The ridge of very high pressure brought us a sunny and fine, if chilly, Christmas Day. The northerly wind for much of the day was much lighter than the previous day with a maximum gust of 13mph. However, the very cold night meant the thermometer struggled to reach 3.3C during daylight hours being 4.7C below average, which meant it was the coldest Christmas Day since December 2010 when the thermometer only reached a chilly -0.1C.
During the late evening, the thermometer having fallen to a minimum of -0.6C at 19.47, saw it reverse the trend and begin to recover as the wind had slowly backed into the west.
Boxing Day arrived dull and gloomy with thick cloud from the approaching Storm Bella. As a result the thermometer at 08.00 read 4.4C and the air mass then coming from a southwesterly direction.
The barometric pressure has been falling for the past twenty-four hours having already dropped 11mb with a current reading of 1022mb. This is the result of approaching Storm Bella that in the North Atlantic has two centres of exceptionally low pressure close together with readings of 955mb and 965mb. Warnings have been given of exceptionally strong winds, up to 50mph, will arrive in this area around midnight.
