Author: Eric Gilbert

Rain fell for many hours during daylight and darkness on Thursday to bring another 15.9mm of rainfall. That brought the December rainfall total to 102.9mm, which is 12mm above the 35-year average. This is not exceptional for this month as since my records began in 1984 we have had fourteen wetter Decembers, but, there are still 12 days to go before the end of the month.

The wind, again gusting strongly at times and mainly from the south, reached a maximum of 32mph.

The warm air from Iberia fell away a little during the day dropping away to 7.2C and stabilising overnight.

Friday started with heavy, thick cloud as a very wide weather front continued to bring steady rainfall.

There was a slow rise in temperature on Wednesday after a frosty start. However, the rise in temperature after around 18.00 was significant as warm air, brought to us on a southerly breeze from Iberia, lifted the thermometer from around 6C to a low of 9.6C at 01.30 early Thursday and a subsequent rise to 10.7C at 08.00 on Thursday morning.

The wind was strong throughout Wednesday with a peak gust of 35mph at 18.29 Wednesday evening during another three hours of steady rain. Another rain band arrived just after 01.00 Thursday morning bringing the daily rainfall total to 13.9mm. The monthly rainfall now stands at 87.0mm, which is 96% of the 35-year December average.

Thursday arrived with total cloud cover and rain again beginning to fall.

The ground temperature at a depth of 5cm read 8.9C at 08.00 on Thursday, the warmest the ground has been all month at that time.

No sun, no UV and below average temperature made Tuesday a day to forget. The thermometer struggled to reach 6.0C, being 2C below average.

The one redeeming feature was the lack of wind when for hours at a time the anemometer did not move and a maximum gust of just 7mph for the second consecutive day.

Overnight the sky cleared allowing a brief ground frost to form in the early hours with a minimum of 0.3C at 08.00 on Wednesday morning With a clear sky there is the possibility of sunshine, when it rises above the horizon. Fortunately, although some mist is evident at dawn no thick fog has yet formed.

Monday was not only memorable for its total cloud cover blocking out any possibility of sunshine but also no UV light triggered the sensor.

It was a very calm day. The anemometer, for long periods of time, was stationary with the maximum gust registering just 7mph. The movement of the air mass started from the southwest, slowly backed into the south for the largest part of the day and then into the south east.

In the evening and overnight further rain fell amounting to 6.0mm bringing the monthly total to 71.6mm, which is 79% of the 35year December average.

Tuesday was very dark after dawn with thick cloud low over the Marlboorugh Downs giving foggy conditions limiting visibility to 200 metres.

Sunday brought us the greatest length of sunshine for a week with 2.9 hours but the rains returned in the evening with another 5.9mm. It was another breezy day with wind gusting to 25mph.

Temperatures by day and night were above average with 8.5C (+0.5C) and 4.6C (+2.4C).

Monday arrived with thin high cloud but with the wind having abated.