Robin Nicholson wrote:
Now that I am back on the group, thanks to John Dann's pointer to the
German thingy I have now joined, can anyone give a brief explanation
for a novice as to why we had that train of depressions that seemed to
start abruptly and ended equally so, in the week before May Bank
Holiday weekend? It notched up my May total to 110.5mm here in Dorset.

As far as I am concerned, High pressure pulled away and we had what I
think were some 6 or 7 really quite deep depressions. Is that it or
were there other factors? Nothing like that has happened for a long
time it seemed

Last October I recorded 140mm so last month was easily 2nd since the
AWS started near the start of November 2005

Cheers

Robin

A series of depressions is quite a normal phenomenon though
rather unusual for May. Some cyclonic winters seem to consist of
little else but in the last few years cyclonic activity has not been
intense. The reason is connected with the position, speed and
amplitude of troughs and ridges in the northern hemispheric
circulation. There are others on this group who are better qualified
than me to explain the stormy May. Altogether it's a rather "chatty"
subject not given to cut-and-dried formal explanations.

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.