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weather-uk press pack

Ready-prepared articles on weather records and extremes

• 980207 Wettest places in the UK Seathwaite farm in the Lake District is but one of three locations in the UK which share the dubious distinction of being the wettest inhabited
• 980725 The Tonbridge record July 22 marks the anniversary of one spectacularly hot day which held pride of place in the record books for the best part of a century. You won’t
• 980822 The world’s coldest place A few days go the temperature Vostok in Antarctica dropped to –79ºC (–110ºF). This is probably the lowest temperature authentically recorded
• 990724 Britain’s heaviest downpours Rainfall totals vary enormously from month to month and from place to place, but there is one immutable fact about British rain: it falls
• 000101 Twentieth century weather extremes Records are easy to summarise – the hottest, coldest, wettest, windiest, snowiest, and so on. It is surprising how many of these
• 010127 Extremes as a normal part of climate Our suburbanised, centrally-heated, air-conditioned, motor car-bound, 21st century existence insulates us so successfully from
• 010512 The hottest place in the world If you believe all the reference books, the hottest place on our planet is a small Libyan town called al-'Aziziyah which is located 20 miles
• 020302 March extremes More than any other month of the year March can bring us meteorological extremes at both ends of the spectrum – reminders of winter just past, and
• 020817 Antarctic winters South of the equator it is the middle of winter and in Antarctica temperatures have been plumbing the depths during the last month or so. A few days ago
• 031108 Record-breaking sunshine in 2003 One feature of this year’s weather that we all seem to have noticed is the sunshine. There’s been a lot of it. Nearly all regions of the
• 031115 A new sunshine record for London After the Lord Mayor’s show: following the spectacular blue skies and near-record breaking warmth enjoyed just over a week ago
• 980111 “… since records began” Short-period (and therefore largely irrelevant) records are often used to exaggerate the rarity of weather events. The most ostentatious example
• 990912 Is it a record or not? One of the problems with disseminating weather statistics and records on TV is that the presenters are, by and large, not experts in climatological
• 030420 Breaking records in April The recent heatwave was a true record-breaker. Too often we hear the weather people on the television telling us that such-and-such a record
• 030818 The UK’s hottest day on record A colleague unkindly suggested that Gravesend is hardly the most attractively named town in Britain, and one suspects that its new found
• 880001 Europe’s heatwave of the century It was not only in Britain that records were smashed during the August heatwave of 2003. The same was true in France, Germany,
• 880002 The hottest place in Europe There is some controversy over which country holds the record for the highest temperature ever measured in Europe. The traditional
• 880003 Britain’s heaviest rainfall on record Dorset in the unlikely county which holds the record for the wettest day every recorded in the UK. It happened during the hot
• 880004 Britain’s heaviest snowfall on record The trouble with measuring snow is that it drifts badly as soon as the wind increases above about 20 mph, so measuring level snow
• 880005 Britain’s lowest temperature on record Very low temperatures occur in all of our coldest winters, but it takes a very special coincidence of conditions to produce our
• 880006 Britain’s longest drought on record Rainfall measurements have been made on a regular basis in England since the middle of the 18th century, and at one or two
• 880007 Britain’s strongest wind on record Anemometers measure wind direction and wind speed, but they are very expensive instruments and they need to be erected in open
• 880008 Collecting weather data in Victorian times The Met Office only came into existence in 1854, and for the first 50 years or so it’s main interest was in services to
• 880009 The UK’s rainfall network George James Symons was a remarkable man. Born into a middle class home in 1839, and educated privately, he soon exhibited a remarkable