A Week in the Weather of: Much Wenlock

Location of Much Wenlock
(Click to Enlarge)

It’s just six months until the start of the 2012 Olympics, so we’re jumping on the bandwagon:  For this week's daily glance at the UK weather, we're in Much Wenlock - the birthplace of Dr William Penny Brookes, who was instrumental in the inception of the modern Olympic Games.

Perched above Wenlock Edge, Much Wenlock is a small medieval English market town in rural Shropshire.  Any geology student, from anywhere in the world, can tell you about Wenlock Edge; at 400 million years old, this giant wall of limestone harks back to the country’s equatorial beginnings,  and still bears fossils of a tropical shoreline.  As for the weather...

(All pictures and figures can be clicked to enlarge.)

Monday 30^th January

Much Wenlock found itself under blue skies this morning, sandwiched between two swathes of cloud that covered South Wales and the East of England.

After a clear night, temperatures barely rose above freezing, but the limited hours of sunshine were just enough to create some convection (seen as thin very ribbons on the edge of the more dense cloud that covered South Wales - click on the image to enlarge).

Satellite image: MODIS RGB Composite Image, 30^thJanuary 2012, from NERC Satellite Receiving Station, Dundee University, Scotland.

Tuesday 31^st January

There's not been much wind in Much Wenlock so far this week, and a glance at the surface pressure charts shows why.  Hidden between weather fronts, there are very few isobars (the thin black lines that cover the chart); closer isobars mean stronger winds, but there's comparatively few across the whole of the UK at the moment, and the calm conditions that look likely to continue.

Chart: Sea level pressure from Uni-Weather Forecast - 31^st January 2012, 1200 UTC.

 

Wednesday 1^st February
Most of our UK weather comes from the west, so we usually have to watch the Atlantic to spot the next weather system - but the weather this week has stalled:  A finger of warm air has been hovering off the West Coast of Ireland for several days; it's been prevented from heading East by high pressure over Northern Europe, which has also kept the UK, and Much Wenlock, in cold air (and near freezing conditions) all day. 

Chart: 850mb air temperature from Uni-Weather Forecast - 1^st February 2012, 1000 UTC.

Thursday 2^nd February 

A cold day turned into a cold night, with surface temperatures below freezing across all of inland Britain.  Things were a little better if you lived in London; the surface temperatures predicted by Uni Weather showed a strong heat island over the city, with temperatures just below freezing, whilst the surrounding countryside was at around -2^oC or lower.

Chart: Surface air temperature from Uni-Weather Forecast - 2^nd February 2012, 2300 UTC.

Friday 3^rd February

An approaching warm front promises snow for Saturday, with the first tell-tale signs appearing on Friday evening: cirrus cloud creeping in above Shropshire late on Friday afternoon.

Photo looking West towards the Wales; Friday 1700 UTC

Copyright: Christopher Lee, 2012.

Saturday 4^th February

As promised, a warm front, that later became occluded, pushed across the UK bringing heavy snowfall almost everywhere.  The Uni-weather forecast did a good job of predicting the precipitation pattern, as well as the rain shadow that sits to the East of the Welsh hills.  That shadow meant that Western Shropshire avoided the brunt of snowfall.
Chart: Hourly precipitation from Uni-Weather Forecast - 4^th February 2012, 1900 UTC


Text Copyright: Christopher Lee, 2012.