Weather news

A notably stormy month!
A review of the weather of February 2022
The most dramatic weather came with three named storms in a week: Storm Dudley on 16th-17th, Storm Eunice on 18th, and Storm Franklin on 20th-21st. Of these, Storm Eunice had the greatest impact on Epping. The highest gust we recorded was of 44mph (Gale Force 8) but notably we had gusts of Force 7 or 8 in every half hour period from 10am to 5pm. (We log readings every five minutes, and these are then aggregated into half hourly records in our data.)
Not surprisingly, this resulted in quite a bit of damage in the area, with many reports of damaged roofs, trees down, and fence panels and sheds wrecked.
The named storms weren’t the only depressions to hit us: as the pressure graph shows, we had a string of low pressure systems passing over us all month. The lowest pressure of the month was however due to Storm Eunice, of 983.9 hPa (mb).



So it’s not surprising that we had a wet month: at 63.4mm total, that’s 141% of our long term average for February, which is actually our driest month on average. This February proved to be our 12th wettest in our 37 years of records.


But it wasn’t cold. A mean temperature of 7.2°C made it our 4th warmest February, the maximum for the month of 14.9°C was our 6th warmest, and the lowest temperature recorded in the month at -0.1°C was the second warmest February minimum. That minimum represented the only air frost of the month. And it was fairly sunny with an average of 4.4 hours per day.
So will March continue the trend? Traditionally, it is said to “come in like a lion, and go out like a lamb”…
Measure | Unit | Minimum | Average | Maximum | Average min | Average max | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Relative humidity | % | 51 | 81 | 95 | |||
Temperature | °C | -0.1 | 7.2 | 14.9 | 3.8 | 10.5 | |
Wind source (most common/highest gust) | Sector | NW | W | ||||
Wind speed | mph | 4.8 | 44 | 24.5 | |||
Rain daily accumulation | mm | 2.3 | 11.0 | 63.4 | |||
Barometric pressure | hPa | 983.9 | 1014.3 | 1033.3 | |||
Solar irradiance during daylight | W/m² | 121 | 599 | 382 | |||
Sunshine (sunny if irradiance > 120 W/m2) | Hours | 4.4 | 8.0 | 122.5 |