Thursday 5th February
Wednesday began bright and improved as the morning progressed with substantial amounts of sunshine between variable cloud, especially around noon. It was the warmest day for a week with a maximum of 9.9C logged at 13.49 being 1.6C above average. It was a dry day and under the very welcome sunshine the UV level peaked at 0.9, the highest since 2nd November. The sunshine, not very strong in February but very welcome, produced a peak solar radiation of 468W/m2 at 12.28, almost five tines the strength as occurred on the 2nd under the thick cloud cover.
Cloud was observed beginning to build just before dusk as the next depression approached the UK that then thickened and gave us a mild night that saw the thermometer log a minimum of 5.8C at 06.22 being 3.8C above average.
Sadly, the start to Thursday revealed that the rain had returned and had began just before 07.00, light in nature, but more will arrive as the morning progresses.
The forecast charts indicate that once again a low-pressure system has arrived from the Atlantic and has come against the high pressure to the east. It will hover just to the west of the UK and Ireland for the next few days, so back to cloud and intermittent rain, perhaps less than earlier in the week, from Friday. The weekend at the moment looks warmer with light rain on Saturday and drier on Sunday as the depression eases northwards with the air stream veering towards the south.
The images of the ground covered in a carpet of snowdrops are still from Welford Park, near Newbury, a family home for over 400 years. It was once the site of a monastery until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536, then turned to a deer-hunting lodge for Henry VIII.