On 02/04/2017 08:42, Col wrote:
On 01/04/2017 15:45, Norman Lynagh wrote:
Col wrote:

There were some around earlier but i seem to have missed most of showery
activity that was around in NW England earlier this morning.

But why do we have the term 'April showers' anyway? Convective shower
activity is surely prevalent in all months of the year, is there any
evidence
that in April it makes up a larger proportion of total rainfall,
compared to
frontal rain?

It's the month when the first of the 'home-grown' heavy showers and
thunderstorms start to develop over the land as a result of solar
heating of
the land. Earlier in the year, much of the shower activity develops
over the
relatively warm sea. In other words, April is the month when the
summer regime
first presents itself.

Yes, April is certainly the time when 'heat' showers first develop.
However to the public a shower is just a shower and they wouldn't know
if it was generated over the land or sea. So why not March, June or
November showers? What I was getting at was is showery activity in April
commoner than in other months?


Col, if you assume that April shower is a meteorological term then your
question is valid. However, I don't think it is such, but rather a folk
saying. This article in Wikipedia may help to bring a bit of light here
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_shower.

A forecaster of my acquaintance once told me that when he was a new
forecaster at an RAF station, he was asked at his briefing 'when will
the rain start' as he had forecasted rain later. He just threw out a
time at random (well about the time the rain was expected). It so
happened that it started to rain precisely at that time. He said that
his forecasts were treated as Gospel from that point on, even when they
were not as accurate as that. Just one occurrence at a time when it's
judicious can affect people's thinking for a long time. After all, we
all know that summers in our childhood were better than they are now.
But does the record confirm this?
Just my two pennyworth