British Rainfall 1934

Abstract

THE total rainfall during 1934 in the British Isles was exactly normal or 100 per cent, the figure for England and Wales being 95, Scotland 110 and Ireland 105. The run of mainly dry months which began in November 1932 continued through part of the year, and the effect of the drought is illustrated in the frontispiece, which shows Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire dried up. The event of the year, however, was the intense and persistent rain of the very warm December in many places the wettest December on record. In this month nearly every part of the British Isles was wet, but by far the greatest excess occurred in the south of England, where in a few places the rainfall was more than 300 per cent of the average. The entire south-west of England and most of Wales had between 10 in. and 20 in. in December, as did also the Downs in the counties south of the Thames. Places on the flanks of Dartmoor received the enormous amount of 25 inches not much less than that which fell on Snowdon, which had the greatest monthly total, namely, 30-8 inches. Practically none of the country south of the Thames had less than 6 inches, but north of the Thames, in the Midlands and East Anglia, the amount was below 5. This distribution was quite typical of very wet winter months in the south of England, where the rains in the hilly country south of the Thames are often very intense. British Rainfall 1934: the Seventy-fourth Annual Volume of the British Rainfall Organization. Report on the Distribution of Rain in Space and Time over the British Isles during the Year 1934 as recorded by over 5,000 Observers in Great Britain and Ireland. (M.O. 385.) Pp. xvi + 299. (Air Ministry: Meteorological Office.) (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1935.) 15s. net.