Sunday 7th December
Saturday started dry with some brightness but the cloud soon thickened with light rain mid-morning and again in the last afternoon, following a brief break after midday. Further rain bands arrived around 05.30 Sunday with more precipitation. The daily rainfall amount was 3.8mm. The last twenty-four hours, not surprisingly, brought well above average temperatures under the flow of warm, moist air carried on the southwesterly breeze. The maximum of 11.2C was logged at 13.11 and the minimum 6.7C at 01.59 in the early hours of Sunday, being +3.7C and +4.8C respectively.
The arrival of Sunday was dark, gloomy and damp. This was due to a succession of fragmented rain bands passing southern England since around 05.30. The day ahead will be mainly damp with light showers of rain. A narrower band of heavy rain was shown on the radar at 08.00 as just arriving over the west cast of Cornwall that will likely arrive here around midday.
The week ahead appears to be similar with bands of rain interspersed with brief drier interludes as the projected track of the jet stream, although waving a little, is principally driving low pressure systems towards the UK from the Atlantic. It looks though a deep, low pressure system will arrive on Tuesday that could produce a very wet day with the depression crossing over Ireland. The pressure gradient will be high, which will result in the wind strength increasing to 30mph or higher.
Interestingly, the depth of water in the River Kennet at Winterborne Monkton, close to where the springs rise for the start of the river, started to flow on December 1st before stopping on the 4th at 16.15 when the gauge indicated no depth of water. The gauge indicated that a flow of water began again on the 5th December at 07.15 and has continued to indicated a level since that time although variable, the highest of 0.19m was logged on the 6th at 04.45. The highs and lows obviously correlate with the wet spells this month. At 08.00 today the River Kennet at Winterborne Minton had a level of 0.1m whilst the River Kennet in Marlborough registered just 0.06m.