Another record-breaking year

A review of the weather of 2022

The weather seems to be becoming ever more erratic, as climate scientists predicted as one effect of global warming. And the Epping Weather Station has been able to put the data on that, thanks to the accumulation of what is now 38 years of weather records collected firstly by weather scientist George Booth and more lately by the Town Council’s weather station.

In Epping, six of the first seven months were drier than our long term averages – indeed, the first half year was our driest on record. Then the heavens opened, and the second half of the year was much wetter than usual! Meanwhile the summer became extremely hot, with a new record temperature of 38.8°C set (and equalled next day) in July.

Overall, 2022 was our eighth driest year with 619mm rain, and the mean temperature for the year as a whole was a new record at 12.0°C.

Other new monthly records* set include:

January – driest January on record with 17.0mm rain; record warmest January day max of 15.4°C on New Year’s Day

March – highest barometric pressure for March of 1043.0

April – record wind gust for April of 44mph (gale force 8)

June – record day max temperature for June of 33.5°C

July – record day max (for both July and overall) of 38.8°C; record high day minimum of 22.9°C; driest ever July (and third driest of any month) at just 1.8mm rain

August – record wettest August day with 48.0mm rain (and third wettest August overall, despite 2nd fewest rain days on record!)

* our wind and air pressure records only cover 14 years of records, unlike the 38 years for temperature and rainfall

The graphs show the warming trends quite starkly. Year by year, the mean annual temperature trend is upward – a typical year now is more than 2°C warmer than in the 1980s. This past record warm year, for every month except December, both the mean daily maximum and minimum temperatures were above the long term average.

Note that due to connectivity issues in October-November, these figures were compiled using a combination of other weather stations within a mile radius