Nigel Marriott's Blog

An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future

You are here: Home / Archive / UK Weather Tracker #88 – May 2024

UK Weather Tracker #88 – May 2024

By

This was the warmest May on record in the UK which surprised me at first when I saw the data.  Then I saw that where I live (in the South West), it was the 3rd warmest but everywhere else in the UK set a new record.  Notably, the new temperature record was set despite below average sunshine and normal rainfall which may be another reason why I was surprised by the new temperature record.  Finally, as I pointed out in June last year, statistically the previous record looked artificially low relative to the upper decile so a new record is perhaps not that great a surprise.

The meteorological year starts in December which is why December appears as the 1st data point in the charts below.  More information on the layout of the charts can be found in this post.  Points lying between the upper and lower deciles are shown as open black circles, points lying between the lower/upper deciles and minimum/maximum are shown as solid black circles and any month with a new record is shown as solid black squares.  All data is supplied by the Met Office and can be found here.

Every month I update 7 charts in all.  I rotate which 6 appear in the deck above and plot the 7th as a separate chart here.  Between November & February, Sunshine (chart G) is shown here since that is of least interest in these months.

How abnormal was May 2024?

Chart H displays my UK Weather Abnormality Index (see my May 2019 post for details).  The closer to zero this index is, the less abnormal and thus more “average” a month is.  The higher it is, the more abnormal the month is.  When the index is over 100%, we can describe the month as unusual in some way.

The abnormality index was 109% this month which is above the upper decile making May 2024 an abnormal month.

Regional Variations

May marks the end of the meteorological spring.  I do not track regional statistics every month but I do track temperature by season for each region so I can update the regional temperature chart here.

This shows the Z-Score for each region for the 2024 spring.  A Z-Score is simply the regional temperature minus the long term average for that region divided by the long term standard deviation for that region.  Doing this, gets around the issue that each region is different on average whereas z-scores all have the same scale, namely number of standard deviations above or below the long term average.

The 2024 spring was the warmest on record in the UK overall and in all regions bar Northern Ireland (2nd warmest) and South West & South Wales (3rd warmest).   For more details about the 2024 spring, click on the link provided in the list below.

PS: If you bookmark this link, it will be refreshed with the latest month’s data.  I usually post the update in the first week of each month.

Click the relevant month to see what the weather was back then.  Months highlighted in bold had an abnormality index exceeding 100% indicating unusual weather.  Alternatively click the Weather Tracker hash tag below this post to see a list of all such posts.

For analysis of trends by seasons, please click on the relevant season from this list or the Weather Trends hashtag below this post.

For analysis of trends by year, please click on the relevant year from this list –

— Subscribe to my newsletter to receive more articles like this one! —-

If you would like to receive notifications from me of news, articles and offers relating to weather, please click here to go to my Newsletter Subscription page and tick the Weather category and other categories that may be of interest to you.  You will be able to unsubscribe at anytime.