Depicted as the rainy city, Manchester is not immune to a downpour. So much so, there’s even a website known as Rainchester that tracks the city’s rainfall. And it doesn’t look like the weather is about to change anytime soon… Experts have predicted that everywhere across the UK will get hotter and drier as climate change continues to affect our seasons, apart from Manchester.
Thanks to its reputation as a rain trap, the city is expected to continue seeing downpours – and that’s not just later today. The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has modelled how global warming will affect its properties until 2075 and said summers will be hotter and drier in all its gardens – with their Manchester property being an exception.
On average, Manchester has 150 rainy days a year, which makes it the most rainy city in England. However, Glasgow is the dampest city in the UK overall as it has 170 rainy days a year. Experts say this wet weather is due to the westerly winds drawing low pressure systems off the Atlantic, meaning Manchester tends to regularly bear the brunt of the rainfall over the North West.
Summer 2024 in the UK was the coolest since 2015, according to climate experts, the Met Office, but would have been considered warmer than average during 1961 to 1990. And although wet weather put quite the dampener on many summer holidays, rainfall was actually 5% below average.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for us Mancs but instead more bloom as the RHS has earmarked their Salford garden, RHS Bridgewater, for trees and other plant species that survive in wetter climates. Trees such as oaks, birches and beeches have grown in Britain for centuries, but are starting to suffer in the south of England as a result of the changing climate, as a result these are being considered for RHS Bridgewater’s new arboretum, a botanical garden aiming to preserve a wide range of species.
Jon Webster, curator of RHS Rosemoor in Devon, told The Guardian, “We saw hotter summers, drier summers, in most of our cases, whereas RHS Bridgewater was the only garden that remained fairly stable in its climate. It is the wettest garden in the RHS – it took the mantle from us.”
In comparison to the rest of the UK, RHS Bridgewater will become an oasis. The RHS’ four other gardens (Harlow Carr in North Yorkshire, Hyde Hall in Essex, Rosemoor in Devon and Wisley in Surrey) have already become drier and plant collections including 130 varieties of rhubarb, as well as rhododendrons and gooseberries, have already had to be moved north to RHS Bridgewater from RHS Wisley in Surrey.