"Philip Eden" philipATweatherHYPHENukDOTcom wrote in message
...
Although the Atlantic was, contrary to popular supposition, quite
active for much of January, the preferred depression track lay to
the north of Iceland, thence to Spitsbergen, and was sufficiently
distant from the British Isles to allow very persistent high pressure
over eastern Europe to extend its influence across the country
from time to time, especially during the last 10 days. As a
consequence it was a very dry January over most of the UK.

More available:
Charts: http://www.climate-uk.com/monpre/0601.htm
The Monthly Review will appear later today
at: http://www.climate-uk.com/monthly/0601.htm
Graphs: http://www.climate-uk.com/graphs/0601.htm and
http://www.climate-uk.com/graphs/200601.htm
Not The Long Range Forecast will be uploaded on Feb 3 to
http://www.climate-uk.com/page4.html

The mean sea-level chart is dominated by a deep Icelandic
Low of 990mbar centred close to coast of SE Greenland,
and an intense High of 1030mbar centred over Belarus. The
Azores high of 1024mbar lies in its usual place, but with
little circulation of its own. Quite a strong S-SWly flow
covers Scotland and Ireland, but England and Wales
has a

The sea-level pressure anomaly field is dominated by two
large anomalies - much below over Greenland and
much above over northern Europe, resulting in a
remarkably strong anomalous SW-ly flow over the
Norwegian and Barents Seas and extending into the
Arctic Basin. This has had a major impact on the extent
of ice in that region. The main anomaly centres a
+15mbar over NW Russia
+14mbar in the southern Baltic
+3 mbar near the Azores
-15mbar over eastern Greenland
-3mbar over central Algeria

One result of this pressure distribution has been the persistently high
temperatures in Iceland during the last few weeks which have been between 5
and 10c for much of the time. It's probably too early to tell, but I would
guess it's been an exceptionally mild January there.

Peter Clarke
Ewell, Epsom