West Cornwall -Warm sea+unstable cold sector= .

[Graham Easterling]

Some really intense rain/hail showers. It was a noisy night.

When I got up at 8am the conservatory roof was still covered in hail from a shower 30 minutes earlier, despite an air temperature of around 6C. At 9am it was virtually dark again.

The SST is at a well above normal 11C (11.1C St Mary's Sound, 10.8C at both Perranporth & Porthleven). That's around 2C above normal. So cold sector air means even more showers than normal.

We still have a hosepipe ban despite Drift, the reservoir feeding Penzance/Newlyn overflowing like Niagara Falls after a wet spell. (Something of a talking point locally).The largest reservoir in the western half of Cornwall, Stithians, is >70% full & rising rapidly and given the amount of water in the rivers, will be be basically full by the end of March. In fact there was a flood alert downstream of Drift, so to prevent Newlyn from flooding we'd better turn the hosepipes on, to help drain some of the excess water in Drift! 

116mm of rain so far this month in Penzance. Much of the month, in warm sectors, there's been a big orographic effect, so the moors much wetter.

Graham

Penzance