Lancashire's lack of sunshine and gloomy New Year 2008

A rare sight: the sun setting in Lytham

We're not known for sunny climes here in Lancashire - but why exactly do we get so little sunshine?

Dr Rob MacKenzie from the Lancaster Environment Centre of Lancaster University explains the reason the sun has so rarely got his hat on here.

And while the sun may not shine often on the county, there is some good news for Lancastrians.

The geography of Lancashire means we escape the worst of the weather extremities says Dr Rob MacKenzie...

"The Lancashire Plain like all of western Britain sits at the end of the north Atlantic Storm Track.

Boost

The inhabitants of the Plain suffer fewer of the really ferocious and extreme weather events that befall those living on the high ground all around.

The heaviest rainfalls occur when weather systems are given a boost by being forced to rise over the high ground of Cumbria, the Pennines, or the mountains of North Wales.

The Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder picks up strong sunshine

Really strong winds occur on the exposed western shores of Ireland and the south-western UK, before the braking effect of air passing over land takes effect.

But the Lancashire Plain can suffer from gloominess as the Atlantic storms pass, carrying with them vast shields of cloud.

Daisy-chains

The storms have a nasty habit of coming in daisy-chains, one after the other, relentlessly replacing one cloud band with the next, with hardly a break to let the sunshine through.

When that happens, the lack of strong sunshine to re-set your circadian clock and to lift your spirits, seems worse than the persistent rain.

Of the 15,330 or so days in our 40-year record at Hazelrigg, near Lancaster, one quarter (4448 days) have had less than half-an-hour of strong sunshine as recorded by our Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder.

Of these gloomy days, 2944, about one-in-five of all days, have occurred in runs of two days or more. The maximum number of consecutive days with less than half-an-hour of sunshine in each we have recorded is 11. This occurred just once, between 26 December 2007 and the 5 January 2008.

During this period there was actually only 12 minutes of sunshine on the 3 January; the rest of the time no direct sunshine was recorded at all.

Lush greenery

Does it matter that the people of NW England experience such long periods of gloom? We don't know, but we can surmise that it might not be exactly conducive to good mental health, not to mention efficient vitamin D production.

For those of us living on the Lancashire Plain, though, such possible negative effects are made up for by the clean taste of the Atlantic air and the lush greenery the rains support ... and of course the feeling of joy when the sun does eventually appear!"

Dr Rob MacKenzie is Reader and Lecturer in Atmospheric Physics at the Lancaster Environment Centre of Lancaster University and Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society

Hottest day		33.7	Blackpool on 3rd July 1976
Coldest day		-21.9	St Michaels-on-Wyre on 16th January 1881
Windiest day		91 mph	Fleetwood on 2nd January 1976
Sunniest month		336.1 hours	July 1955 at Blackpool

There is a special programme on the region's Wild Weather at 7.30pm on BBC One on Monday 20 September.