Surprisingly, Thursday did not see the cloud begin to thin and break as forecast. The cloud that had drifted in from the North Sea overnight persisted all day and in fact eased even further westwards as the day progressed. As a result the temperatures by day and night were depressed making it feel chilly in the brisk northeasterly breeze. The maximum of 15.4C was 1.9C below my long-term average making it the coolest day since the 6th. There were occasional glimpses of very brief bursts of sunshine when the cloud thinned. But overnight the cloud did disperse so that we had another cool night that saw the thermometer drop away to 5.2C at 05.34, just after sunrise at 05.14, being 1.8C below average.
Friday brought us the return of welcome sunshine after sunrise that had lifted the temperature to 11.3C by 08.00. After 07.30 small areas of light, high cloud did drift across from the North Sea, on the continuing brisk northeasterly breeze, but minimal interruption of sunshine.
The anticyclone, centred just to the north of Scotland, continues to push down south over the Uk and across France and built further, an increase of another 2mb since yesterday, with a barometric pressure reading of 1027.4mb at 08.00 making it the highest pressure all month and since 10th April. The forecast charts indicate that this high pressure will keep the dry, sunny weather well into next week.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t realised that when the website was rebuilt at the end of last year it had inadvertently restricted the width of the data sheets, making viewing less than ideal. This situation, hopefully, will be addressed soon, not something I can remedy, I just fill in the spaces!
There will be a new image each day from the Abbotsbury Swannery, that will continue into next week. The Swannery was established by Benedictine Monks who built a monastery at Abbotsbury during the 1040s. The monks farmed the swans to produce food for their lavish Dorset banquets.