Flood alerts for Shropshire after wettest April in a century
As rivers and brooks in Shropshire are on flood alert, this April is the wettest in the UK in records which date back to 1910, according to early Met Office figures.
The UK has already seen 121.8mm of rain so far - significantly more than the 69.6mm you would normally expect for the month and beating the previous record of 120.3mm set in 2000.
The Environment Agency currently has Flood Alerts in place on:
- River Severn in Shropshire
- Rea and Cound Brooks and their tributaries
- River Teme and its tributaries downstream of Ludlow
- River Teme, River Onny and River Corve & their tributaries upstream of Ludlow
- Rivers Tern, Perry, Roden, Strine and Meese and their tributaries
- Severn Vyrnwy Confluence
Many Met Office observation sites across the UK have broken their individual rainfall records, with six stations so far having seen more than three times their usual monthly average.
Liscombe in Somerset has seen the most rainfall, with 273.8mm of rain - more than three times the 86.4mm average.
At the other extreme, Prestwick in Ayrshire has seen just 39.2mm of rain and Skye has had just over half of its monthly rainfall - with 52mm of its 99.5mm average.
April has been in stark contrast to March, which was the 5th driest on record for the UK with 36.4mm of rain (comparing to the average of 95.9mm).
In another reversal of the norm, this April has also been cooler on average than March - the first time this has happened since 1998.
Figures which go up to 25th of this month show April's mean temperature is 6.1C compared to March's 7.7C.
No weather station across the UK has registered a temperature of 20C or above this month, which is the first time this has happened since 2006 (and 1989 before that).
Again, this is in contrast to March where the 20C barrier was broken regularly.
Weather during these two contrasting and distinctly non-average months has been heavily influenced by the position of the jet-stream. In March it brought prolonged settled and unusually warm weather, but a shift in the jet stream's track has brought in unsettled weather for April.
