For once, there are no extremes or records to report regarding the weather of September in Epping! It was a pretty routine September overall. Having said that, it was a month of two halves.

The first half was often unsettled, generally wet and warm; yet the second half settled into largely calm, dry and sunny weather, albeit often with an autumnal nip in the air of a morning.

The overall effect was of a slightly drier than average September, with a total of 51.4mm as against the long term average in our 43 years of records of 60.8mm, and our lowest September total since 2020. It rained on 15 days, which is slightly above average (13.5 days), and our wettest day on the 12th delivered a modest 13.8mm, also below the long term average of 18.4mm.

Our temperatures also show how it cooled towards the end of the month. The warmest day on the 19th reached 28.1°C, above our long term average of 25.3°C but not exceptionally so. The coolest temperature recorded was 4.4°C on the 23rd, below the long term average of 5.8°C but again not exceptionally so. Overall the mean for the month was 14.6°C, almost bang on the long term average of 14.7°C.

Unsurprisingly the barometer also showed the unsettled weather early in the month, with a series of depressions passing by, before the settled end to the month. Overall the mean pressure for the month was 1013.9 mb (Millibars are the same as hectoPascals, which is the formal SI unit name), and that’s a little less than the long term average of 1016.1 mb (we have 17 years of comparable records). The lowest pressure was 993.3 mb – again, a little below the average but not exceptional.

September was not a particularly windy month, despite the unsettled start. The highest gust during the month was 35mph (Force 7) from the SSE on the 15th, which is the fifth highest gust for September in our 17 years of records. The predominant wind over the first half of the month was from a southerly quarter, then as the weather settled the wind speeds dropped and switched to a more east to north-east direction.

Finally to the sunshine. We are only in our second year of recording detailed sunshine data, but we can say that this September was about 13% sunnier than last year!

October began with Storm Amy delivering wet and windy weather. October is our wettest month on average, so will this October be even wetter than usual? Come back next month to find out!