wrote in message
oups.com...
With the 15th-19th GFS this morning being more depressing than
yesterday's (albeit still with a block, but too far to the east to
affect anywhere west of Germany) it seems that the only thing of
interest this month would be to achieve the possible "record" above. I
can't think of a January which had *non stop* weather which was both
mild and wet - all examples I can think of either had a cold, dry
interlude or a mild but dry interlude (years like 1990 and 1995 spring
to mind here)

It doesn't quite answer your question, but here are the most
westerly and southwesterly Januarys in the dataset that I use,
which goes back to 1873. The westerliness index is the difference
in sea-level pressure between 50N and 60N in the longitude of the
British Isles (i.e. 00-10W), while the southwesterly index is simply
the difference in pressure between 50N 10W and 60N 00W.

Most westerly Januarys:
1983 27.6
1993 26.0
1916 24.4
1990 21.6
1944 21.3
1989 21.2
1928 21.1
1923 20.8
1949 20.6
1890 20.6
1975 20.0
1884 20.0

Most southwesterly Januarys:
1993 30.8
1983 30.0
1990 28.9
1890 27.4
1916 27.3
1974 26.4
1989 26.3
1932 26.2
1928 25.6
1975 25.2

Here's an interesting statistic: on average, a Jan with a SWly
index of 22.5 has a return period of 10 years. The longest periods
without reaching that threshold were 1873-1889 (17 years),
1947-1961 (15 years), and 1994 to date (13 years so far).

Philip Eden