Friday 20th February
Yet again we had another cloudy and dismal day on Thursday, that due to the continuous cloud cover resulted in a minimal rise or fall in the temperature. The day started off at 3.5C and ended up, after twenty-four hours, with a maximum of just 5.4C on Friday morning. The minimum of 3.4C was 1.5C above average resulting in a minimal diurnal range of just 2.0C. However, it was a dry day with the northwesterly breeze relatively light.
Friday did start brighter although the radar indicated that during the morning we will receive another dose of rain. The warmer air has already arrived with a temperature of 6.6C at 09.00, the highest for three days, and continuing to rise.
As forecast, the barometric pressure has risen significantly, 22mb over the past twenty-four hours, as the Azores high pushes across southern England and extends across the Continent. Changes have already occurred as the wind backed into the southwest late yesterday.
Temperatures by day and night over the next few days will rise well above average for late February, bringing an end to the recent brief, cold spell. The air stream will be moist, having travelled extensively over the surface of the Atlantic, picking up moisture has it heads towards us, thus the days into and after the weekend will bring mainly cloudy conditions with variable sunshine between the breaks. There will be no blocking high pressure to the east, as earlier in the month, so any depressions arriving over the UK will not linger over the UK depositing large quantities of rain, any precipitation is more likely to be of a showery nature.
The warmer air will have originated near the Azores having then travelled around the southern and western edges of the anticyclone, to then arrive over the UK.