Those swirling lines and triangular symbols on a weather map are a language. Once you can read it, a single chart tells …
Sharing your station’s data to networks like Weather Underground and the Ambient network is free, easy, and turns your h…
Measuring air temperature accurately is far harder than it looks, and most home stations get it wrong for one avoidable …
Fog is simply a cloud at ground level, but the different ways it forms explain why some mornings are socked in and other…
A heat dome can lock a region into days of dangerous, record-breaking heat. The mechanism behind it is a particular trap…
La Niña reshuffles weather patterns across the globe in broadly predictable ways. Here’s what the pattern is, and the ki…
Glasgow sits in west-central Scotland on the River Clyde, close to the Atlantic and open to its weather systems, at approximately 55.86°N, 4.25°W. It has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen Cfb) — mild, very wet, cloudy and changeable — and its western position makes it one of the rainier major cities in Britain, markedly wetter than Edinburgh on the opposite coast, though the Gulf Stream keeps it mild for its latitude.
Summer, from June to August, is mild and often cloudy, with July the warmest month — average highs around 19–20°C and cool nights. Warm, dry spells do occur, and 2022 saw temperatures reach into the low 30s in the region, but most summers are changeable, with frequent showers even in the warmest months. The far-northern latitude brings long, light summer evenings.
Winter, from December to February, is cold, wet and windy but mild by the standards of its latitude, with December and January the coldest — average highs around 6–7°C and lows near or a little above freezing. Snow falls on the surrounding hills more than in the city, where it seldom lies for long, and the biggest winter hazard is the procession of Atlantic storms bringing heavy rain and strong gales.
Glasgow is notably wet, receiving on the order of 1,100–1,250 mm of rain a year — among the highest of any major UK city — as its western position places it directly in the path of moist Atlantic fronts, and rain falls on well over 170 days a year, in every month. Flash flooding has occasionally followed intense summer downpours, as in the storms of 2002. Live rainfall, humidity, and pressure readings for the city are shown in the panels above.
Glasgow's defining weather trait is simply how often it rains: its exposure to the Atlantic on Scotland's wetter western side means grey, damp, drizzly days are frequent year-round, and locals reach readily for the Scots word 'dreich' to describe them. Autumn and winter bring the strongest of the European windstorms that regularly track across the west of Scotland.
To follow any single measurement in Glasgow more closely, use our live instruments: the online barometer for atmospheric pressure, the thermometer for temperature, the hygrometer for humidity, the anemometer for wind speed, the wind vane for wind direction, and the rain gauge for rainfall.