Absence of Winter Rains in England and Wales

Abstract

THE Director of the Meteorological Office, Air Ministry, states that the rainfall over England and Wales has been less than the average for nine out of the last eleven months. August, November, December and February stand out conspicuously for their dry-ness. In October and January the fall was slightly above the average but there is not a single month of large excess. Taking the period a £ a whole, the rainfall was everywhere less than the average except along a strip of the east coast from Newcastle to Hull and again near Yarmouth. There were two areas in which the deficiency was particularly large, the fall amounting only to about two thirds of the average. The first of these is bounded roughly by the counties Breconshire, Bedfordshire, Somersetshire and Surrey; the second includes the Cheshire plain and the coastal strip of Lancashire. The absence of the winter rains on which we rely to such a large extent for keeping up our water supplies is remarkable. The rainfall for the four months November-February was less than half the average over a great part of the country south of a line from Aberystwyth to Yarmouth, and there are regions of similar deficiency to the west of the Pennines and in south Lancashire. In January, heavy falls amounting to about 20 inches fell in Snowdonia and the English Lake District, but less than two inches were measured over the eastern half of England, and less than an inch in the neighbourhood of Middlesbrough and the Wash. The deficiency for February was also marked. Totals of more than an inch were confined to Snowdonia, the neighbourhood of Borrowdale and parts of the north-east coast. Locally, for example at Patching Farm near Littlehampton, there was no measurable rainfall for the whole of the month, a very unusual occurrence. The partial failure of the winter rain has been the most severe since the memorable winter of 1879-80, which, however, followed a wet summer, whereas the summer of 1933 was dry.