Scotland’s weather: After a soggy summer, legend warns of more

By ROSEMARY FREE
Published on 16/07/2012 00:00

AFTER one of the wettest Junes on record and a soggy start to July, Scots were yesterday left bracing themselves for another 40 days of unsettled weather.

With the period from April to June the wettest in the UK since records began, rain on the fabled St Swithin’s Day left Scotland facing a wash-out summer.

According to the legend, if it rains on 15 July, the next 40 days will be wet, and yesterday, while most of Britain was given a much-needed respite from persistent downpours, Scotland experienced showery weather.

A spokeswoman for the Met Office said the forecast for Scotland remained fairly unsettled for the foreseeable future. But while the continuing wet weather was bad news for most, for contestants in the weekend-long Tough Mudder event at Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfriesshire, the conditions were perfect.

The extreme challenge event is held in countries all over the world, and includes a ten to 12 mile obstacle course, with mud, fire and ice-water among the elements faced by competitors.

Almost 40mm of rain – nearly half the Scottish average for July – fell over Central Scotland during a 36-hour period between Tuesday and Wednesday last week. At the end of June, floods brought chaos to the transport system, with the two main London to Scotland train companies – East Coast and Virgin West Coast – suffering disruption to their services.

But the poor weather does not seem to have had a negative impact tourism. Figures published last week showed that overall visitor numbers to Scotland rose 5 per cent from April 2011 to March 2012, with a 6 per cent rise in UK visitors.

Figures for the north of Scotland show the region witnessed the largest rise in domestic visitors outwith Edinburgh, with a 10.2 per cent increase over the year, compared with 2010-11..