This afternoon I spent hours swearing at Excel to finally produce these dinky graphs to prove it rains more in Manchester than it does in Lowestoft (chosen not only to represent The South but as a point of interest for the high percentage of this blog's readership who live very near that fair town).
The data comes from The Met Office. Some figures are missing, which is why the year range is an odd 1961 to 2001. I'm not sure if 40 years is significant within the vast spans of time, but what is very interesting is that there is a slight increase in rainfall over this period. Is this proof of climate change? What may be worrying for some is that the trend is sharper in Lowestoft, ie, its getting wetter quicker than Manchester.
And yet looking at figures over a longer time frame we find there hasn't been a gradual increase in rain. This is a chart for rainfall for England and Wales from 1766 - no upward swing at all. Perhaps the mathematicians amongst our readership may quibble with the accuracy of comparing 'mean monthly' with yearly totals, but hey, the pretty pictures don't lie.
So, we may think it's getting wetter but it's not.
BUT we can be certain it rains a lot in Manchester.
