of the UK spring.”

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/rain/april-showers

I think it derives from a popular song from our grandparents time, made popular by Al Jolson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Showers_(song)

I prefer the parody version “When April showers, she never closes the curtain..”

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John Dee's avatar

Interesting. Either the historic records of 71 UK land stations as reported by NOAA's GHCNd database is nonsense or the Met Office haven't bothered to check! The venerable observatory at Oxford has been putting its bucket out for 197 years and a quick analysis reveals March to be the driest month with April second. My money is on NOAA's database!

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Liz's avatar

Haha, I knew it! We have one of those big tanks for rain water by the barn, and every year (almost) when we have ewes with lambs in there and this would be real handy to save fetching water from the tap, we have a dry spell and need to carry it. This would be March.

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John Dee's avatar

There we go! You can't fool farmers (apart from Guy Singh Watson).

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Liz's avatar

"Anglesey man has measured the rainfall every day since 1948 - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-68005382?at_link_origin=BBC_Wales_News&at_bbc_team=editorial&at_medium=social&at_campaign=Social_Flow&at_ptr_name=facebook_page&at_link_id=A1 This just popped up. Bet he's got some reasonably good data. I've often wished I'd collected some over the years, never knew it was going to become so weaponised.

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John Dee's avatar

A mate of mine's enthusiastic father kept detailed weather records for decades but threw them all away a couple of years ago. It's enough to make you snap your biscuit! I note that the Met Office are not offering the data to the public. The longest running rain record I have access to is Oxford (197 years and counting). This shows no overall trend, with periods of heavy rain 1950 -1970.

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Liz's avatar

Decades !!! Oh my!

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