So, what do our records tell us about the weather of 2025 as a whole?

Well, it was certainly warm. 2025 was the second warmest year in our 41 years of records – and our five warmest years on record have all been in the past six years, only 2021 bucking the trend. The impact of global warming on our climate is starkly clear.

Looking at the monthly mean temperatures for 2025, every month except January and September had temperatures above the long term average.

The average daily maximum and minimum for each month also showed the same trend, with nearly every month warmer than the long term average.

The hottest day of the year was appropriately enough on Midsummer’s Day, 21st June, when the thermometer peaked at 32.9°C; and the coldest was the early morning of 12th January at a chilly -4.6°C. There were no ‘ice days’ where the temperature never rises above freezing, but neither were there any ‘tropical nights’ where the temperature never falls below 20°C.

The last frost in Spring was on 16th March, earlier than the average date of 5th April, and the first Autumn frost was on 18th November, also earlier than our average first frost date of 25th November.

It was overall a dry year: the second driest in our records after 1983, with just 447.0mm – our long term average annual rainfall is 665.0mm. Only January, February and July were wetter than average. The Spring was particularly dry: from March to June we had only 50.1% as much rain as the long term average. The wettest day was 5th January with 25.4mm, exactly one inch. Just nine of the 42 years in our records have had less rain on their wettest day.

Not surprisingly given the dry weather the sunshine hours were 22% up on last year, the only year we have comparable records for.