March winds, April showers

Planet Earth’s climate changeability has seen at least five Ice Ages come and go up to now, but in the current interval the UK’s springtime can be summed up in the old saying:

March winds and April showers,
Bring forth May flowers.

Andrew Lang included this in his 1897 collection of folk tales and rhymes entitled ‘The Nursery Rhyme Book’ and the weather conditions it describes are as true today as they were then.

They can be explained scientifically when one considers the seasonal movements of the jet streams and the gulf streams, along with the increasing hours of sunshine during springtime. The clash of air rising from warmer land with that from the cold seas causes windy weather in March, especially in the west, and rain showers quickly followed by outbreaks of sun in April.

The UK’s position off the north-west of the European continent subjects it to a whole variety of weather phenomena. Snow is not unknown in springtime, but usually there are cold, not quite freezing nights, with warm days. After this, in May the plants are ready to display their beautiful flowers.

(Image: Kenneth Mallard at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)