From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
FEBRUARY 2, 2022
By Paul Homewood
Although 2022 is still only really getting going, January has been a month of chart-busting weather in the UK. Some will remember it for record-breaking temperatures, sunshine levels and a noticeable lack of rain, but for others it was almost the opposite, with endless cloudy days and ending with a duo of severe storms.
The year began with the UK having the warmest New Year’s Day on record as St James’s Park in central London reached 16.3C. The previous New Year’s Day record was set in 1916, when it reached 15.6C in Bude, Cornwall.
Warm air from the Azores had brought unusually mild weather.
The Met Office has also confirmed it was the sunniest January on record for England with a total of 80.7 hours, beating the previous record of 77.5 in 1959. It is also the third sunniest January on record for the UK, with 1959 remaining in the top spot with 69.7 hours.
Rainfall has also been in short supply in some locations. Both East Anglia and the area covering the east and north-east of England ended up with their fifth driest January on record with 16.4mm and 23.8mm respectively.
The rainfall total for England and Wales up to 29 January reached 34mm, which is less than 40% of the average. Though it doesn’t even make the top 20 record-wise, with a long way to go to beat the 1766 low of 4.4mm.
With recent rain in Scotland, that figure is now more than 50% but not by very much.
Destructive storms Malik and Corrie brought gusts in excess of 90mph and a very sobering end to the month. Two people died in Staffordshire and Aberdeen and thousands of homes in Scotland and England were left without power.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/60216565
To most normal people, extreme weather in January would mean freezing cold, six feet of snow, storms and floods. But not the charlatans at the BBC, who reckon that a bit of sunshine is somehow newsworthy.
They start by talking about record breaking temperatures, which is grossly misleading.
Yes, it is true that it was the warmest New Year’s Day on record at 16.3C, (61.3F) but that is meaningless, given that it is only one day out of 31.
The UK record temperature in January is 18.3C, much higher than this year’s “record”, and was set in three separate years, 1958, 1971 and 2003. There will of course have been many other years with higher temperatures than this year. January 1916 was actually the warmest on record, 1.6C warmer than this year, and temperatures reached 63F on the 6th:
In those days, though, the Met Office was not trying to sell its global warming scam, so there was none of the hyperbole we get nowadays about “record breaking and extreme weather”. Instead their reporting was just matter of fact, as with the sunniest January on record in 1959:
Neither was rainfall as abnormally low as implied by the BBC. Across the UK, it was just the 13th driest January, with rainfall more than double that of January 1997.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Rainfall/date/UK.txt
No doubt all of this will be blamed on climate change, when the Met Office publishes its annual “Britain’s Wild Weather” nonsense at the end of the year.
Even though they have been consistently claiming that Britain’s winters are getting wetter because of climate change!
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January in the UK has been dry, dreary with some warm sunny outbreaks – and a couple of exceptional storms. Up to the end of December I only saw frost once… The daffodils are in bloom as are many other flowers, weeks early.
But the weather in the UK generally has been greatly changed by climate change…
It is 6% wetter on average than 30 years ago – that’s a fact based on recorded observations. There are more extreme weather events – storms, floods and flash floods.
The BBC is right and no amount of misleading cherry picking and denial can change the facts – the UK is suffering from climate change.
Looks to me like the BBC is suffering from a case of Peyronie’s disease.
Paul H, there _was_ one record for January which was a “month-wide” one. It is the CET (Central England Temperature) maximum, which was recorded as 14.3 degC on January 1st, which is the warmest of any January day back to the start of that series in 1878.
Not that I think that proves global warming or regional warming. I just like to see statistics treated in a balanced way.
It’s weather, and the weather of the UK is notoriously fickle. Personally, I am glad that it is presently warmer than usual, as it will keep my heating bills down. Most winters, it does snow, and everyone is surprised (and, this winter is not finished, yet). Similarly, most summers, everyone hopes for a summer like 1976, and are invariably disappointed; last year, though it was dry and quite sunny, temperatures rarely got high enough to wish we had air-conditioning installed (about 3 days, iiirc). Naturally, the government is desperate to Be Seen Doing Something About Climate Change, so that, when the cooling can no longer be denied, they can triumphantly shout: “See! Told you it would work!” at their impoverished people.