Lindsey Street in May sunshine during Coronavirus lockdown

Weather news

Wall to wall sunshine for lockdown May

This was a month spent in Coronavirus lockdown, and those partaking their daily outdoor exercise will have welcomed the warm, sunny weather. However, gardeners and farmers will have wished for rather more rainfall.

The deluges of February have been well and truly forgotten as May proved exceptionally dry – in fact with just 7.2 mm the second driest in Epping records (1975-2013). The driest May came in 1989, with only 1.3 mm. There was only one day, the 1st, with any significant rain. To put this in context, the average May in Epping records has 56.1 mm of rain. That’s now three successive months of below average rainfall, amounting to 52% of what we might expect in that time.