Weather News
Autumn comes early
It certainly felt as though Summer missed out August this year. The first half of the month was very wet, thanks to a continuation of July’s weather of a succession of heavy and sometimes thundery showers. and when the weather settled down, it became cool and cloudy day after day: only eleven days in the month had more than four hours of sunshine.
Not surprisingly, the temperatures followed suit. Only three Augusts in our 37 years of records had a lower mean temperature, and just seven had a lower monthly maximum than this August’s 25.7°C recorded on 11th. Conversely, this August’s minimum temperature of 10.2°C was the third highest monthly minimum for August.
With 69.0mm of rain, the month as a whole was well above the long term average of 56.6mm, and it was our ninth wettest August. In fact, since the driest April on record, the next four months have all been much wetter than average, and August was the third month in a row with a wettest day of an inch or more of rain, this time 25.4mm on 7th.
Not a particularly windy month, and the weather patterns showed with winds generally in a south-westerly quarter during the unsettled first half, and a north-easterly quarter for the dull but settled second half, driving low cloud off the North Sea.
| Measure | Unit | Minimum | Average | Maximum | Average min | Average max | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relative humidity | % | 51 | 82 | 97 | |||
| Temperature | °C | 10.2 | 16.5 | 25.7 | 12.9 | 21.5 | |
| Wind source (most common/highest gust) | Sector | WSW | NE | ||||
| Wind high gust | mph | 2.1 | 25 | 14.5 | |||
| Rain daily accumulation | mm | 2.2 | 25.4 | 69 | |||
| Barometric pressure | hPa | 996.5 | 1018.0 | 1032.5 | |||
| Solar irradiance during daylight | W/m² | 218 | 1048 | 783 | |||
| Sunshine (sunny if irradiance > 300 W/m2) | Hours | 4.0 | 8.0 | 123 |