A few more wet days in May and then a dry start to summer
Netherlands residents will have to endure a few more rainy days in May before summer starts out dry on Saturday, according to the meteorological institute KNMI. While there is little chance of rain on the first days of summer, the days will still be mostly cloudy and on the cool side, with maximums in the high teens and low twenties.
Wednesday will be soaking wet, with showers throughout the country and throughout the day. The eastern half of the Netherlands will get the most rain and also has a chance of thunderstorms. The western half will start getting dryer during the afternoon. Maximums will climb to between 16 and 18 degrees degrees.
Thursday will be cloudy, with showers moving from west to east across the country in the morning. In the afternoon, most of the rain will be in the east. Maximums will be between 17 and 19 degrees, with a moderate wind first from the southwest and then the northwest.
Friday will also see a few showers and maximums between 17 and 19 degrees. There will be a little room for sunshine, with a moderate wind from the north.
Saturday is the first day of summer, but it won’t feel like summer. “The weekend will be dry but quite cool with a northerly wind and cloud fields,” the KNMI said. Maximums on Saturday and Sunday will range between 16 and 21 degrees. After the weekend will also be dry, with gradually more sunshine and temperatures around 20 degrees.
According to Weeronline, the spring was the second wettest on record, with an average of 254 mm of rain falling across the country. Typically, the Netherlands gets around 157 mm of rain in spring. The wettest spring on record was in 1983, with an average of 282 mm of rain across the country. With the large amounts of rain, the spring was also gloomier than usual, getting only 508 hours of sunshine on average across the country, compared to the typical 576 hours.
This spring also equaled the high-temperature record of 2007, with an average temperature of 11.7 degrees. Typically, the average temperature in spring is 9.9 degrees. And it broke the record for the fewest frost days - temperatures dipped below zero in De Bilt only once in the past months. Usually, the Netherlands gets 13 nights with below-freezing temperatures in spring.
