Wales managed to escape the worst of Storm Ali, which blew in from the west on September 19.Īgain, meteorologists said the extreme weather was down to a jet stream, this time from Canada. With the scorching summer a distant memory, September heralded the arrival of the first two named storms of the 2018/19 season: Ali and Bronagh. Emergency measures were required to keep Cardiff Bay and Barrage working, and rare Bioluminescent Plankton arrived in the sea at Aberavon Beach. As a result, ancient ruins were exposed in the ground, forests caught fire, and the grass turned brown.Ī crisis began to emerge for Welsh farmers, who started turning to their winter feed stocks and buying in additional feed and straw, which would have far-reaching impacts beyond the summer.Īs the grass dried out and the vegetation shrivelled, wildfires swept across Wales. One reader posted: "Sadly, the yellow warning is not for the amount of snow we will get, but for the amount of people who panic and are unable to cope with just slowing the pace, wrap up warm and remember it'll last a day or 2 at the most."īut Welsh farmers were already beginning to struggle, as the early summer heatwave caused wells and streams to dry up and created problems for livestock and crops.Īs the mercury continued to rise, with temperatures well into the 30s, July was one of the hottest months on record. Many assumed the warnings would come and go, with people panicking for no reason. Not everyone was convinced, with many disbelieving comments on the WalesOnline website such as "BETTER GET 300 PINTS OF MILK AND 40 LOAVES OF BREAD IN THE FREEZER THEN" or "4 inches or 10cms of snow and we have panic merchants in the met office almost forecasting the end of the world!!" At the time, there was talk of a so-called 'Beast from the East' which it was said would bring the coldest period for at least five years. Sandy also shut down the New York Stock Exchange for two consecutive. In the last week of February, 2018, the Met Office issued a yellow weather warning for snow for much of Wales. The map shows all types of weather disasters, some of which are known to be. So, what exactly did 2018 bring us? The Beast from the East However, as my tweet showed, temperatures across the globe are currently at near record levels, which vastly increases the likelihood of a heatwave - even if the weather pattern is not so unusual." Grahame Madge, from the MET Office, said: "You can’t assume that extremes of weather are caused by climate change, but a changing climate makes new extremes more likely."īack in July, meteorologist Simon Lee said: "It is impossible to say during an event whether it was caused by climate change - we’ve seen heatwaves before and we will see them again. It means fluctuating extremes of weather. In the summer, we reported how the heatwave was all down to the jet stream as well as rising sea temperatures and climate change.īut climate change doesn’t just mean hot summers. In 2018, the UK received close to 90% of average annual rainfall, and in Wales, the west actually had more rain than average. Summer temperatures were up for the whole of the UK (Image: Met Office)īut, despite the heat, you might be shocked to hear the last 12 months weren't exceptionally dry overall for the UK.
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