July 2012- not much improvement

Blue sky being somewhat rare this summer so far

The second month of summer only offered a slight improvement over the first, this courtesy of the Jet stream that moved further north than it had been and sat roughly mid-country. The jet stream had a buckle to our South West which was was still allowing low pressure systems to hit us from the atlantic.

A real taste of summer hit around the 22nd with temperatures soaring to the late twenty's and locally even higher and 6 glorious days of zero rainfall!

Mud tracks at the war and peace show, Hop Farm,
Paddock Wood, Kent

This brief respite only served to highlight what a shocking summer we are having in 2012, and despite those high temperatures July was the second coldest since I began keeping records in 2005 (marginally beaten by July 2011 by 0.2C and that was the coldest for quite a few years.

August will have to be exceptional to rescue the summer, and thats not looking likely!


Hawley Stats:
Mean Temp. 16.4
High.             31.1
Low.              7.9
High Wind.    32 mph

SE England Stats:
Temp anomaly: -1.1
Rain %.             176
Sun %                86

June 2012 and the washout continues.

view from the bottom of my garden

The first month of summer gone and with the first two week of July following the same dismal pattern, what is happening with our weather that is making this summer the worst I can remember?

jet streams affecting our weather

According to the Met Office, averaged across the UK, June 2012 has been the wettest since records began in 1910, the coolest since 1991, and the second dullest since records began (record for lowest sunshine in June is still 1987)




Its all down the the jet stream, the band of high winds in the upper atmosphere that forms a boundary between the cool air in the north and warm air in the south, its sitting to the south of the UK which is not its normal position and is driving wave after wave of low pressure systems that continue to deluge us with rain, and its been like this for three months now!


Here in Hawley I recorded 95.4 mm of rain, the highest total since I started keeping records in 2005, and to confirm the lack of sunshine the mean temperature for the month was a poor 14.5C, some 1.5C lower than my June average, it all adds up to a miserable summer so far.


As I mentioned above, up to mid- July the story is the same with 55.6 mm of rain recorded so far.
There are signs that the jet stream is starting to move north allowing High pressure to build from the south so I am hopeful for a drier (and warmer) final two weeks and a substantially better August to rescue our summer!


June Stats:
High temp: 28.9 
Low temp:    3.8
Rain:          95.4mm
High wind:   37.0mph

May 2012 - cold start hot end.

May started in the same vein as March with cold and damp conditions prevailing until the 17th when warm air flooded the UK from the south and gave us a much welcome taste of summer with a mini heatwave that lasted 10 days. This year so far is proving to be very interesting weatherwise with extremes of temperature, wind and rain in virtually every month!

stunning buttercups

a welcome view after April!

So what does this mean for summer 2012? I think given what has happened so far this year I can see this trend continuing which at some point means another heatwave, but when and for how long (and indeed how often) is anyone's guess.

Stats: high temp.    26.8C
          low temp.     1.3C
          mean temp.  13.0C
          high wind.    32 mph
          rain.              35 mm

April 2012-- wet! wet! wet!

The dry winter and exceptionally dry March has given way to one of the wettest April's since record began.
Here in Hawley I recorded 82mm of rain, to put this into context below is the rainfall amounts recorded over the previous 6 years.

a very wet month!

2006: 38.4mm
2007: 4.8mm
2008: 0.2mm
2009: 22.1mm
2010: 13.5mm
2011: 1.2mm (6 days data missing)

The combined totals of these months is still 2mm short of 2012's which just proves what an incredibly wet month it was, good news for the farmers and water companies though!

Stats: high temp.   18.2C
          low temp.    -4.4C
          mean temp.   8.1
          high wind.    38.0 mph
          rain.              82.0 mm

March 2012

cloudless skies

The first month of spring started as February ended with warm sunshine and cloudless skies, a high temperature of 17.5C recorded on the 1st and this was to set the scene for the rest of the month.
With only 11.8mm of rain it was an exceptionally dry month that has forced many water companies to issue hose pipe bans following three dry winters.

water levels low

Stats: high temp: 22.8C
         low temp:  -2.5
         mean:         7.8
         rain:            11.8mm
         high wind:   38.0

Winter 2011-2012 Summary

It's been a while since my last blog and I have decided to do monthly summaries so its easier to compare month for month in future years.
To supplement this I will also issue 'season summaries' so I thought I would start with the winter just gone.
December always brings the most anticipation if you like the prospect of a picture post card Christmas, little children with rosy red faces peering into brightly lit shop windows being briskly pulled away by mothers with fur collars and long scarves laden with bags of shopping, tree lined avenues, branches heavy with snow, lead laden skies that threaten more, and the prospect of arriving home to a roaring fire and a hot mug of soup...
The reality of December 2011 was far different from the picture that I have just described and completely different to the previous year that delivered the coldest start to winter for one hundred years.
There were many weather 'agencies' and hopeful amateurs that predicted 'snow-maggeddon' and although I was broadly accurate with my December forecast, I, like many others, were caught out by just how mild December turned out to be, the mean temperature for the month was 6.6C much warmer than 2010's 0.4C and the second warmest in Hawley since I started keeping records in 2005. ( for information, Dec 2006 was the warmest @ 7.2C) and of course no white Christmas!

So did things improve in January? with a mean of 6.0C it was colder than 2007 & 2008 (7.8C and 7.5C respectively) but again was a mild month overall, five nights mid-month recorded temparatures of -3.4 - 5.9 and that was really the highlights of January.
I predicted February would be the coldest month and indeed it delivered a reasonable snowfall, but it really was a month of two halves. For the first two weeks it looked like that the mean for the month would be below zero, but from mid-month onwards there was a dramatic change with un-seaonally warm temperatures that persisted until month end. Interesting stats: Lowest Temp, -10.3 Highest Temp: 19.8 and the mean ended up 4.3 ( second coldest since 2005)

So there it is, a rather boring winter and actually fairly typical of our winters of the last twenty years, the really cold weather never reached us and stayed in eastern Europe that in some places had the harshest winter for many, many years.

Snow At Last!

Field at the back of my house

Just a quick blog update to post a few pictures.

Apple enjoys the snow

It started snowing last night around 9:15 pm and by this morning I had 8cm (measured from the car roof) not mega amounts by any means but enough to transform the landscape which to me is why I love snow!

Today has seen the temperature just climb above 1C so a slow thaw has set in, which will mean icy conditions as the slush turns to ice overnight.

My road

Things look interesting as we head into the middle of the week as the deep cold affecting Europe will again march towards the UK bringing much depressed day time and night time temperatures so hard frosts and freezing fog will continue to ensure February is, at least until mid-month, a proper winter month!

Burying a car is always fun