Heading for the sunniest spring on record - and one of the driest and warmest
Relentlessly it seems, the sun keeps beaming down on East Anglia in apparent disregard for those trying to abide by government advice and stay at home as much as possible.
It looks like that the spring months of March, April and May will have seen record amounts of sunshine in the Anglia region.
According to the Met Office, the sunniest spring ever in East Anglia was three decades ago in 1990 when there were 644 hours of sunshine - but that 30 year reign could now be over.
Provisional figures show that since the start of March until 25th May, the Anglia region has seen 645 hours of sunshine and there is plenty more to come this week.
Spring has tended to be warm in recent years with the top four warmest springs in East Anglia all occurring since 2007
Spring 2020 is not up in that league but it is likely to be among the ten warmest on record in the region.
Daytime temperatures this spring have been around 2°C above average at around 15°C.
And there has been very little rain during the spring month with May likely to be the driest on record in East Anglia.
With around 57 mm (2.2 inches) of rain since the start of March, it is likely to be the fifth or sixth driest spring since records started in 1862.
A normal spring in the region sees 137 mm of rain.
Top five driest springs on record in East Anglia
28 mm in 2011
41 mm in 1893
50 mm in 1996
57 mm in 1974
57 mm in 1976
It will be the driest spring since 2011. Both March and April both saw only a little over half of the normal rainfall and May has so far has less than a tenth of the normal rainfall.
The Environment Agency reports the Bedford Ouse and the River Cam are currently at below normal flows while the Chelmer in Essex and the Gipping in Suffolk are classed as ‘notably low.’
At the end of April, all the region’s major reservoirs were more than 90% full.
All the figures in this report are provisional and will be verified at the end of the month when more weather readings and data become available and further checks have taken place.