Thursday 19th February
Wednesday was a cold, dreary and uninspiring day, best forgotten! The thin cloud cover meant no UV light triggered the UV sensor, the maximum of 4.3C at 12.38 was exactly 4C below average, the highest solar radiation of just 96W/m2 was the lowest this month, compared to 580W/m2 on Monday. The situation was exacerbated by a brisk wind from the east that produced a wind chill, for example, at 13.00 the thermometer read 4.3C but the calculated wind chill factor meant outside it felt more like 1.9C on exposed skin.
The other depressing factor was the rain, brief at first when observed at 15.00, then steady with modest falls from just before 15.45. The precipitation was from a slow moving depression, moving across southern England. The automatic rain gauge indicated rain every hour, except between 03.00 and 04.00 early Thursday, before further modest hourly totals were recorded. The rainfall for the past twenty-four hours amounted to 13.9mm that took my monthly total to 112.1mm, being 165% of my 42-year record. Whilst on the subject of rainfall, I note that the past Winter has seen a total of 415mm of precipitation, which makes it, at the moment, the third wettest winter since this station started in 1984, and we have another ten days left in February. Another 19mm during the rest of February would push the winter of 2025/26 into second position.
Thursday revealed yet another dull, dreary view out of the window with moisture in the air, humidity at 08.00 was 96%. The low cloud was again draping the top of the Marlborough Downs and Savernake Forest reducing visibility to around 1000m. The culprit is another depression, which is currently edging its way southeastwards towards the Channel and France.
The forecast synoptic chart indicates that the high pressure towards the southwest, an Azores high, will this evening push a ridge across the country again before it topples across France and Iberia then extending access eastern Europe over the weekend. This will result in much milder, but moist air from the middle Atlantic, travelling around its western flank. By Friday, temperatures will begin to rise and over the weekend into next week maximum temperatures will likely be well above average for late February, however, it will be moist air, without, thankfully at the moment, any indication of prolonged heavy rain, that will mean predominantly cloudy conditions with brief sunshine between the breaks in the cloud.