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The month of May started out fairly settled and occasionally cool, but in the second half of the month, a blocking high pressure established itself on the near Continent and fed exceptionally warm air up across the country. This peaked with the hottest May day in our 42 years of records on Tuesday 26th, with an astonishing 35.8°C recorded – that’s 3.7°C above the previous May record set in 2005, hotter than our record temperature for June, and is the fourth highest monthly maximum of any month in our records.

This hot spell meant that three other May temperature records were also beaten: the mean temperature for the month as a whole of 15.3°C was a full 3°C above the long term average, and more than a degree above the previous record set only two years ago; the average daily maximum was 21.2°C, compared with the long term average of 16.8°C and beating the previous record of 20.6°C set in 2020; and the highest overnight minimum of 17.6°C in the early hours of the 26th was way above the previous record of 15.3°C set in 2001 and equalled last year – the long term average for the highest minimum of May is 12.5°C! The average daily minimum was 9.8°C, our second warmest on record, and this despite the earlier cooler spell including our coldest night of the month with a minimum of 1.5°C at dawn on Monday 11th, our 12th coolest May night on record.

Unsurprisingly, with the settled weather, it was another dry month. There was just 13.0mm of rain in May, the fourth driest May in our records, and the third dry month in a row. Our wettest day was Wednesday 13th, with 3.6mm, making this the second least ‘wettest day’ in our May records. It rained on nine days: only four times in our records have we had fewer days of rain in May.

The barometer reflected the dominating high pressure of the second half of the month. Overall the month’s lowest pressure was spot on the long term average (18 years of comparable records) and the mean pressure almost spot on the average. The peak pressure at 1031.1mb was however the 6th highest for May in our records.

Winds were generally light in May. The main wind directions in the first part of the month were from the north-west quarter, a cool direction, but swung round to between south-west and east to usher in the warmer air for the second half.

Winds were generally light – the highest gust of the month of 25mph (Force 6) on Tuesday 19th was our equal third lowest for May.

And finally to our sunshine records. Perhaps surprisingly we didn’t get quite as much as last year, a total of 194.4 hours in the month. There were just three days when the sun didn’t shine at all. We have just three years of comparable sunshine records, and we logged our highest sun radiation level to date for May of 1239 watts per square metre on Wednesday 20th – good news for owners of solar panels!

So what will June bring? Already by the 3rd we’ve had more than the whole of April and a whisker short of the total for May. Will this be the start of a wet period or will we go back to high temperatures? Find out the details here next month!