There was no change on Thursday from the recent gloomy conditions under continuous thick, low cloud brought in on the cool easterly breeze. The thermometer struggled to reach a maximum of 3.7C at 13.46, being 4.6C below the long term average, with the strongest gust of 14 mph logged at 00.25 early Friday. The minimum of 1.2C, which was 0.7C below average, was recorded at 19.36 in the early evening of Thursday.
Friday revealed the first early signs of a change in the persistent cloudy and cool conditions. The wind overnight had slowly veered from the east to east-southeast and then southeast, a less cool direction. The cloud is higher but there is still total cover although the visibility has improved without misty conditions.
The humidity level at 08.00 was 76.5%, the lowest since the beginning of December so the air is slowly becoming less moist that would indicate thinner and higher cloud cover today, not sure that would extend to any breaks in the cloud therefore we are not likely to see any sunshine, unless very brief and weak. The solar radiation sensor was woken just before 07.40, not seen so early for over a week.
The radar charts show the very large depression in mid-Atlantic has been making slow prepress towards the UK with rain in the west country late on Thursday. Today, light rain had reached Somerset by 08.00 with heavy rain crossing Cornwall and Devon. The barometric pressure is still, high-up up 1mb since yesterday, as the anticyclone resists the advancing depression so there so no indication of rain here today although the cloud will slowly thicken as the day progresses. The pressure reading at 08.00 was still high at 1023.5mb.
N.B. My new professional weather station showed a gust of wind on Thursday reaching 142mph at 08.15. That was obviously a glitch in the electronics that I cannot delete as in the older station. The technicians are working at producing a solution, mine is not the only complaint. In the good old days I could manually access each item of data using a button to correct my data but not now – is that progress?