Monday 21 February 2022

Why Is It So Windy in UK?

As the Jet Stream acts as a division between the cold, Polar air and the hot air from the Equator, the general rule is everything above it is wet and cold while everything below it is warm and dry but if you are stuck directly under it, you get the storms which get trapped in the Jet Stream delivered to your door.
The Jet Stream generally snakes up and down but for the past week it has been stuck directly over the UK flinging Dudley, Eunice and now Franklin our way over the past week and meteorologists are keeping an eye out for a potential Storm Gladys which could be coming on Thursday to render pointless any hairdresser appointments we may have.  
Not that this stormy weather isn't expected, our weather isn't random and there is something called a Weather Singularity which is the probabilities of certain weather types happening at the same dates based on geography, atmospheric conditions, the earth's rotation, sea conditions and other sciency stuff which happens at the same time each year and there is an 88% chance that from towards the end of February to 9 March, it will be, stormy and wet and windy.
There are many websites which will show you the Jet stream and forecast where it will be for the next few weeks so you can dress accordingly and the one above from netweather.tv shows where it is sat today (left pic above) and when we roll forward where it will be sat until 9 March (right pic above) and in my best meteorologist speak, that bad boy ain't going nowhere.
As we have another couple of weeks of watching our neighbours fences swing precariously, we had better get acquainted with the names of the storms as provided by the MET Office that the jet stream will deliver to us like a demented Deliveroo driver, so we have a good chance of greeting Herman, Imani, Jack, Kim and Logan and then they seemed to to take on a more exotic flavour with Méabh, Nasim, Olwen, Pól, Ruby, Seán, Tineke, Vergil and Willemien.
As the highest we have got to it in the names was K in 2015/16 (Storm Katie), if we get to Logan then we are in record breaking territory but the good news is that the windy and stormy singularities ends around 9th March and then we can expect some more settled weather...until March 22nd to March 31st when the next one arrives with a 67% chance of it being stormy so we better learn how to pronounce Willemien.


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