Met Office data shows that December 2025 was generally a warmer and drier month than average for our region, and that is borne out by our records. The mean temperature for the month was 7.1°C – not just the third warmest in our 41 years of records but actually equal to the average daily maximum temperature for 1979-2013! And the average daily maximum for this December equalled our record high of 9.5°C set just two years ago. Top temperature for the month came on the 9th at 13.6°C, our sixth warmest December day. It was also our fifth warmest average daily minimum at 4.7°C. Despite this we still experienced three frosts.

It was certainly dry in Epping in December! It rained on just 3 days, a record low for December, and only May 1990 and April 2011 have had fewer days with two each. The month’s total was only 9.6mm, also a record December low for us. It didn’t rain after the 4th, a run of 27 dry days and counting. Just to note, our record dry spell is 30 days…

Storm Bram passed through on 9th-10th December but although there were major impacts in Scotland, the effects were barely felt in Epping, with the pressure record showing it was just another depression during a generally unsettled – if largely dry – first three weeks of the month; the pressure then started to build into the new year. Overall the mean monthly pressure was 1014.3 mb, slightly above the long term average for December of 1013.0 mb. The lowest pressure of the month, 992.0 mb, was our fourth highest minimum for December.

The winds weren’t anything special for December. The highest wind of the month was 33 mph (Force 7) from the SSE on the 5th, the long term average being 37.7 mph.

And finally, it might not have felt like it, but the sun did actually come out in December. We’ve only two years of comparable records, but this December was almost twice as sunny as last December, with 31.4 hours over 16 days of the month, and the sunniest day was Christmas Day! Admittedly that also means half the days of the month were wall to wall cloud…

So with January starting off with a freeze, will it mean that this January bucks the trend of warmer than average months?
The 2025 year summary will be published on this site shortly.