Tuesday 27th January
The unsettled weather continued on Monday, however, the rain from Storm Chandra did not arrive until 21.30, being light at first and heavier from just after 02.00, early Tuesday. It was another twenty-four hours when the temperature did not drop overnight, as is usual in winter, but rose from a low of 5.8C at 19.01 to reach 7.6C by 08.00 Tuesday. This was entirely due to the air stream arriving from the Atlantic bringing the thick, low cloud.
There was a drop of 20.5mb in the barometric pressure over the past twenty-four hours as the deep low pressure of Storm Chandra edged closer. A drop of at least 20mb in a twenty-four hour period is classed as a ‘weather bomb’. The barometric pressure at 08.00 Tuesday read 980.3mb and is beginning to stabilise as Storm Chandra edges away.
The daily rainfall total was 19.2mm making it the third wettest day since the 8th (23.0mm) and 15th (21.4mm). The monthly total now stands at 142.6mm, which is 159% of my 42-year record. Although this month has brought us many wet days the total so far makes it the fifth wettest January day since this station began in 1984. However, with more rain forecast for the remaining four days of the month, the current total is likely to rise much further. The trend for January rain over the past 42 years shows that the rainfall for the month is slowly increasing from around 85mm in the late 1980s to around 92mm in the 2020s.
Tuesday began dark and wet under the thick cloud from Storm Chandra. This weather system is slowly edging northwestwards over Ireland, towards Iceland, with the result that the significant rainfall from the weather front is easing considerably and the peak wind speed has been falling since around 04.00.
The rest of the week will bring us more unsettled weather as the forecast track of the jet stream indicates that it will continue to hustle across the Atlantic further low pressure systems, that by Thursday will see the arrival of another deep depression.
Snowdrops have begun to open indicating that nature is beginning to stir, so I will attach a selection of images of Galanthus over the next week or so.