Wet June comes to a hot conclusion
3 Jul 2019 12:49 PM
With a warm end to the month and notable rainfall, you may be forgiven for thinking that June 2019 would automatically be a record-breaking month. In reality, the month as a whole might not beat previous Junes for heat or overall rainfall, but it will be remembered for some extreme weather events.
Notably, Lincolnshire received 230% of the rainfall expected in June, compared with the average between 1981-2010. Wainfleet in Lincolnshire recorded the highest daily rainfall total of any UK station with 74.6 mm of rain on 10 June.
Across Lincolnshire, the rainfall wasn’t sufficient to break the June county rainfall record of 181.9 mm in 2007, but with 128.9 mm it was in fourth place in a series stretching back to 1910. New records were set for two-day and three-day total rainfall in Lincolnshire on 10-11 and 10-12 June respectively; both previous records were set in July 1968.
Flintshire in North Wales was the wettest county when compared with average; and here it was the second wettest June since 1910. The rainfall was largely due to the presence of persistent areas of low pressure which had become anchored over parts of the UK, sitting in the loop created by the buckling of the jet stream – known to meteorologists as an Omega block.
When reviewing temperatures, June 2019 was a remarkably average month. The mean temperature for the UK was only 0.2 °C above the long-term average. One of the regions to deviate the most from this was East Anglia, with both Norfolk and Suffolk average temperatures being 1.1 °C above the long-term average: 14.5 and 14.7 °C, respectively.
Much of the month had been notably cooler than average, but towards the end of the month an area of significantly warm air moved northwards across Europe bringing record breaking temperatures to France, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. Although temperatures were not record breaking in the UK, several days of high temperatures were recorded across the country with some individual locations reaching heatwave thresholds. The window of heat shifted from west to east culminating in the highest maximum temperature of 34.0 °C at Heathrow and Northolt on 29 June. By contrast, the lowest minimum temperature was -0.3 °C at Redesdale Camp in Northumberland on 10 June.
There was also lower than average sunshine hours for many parts of the UK, with only Scotland and Northern Ireland receiving more than the long-term 1981-2010 average. The sunniest location was the Isle of Man with 236.5 hours of sunshine.
| Provisional June 2019 |
Mean temp (°C) |
Sunshine (hours) |
Rainfall (mm) |
| |
Actual |
Diff from avg (°C) |
Actual |
% of avg |
Actual |
% of avg |
| UK |
13.2 |
0.2 |
160.8 |
95 |
111.5 |
152 |
| England |
14.3 |
0.2 |
165.0 |
90 |
109.4 |
177 |
| Wales |
13.3 |
0.1 |
143.3 |
83 |
159.0 |
185 |
| Scotland |
11.6 |
0.3 |
158.8 |
106 |
102.6 |
115 |
| N Ireland |
12.6 |
-0.1 |
156.5 |
104 |
112.7 |
148 |