Super-rare ‘Lemon Drizzle’ wet weather front to hit Peterborough

An extremely rare wet weather phenomenon is due to saturate our region this weekend.

The bizarre weather front – known as ‘Lemon Drizzle’ – will make the rainfall expected today and Sunday (April 1 and 2) have a distinct “lemony” taste and smell to it.

Local weather expert Ian Normel told the Peterborough Telegraph why this highly unusual weather event has occurred:

“The ‘Lemon Drizzle’ is caused by the atmosphere being seeded by unusually strong convection across the lemon growing fields over Southern Spain,” he said.

“This has pushed up across the UK, meaning any rain that falls may taste, and/or, have a lemony smell to it.”

It is believed that the inherent flatness of our region encourages convections of this kind to release the precipitation contained within more readily than hilly or mountainous areas.

Although unpolluted rain is slightly naturally acidic with a pH of around 5.6, the enhanced bitterness required to make rain taste and smell of lemons is exceedingly rare. Indeed, it is so rare that similar phenomena have only been reported (officially) a handful of times since records began.

The last officially recorded ‘Lemon Drizzle’ event was in the southern US state of Louisiana in 1989. On that occasion, an unseasonably powerful autumn convection – the so-called ‘Zest from the West’ – pushed across the Gulf of Mexico from the lemon growing regions of Tabasco in eastern Mexico.

That event was even more noteworthy as residents of New Orleans stated that – along with an evident taste of lemons – the rain that fell that day also had a strong “spicy” taste of Tabasco sauce.

James Jones, a keen weather observer and amateur stormchaser based in Eye said he is “excited” and “intrigued” about the upcoming anomaly.

“I’ve witnessed all kinds of crazy weather in my time, from three-fold megastorms to hailstones the size of cricket balls,” he said, adding “but I’ve never seen rain that tastes like lemons before.”

The excited 26-year-old said he and his friend would be out with their umbrellas, filming each other tasting the rain. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event,” he noted: “I want to get it on video for posterity.”

Current forecasts by the Met Office predict Saturday will be significantly wetter than Sunday.