Category: News

A light snow shower, producing a depth of approximately 1cm, fell before dawn.

Evidence that the sun’s strength is increasing was a value for high solar radiation of 538 watts/square meter yesterday, the highest since October 21st 2014.
This morning, as the wind was gusting to 28 mph and the air temperature registered 2C, it produced a wind chill value of -2.2C.
As the Polar Low passed over Southern England during the past twenty-four hours the barometer fell to its lowest point since February 2014 with a minimum of 974.5mb early this morning.

Yesterday was notable for the very high winds that continued for much of the day with maximum gusts of 35mph between 11.00 and 11.30. The light showers totalled 1.1mm for the daily total. A ground frost occurred overnight with a minimum of 1.2C air temperature but no snow reported. The barometric pressure dropped 39mb over the last two days with a very low reading of 989mb this morning and still falling.

There have been just six totally dry days this month so far and the total rainfall of 89mm is close to the long-term average of 91.9mm. This contrasts with the record rainfall for January last year with a total of 219.1mm.
The last two days have seen temperatures recover from the frosty days of last week with a maximum of 9.1C yesterday, almost 3C above the average for January.

The UV value has started to increase over the last few days after the very low or non-existent values during the last two months. Today the value was 0.9 (range 0 – 10+) the highest since November 20th and the solar energy was the highest since November 9th 2014. It is not surprising, therefore, that there were 6.5 hours of direct sunshine, close to the 6.6 last monday, which has produced maximum temperatures close to the average for January after a week of very cold days.