Wednesday 24th December
The thick, low cloud on Tuesday, that was dragged in from the North Sea on a northeasterly breeze, produced misty conditions that lasted throughout the daylight hours and into the night. The day started with a temperature of 6.6C, 0.9C below average, and dipped a little to hover around 6C throughout the daylight hours before dropping a fraction around 17.00 to hover around 5C all night and a final dip after 07.00 to reach 4.1C at 08.00 on Wednesday. The brisk cool, northeasterly breeze, gusting to 22mph at its peak, produced a considerable wind chill. There was no precipitation, white or wet, no frost and no UV light triggered the UV sensor.
Wednesday after dawn revealed thick cloud that by 08.15 was breaking to reveal thin high cloud that could bring some brightness and possible sunshine as we move towards midday. The radar over the past few hours has shown the bank of cloud beginning to thin and clear from the east. However, that will not do much to raise the temperature. The wind from the east-northeast is still strong and producing a wind chill. At 08.40 the thermometer had dropped further to reach 3.4C but outside it felt more like 2.2C due to a significant wind chill.
The large area of high pressure has built further, adding 15mb to the barometric pressure since yesterday, with a reading of 1030.1mb at 08.00, which is the highest pressure for two months. The anticyclone, centred over southern Norway, will dominate our weather for the next few days and likely persist for a week, so there will be no major change in the wind direction until next Tuesday at least, with the blast of cold air persisting, restricting any rise in the general temperature. At night the minimum will hover around zero with an air frost likely developing in the early hours of some nights. At the moment it looks as if this relatively dry air stream will likely produce several mainly dry days ahead.