Author: Eric Gilbert

The cold Continental Air has now given way to warmer and moist Atlantic Air thus the temperature was above average yesterday at 8.8C. During the late afternoon the wind veered from the persistent northeasterly direction to the southeast that combined with cloud overnight meant the lowest temperature was 7.5C.
The thick low cloud meant it was a foggy to start to the day with visibility down to 1100m at 08.00

What a change and pleasure it was to see the sun again yesterday, 4.46 hours, and if hazy, blue sky. This pushed the thermometer to 10.3C, the second highest for this month and 3C above the mean for February. The strength of the wind was noticeable with a maximum gust of 31 mph at 13.35 yesterday, this combined with the sunshine, meant that the evaporation from ground sources and plant life was 1.65mm, the highest since early October.
After a minimum of 1.5C this morning the cloud has returned blocking out any possibility of sunshine.

The maximum temperature by day yesterday was 1.6C but as the evening approached the thermometer slowly rose to a maximum of 5.2C at 00.43 and then slowly fell away to reach 3.3C at 08.00. No sunshine or rainfall yesterday but the wind, on several occasions, touched 26mph.
This morning there is a dramatic change from the previous days of thick cloud and showers as the thin cloud is allowing weak sunshine to break through but as the wind is still gusting to over 20mph the wind chill is making it feel more like -1C.

The last twenty four hours have been interesting weather wise. The wind backed slightly into a more northerly quadrant and picked up in speed giving a wind chill factor that meant it felt more like -3C. The maximum reached at 13.56 yesterday was 1.7C, which began to fall as the first very light snow started to arrive just before 3pm. By 4pm the flakes had grown in size. Around 4.30pm there appeared to be small hail in the shower, which unlike the snow flakes that land softly, bounced on impact with the ground. By then the thermometer had fallen to 0.3C and reached its minimum of -0.6C yesterday evening at 18.36.
There was a further fall of light snow overnight, which meant the total precipitation was 1.2mm, having gently melted the snow this morning, which had accumulated in the rain gauge.
This morning the cloud is a little higher but thick enough to block out any possible sunshine and a temperature of 0.4C at the time of reading at 08.00.
The ‘Snow Moon’, appeared after dusk when the showers had ceased and before further cloud arrived. It is the name given to the February full moon, because historically it’s away been the snowiest month in America, I read.