Author: Eric Gilbert

Monday gave us some brief sunshine in the early morning, before the cold front brought thick cloud and obscured the sun, amounting to just 10 minutes. The influence of the initially westerly breeze and lack of sunshine meant a day with below average temperatures with a maximum of just 12.9C at 13.47 (1C below average). Just after 5pm the cloud thickened, the wind veered into the north and the thermometer began to fall steadily in the cooler air. This made yesterday the wettest day this month with just 1.1mm, bringing the total for April to 2.1mm making it the second driest April since my records began in 1984. Yesterday is classed as a wet day, which meteorologically is any twenty-four hour period with precipitation equal to or exceeding 1mm.
To sum up yesterday: lowest night temperature, lowest solar, lowest evaporation, strongest wind gust and wettest day.
There was an air frost for a couple of hours starting just after 3am this morning, giving a minimum of -0.7C. There was little evidence of this due to the very dry air, 81% humidity at 08.00.

Sunday gave us a very sunny morning with 5.28 hours in total, which became intermittent in the afternoon. However, with light breezes, maximum gust of 12mph, the thermometer rose to a high of 15.4C, still above average for April. Overnight the temperature fell steadily until a minimum of 2.9C was reached at 06.30.
At dawn there was quite thick valley fog with visibility down to 300m. However as the sun got to work it slowly began to lift but the leading edge of the much heralded cold front could be seen advancing from the north west and by 07.30 it had totally obliterated the glorious early morning sunshine.

Saturday gave us another sunny day with the welcome return of strong sunshine amounting to 9.44 hours. There was a light breeze from the north, which made it feel a little chilly out of the sun, but nevertheless the thermometer peaked at 15.8C, which is 2C above the average for April. Overnight the thermometer fell rapidly to a low of 0.2C at 06.16 this morning before glorious sunshine started to raise the temperature to 3.8C at 08.00. There was a sharp ground frost but we just escaped an air frost, which gardeners at this time of the year fear with so much blossom on the fruit trees and tender plants ready for planting out. However, just before 07.30 a fog bank slowly rolled in from the east temporarily obscuring the sun but by 08.00 it had burnt its way through the mist.
Rainfall this month amounts to just 1mm when the 33-year average is 59.7mm, with little rain on the forecast. Winter had a deficit of 99m and March 9mm so there is a large deficit of precipitation over the last five months. This is compounded by the considerable evaporation from ground sources and plant life this month amounting to 53mm.

For the second day running, yesterday gave us no strong sunshine although the slightly warmer air pushed the thermometer to a maximum of 15.2C (+1.3C), the highest for a week. With cloud cover overnight resulting from the week weather front transitting the country, the thermometer did not drop below 9.5C giving us the warmest start to the day this month. As a consequence of the higher day and night time temperatures the soil at a depth of 5cm is the warmest it has been since October 29th at 11.3C. However, with the forecast of a brief cold spell next week, this is likely to drop significantly.
Intermittent sunshine has greeted this morning but no rain in the immediate forecast with just 1mm in total this month so far.