Monday 22nd September
The effects of the change in wind direction were felt on Sunday as the air stream, brought down from a northeasterly direction, meant a chilly day and cold night. The thermometer reached a peak of 15.0C by 15.13 Sunday afternoon in pleasant sunshine, however, it was the coolest day since 8th May being a significant 4.0C below my long-term September average. Under the combination of clear skies overnight and still air conditions, any residual warmth quickly dissolved into the atmosphere that resulted in the coldest night since 3rd May with a minimum of just 2.8C logged at 04.53, once again a significant difference from the average of 5.9C.
Monday greeted us with sunshine after sunrise from a clear sky, but this did little to raise the low temperature as the thermometer had only risen to 5.3C by 08.00 making it the coldest start to a day at that time since 6th May.
The soil temperature at a depth of 5cm very clearly shows the arrival of autumn with temperatures of 16.6C, 15.7C, 15.2C, 10.1C and 7.0C respectively over the past five days, read at 08.00.
The anticyclone is now dominating our weather, and will do so up to Thursday at least with fine, mainly sunny weather but depressed temperatures due to the flow of cool air from a northerly quadrant. The barometric pressure has risen another 11mb over the past twenty-four hours with a reading of 1027.6mb at 08.00, with the centre of the high over Southern Ireland. It is the highest barometric pressure the month.
Storm Gabrielle that became a hurricane on Sunday is expected to pass east of Bermuda as its track now indicates it veering into a northeasterly direction back into the mid-Atlantic. It remains to be seen what effect, if any, it has on our weather next week, that depends if it eventually gets caught up in the Gulf Stream heading our way but by that time it will have decreased in strength significantly.
Westonbirt Arboretum. There are two main areas in the arboretum. The Old Arboretum is a carefully designed landscape with several avenues and a number of rare and exotic trees from across the globe dating back to the 1850s.