It looks like this January (2024) could turn into a very anticyclonic month from this weekend, so I thought I would take a look back in the objective LWTLWT Lamb Weather Types are often used in UK-based analyses, with individual weather patterns based on the eight primary cardinal directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) plus cyclonic (C), anticyclonic (A) and unclassified (U) types. records, which started in 1871, and found that January 1992 was the most anticyclonic on record., although despite it being so anticyclonic, it never really managed to generate more than a few easterly days at the start of the third week.
MSLPMSLP Mean sea level pressure is the pressure at sea level, or, when measured at a given elevation on land, the station pressure reduced to sea level assuming an isothermal layer at the station temperature. that month across the UKUK The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. got close to 1050 hPahPa A Hectopascal is the SI unit of pressure and identical to the Millibar on the 26th as you can see from the chart for 12 UTCUTC Coordinated Universal Time or UTC is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time (such as UT1) at 0° longitude (at the IERS Reference Meridian as the currently used prime meridian) and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. It is effectively a successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)., the highest on that chart was 1049.0 hPa at Cynwyd in Denbighshire. I only have main synoptic hour data so it may have broken through 1050 hPa. Notice that they’re also plotted SYNOPSYNOP SYNOP (surface synoptic observations) is a numerical code (called FM-12 by WMO) used for reporting weather observations made by manned and automated weather stations. SYNOP reports are typically mad hourly and consist of groups of numbers (and slashes where data is not available) describing general weather information, such as the temperature, barometric pressure and visibility at a weather station. reports from Cape Wrath, Butt of Lewis and Binbrook on that chart, those were the days 😉
One other point about January 1992 is that it was also a El NinoEl Niño El Niño 'The Boy' is the warm phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation and is associated with a band of warm ocean water that develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific month.