November seemed fairly typical: not too wet, not too windy, both mild and cooler interludes; and the only named storm of the month, Storm Claudia which passed by on the 14th, was far enough away to have limited impact on our weather, with lesser but closer depressions having more of an effect. The average pressure for the month was 1009.2mb (a millibar is the same as a hecto-Pascal), a little below our long term average of 1012.7mb. The highest of the month was 1027.5mb on the 21st and the lowest 989.3mb just three days later. Both of these are also a little below the long term average.

Ahead of these depressions, the winds were warm and southerly, and as they passed to the east, winds swung to the north and temperatures dropped markedly. Thus the warmest day was the 13th, as Storm Claudia approached, when we recorded 18.2°C, the second warmest November day in our records (the warmest was 21.4°C in November 2008). The highest overnight minimum temperature, 13.3°C on the night of 4th-5th, was also our second highest on record. In fact we had no less than seven overnight lows in double figures.

You’d think it unsurprising therefore that the monthly mean temperature was 8.7°C, considerably above the long term mean of 7.2°C and a figure beaten in only seven previous Novembers in our 41 years of records.

And yet we also had our fifth coldest November minimum, with -2.6°C on the 20th. There were six frosts in November, the first of the winter coming on the 18th (our average first frost date is the 25th, and only in twelve years in our records has it come earlier), and the lowest day maximum was just 3.0°C also on the 20th.

November is normally our second wettest month after October, with an average of 62.6mm of rain. This November was a little on the dry side, with 52.0mm. It rained on 17 days (a typical number) and the wettest day was the 10th with 12.8mm (a little below the long term average figure).

It wasn’t a windy month, however. The maximum was 25mph (Force 6) from the WSW on the 1st, our average for November is 34.2mph.

This is only our second year of detailed sunshine records, but our monthly total of 13.7 hours on 18 days when the sun came out was a slight improvement on last year’s figures. We probably under-record sunshine particularly in the winter months, as our weather station location doesn’t have clear line of sight to the horizon, and the sun is low at this time of year.