Category: News

The persistent north-easterly winds continue to produce dry days with copious sunshine. Although the brisk winds, up to 20mph, take the edge of the temperature, the last two days have peaked at 5C above the average for April.
The rainfall total remains at 6.6mm but the total evaporation of moisture into the atmosphere from ground and water surfaces, also plant life, is now in excess of 50mm.
The total hours of strong sunshine for April is now 128 hours with the solar energy on the 20th being the highest value since the end of July 2014. Yesterday there were 13.74 hours of string sunshine. The UV levels this past week have been at the moderate level.

After a very cool day on the 19th with a maximum of only 10.6C, nearly 3C below the average, the air temperature dropped almost continuously overnight to a low of -1.4C at 0618, the coldest night since 25th March.
Another 3.25 hours of sunshine yesterday pushed the figure for the month through the 100 barrier to a total of 102.6 hours.

Saturday 18th produced 11.8 hours of strong sunshine and the highest daily total for solar energy since the end of July.
The strong easterly winds persist and with a low of 3.3C overnight produced an equivalent temperature, due to wind chill, of 0.4C.
April 2015 so far is proving similar to the first half of April 2011 with minimal rainfall during the first three days and many totally dry days that produced 5.4mm for the whole month. Currently for April 2015 the rainfall total is 6.6mm and fourteen dry days.

The humidity at 0800 today was the lowest since July 2014 with a reading of 75%. The minimal rainfall of 6.6mm this month, unusually warm sunshine and twelve totally dry days combined with drying easterly winds yesterday have resulted in 36mm of moisture evaporating into the atmsphere.

Yesterday the thermometer peaked at 22.8C. This was the warmest day since April 23rd in 2011 when the record was set at 26.2C. There was continuous sunshine amounting to 12.77 hours, the highest recorded since the new instrument was installed exactly one year ago.
At 0800 today the soil temperature at a depth of 5cm reached its highest this year at 10.7C.