So was it a cold April?

A review of the weather of April 2024

T.S. Eliot wrote that “April is the cruellest month”. He was writing about the impact of increasing daylight and burgeoning spring growth on someone who is depressed, but many have applied it to the vagaries of the weather in April. Everybody seems to think that April 2024 has been cold and unpleasant, but is this true?

Well, in fact April 2024 was, perhaps surprisingly, warmer than the long term average. The mean temperature for the month was 10.0°C, almost a full degree above the long term average of 9.1°C. Highest for the month was 22.2°C on 12th and 13th, which is higher than the max in all but ten of our 40 years of records. The lowest was 1.8°C on 22nd, and only three Aprils in our records had higher monthly minima, and this was the 16th April in 40 years not to record an air frost.

So why do we think it was so cold? Perhaps because the cold weather came in the second half of the month. Thus the average day maximum for the 1st to the 15th was a pleasant 16.7°C, whereas for the 16th to 30th it was a rather more chilly 12.8°C.

As far as rain goes, it was – surprise, surprise – another wet month. The total of 78.4mm was 55% more than the average of 50.6mm, and it was our seventh wettest April. That now makes it an astonishing eight months in a row now that the weather has been both warmer and wetter than the long term average. Wettest day was the 28th with 22.6mm, our fourth wettest April day. It rained on 16 days, just over the long term average of 14.6 days.

The chilly end to the month was due to a static high pressure system feeding persistent and often brisk north or north-westerly winds across the country. The strongest wind of the month was 37mph (Force 7) from the NNW on 15th.

There were two named storms in April: Storm Kathleen passed by on 6th-7th April, but its impact on Epping was not great; with Storm Lilian at the end of the month however, whilst the worst of its winds didn’t reach Epping, it brought more than half the month’s rain on 27th and 28th, as the weather transitioned from cold to quite a bit warmer.

So can we really get nine months in a row of warmer and wetter Epping weather than average? Take a look here once May has finished to find out!