Once again the numerous showers, some very active with heavy rain shown on the rain radar, passed on a northeasterly trajectory to the northwest of Marlborough. There was a particularly heavy shower that glided past, just five miles north, at 15.30. However, there was a very brief, light shower at 19.50 that produced just 0.9mm. The sunshine between the variable cloud was very strong with the solar activity peaking at the top end of the ‘High’ category with the highest solar activity for a week with a peak burst of 1030 W/m2. The past night saw the thermometer not drop below 10.8C, logged at 04.40, as the sun rose over Marlborough at 04.50.
Sunday revealed a very sunny start to the new day with the temperature reaching 15.8C by 08.00.
The anticyclone has edged much closer as the depression departed, that has seen the barometric pressure rise to 1022.2mb at 08.00, the highest pressure this month. The forecast charts indicate that this anticyclone will continue to build and extend its influence so that the coming week will bring more very warm, dry and sunny weather with no indication of rain at the moment for the next few days.
During the winter I often mention wind chill when it is cold and windy that makes it feel colder outside on the skin than that indicated on a thermometer, referred to as the THW Index using temperature, humidity and wind strength data. During very warm and hot days, as recently, there is a different index, referred to as the THSW Index, that additionally uses solar activity to suggest what it might feel like outside on the skin when the sun shines strongly. An example was on Saturday at 15.30 when the sun shone strongly resulting in an air temperature of 22.2C when the THSW Index indicated it felt more like 28.2C outside.
Puffins have beautiful markings, a strikingly coloured bill and a comic gait that are sometimes referred to as ‘sea parrots’ but in Northumberland as a ‘tommy noddy’.