Weather news
An impending shower cloud darkens Lindsey Street as another passes in the distance (Photo: Roger Emmens)
Our weather is still lurching between extremes!
After an April which was unusually cool and exceptionally dry, May proved to be unusually cool and exceptionally wet.
It was a month of frequent heavy showers, almost every day, delivering 114mm of rain, more than twice the long term average for May, and rating this May as the fourth wettest of our 37 years of records. So we more than made up for our driest ever April – May alone delivered more than the long term average of April and May combined!
The month was rescued by six dry and slightly warmer days right at the end of the month, with the temperature rising to 22.4°C on 31st, but even so, the mean May temperature of 10.8°C is well below the long term average of 12.5°C, and makes this May our equal fourth coolest overall. We had no air frosts, but five days early in the month had minima below 3°C, low enough for a ground frost and scraping car windscreens. Astonishingly, the warmest day of the year up to the end of May was still the 23.9°C recorded on 30th March!
Not surprisingly, with the succession of depressions bringing all the rain, the average air pressure for the month was 1011.3mb, our lowest recorded monthly average, although average daily pressure has only been logged for the most recent ten years of our records. The commonest wind direction was a cool north-westerly, and the highest gust a fairly typical 32mph, or Force 7, from the WSW on the 3rd – despite the depressions it wasn’t an especially breezy month.
| Measure | Unit | Minimum | Average | Maximum | Average min | Average max | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Relative humidity | % | 38 | 79 | 97 | |||
| Temperature | °C | 1.3 | 10.8 | 22.4 | 6.6 | 16.1 | |
| Wind source (most common/highest gust) | Sector | NW | WSW | ||||
| Wind high gust | mph | 3.3 | 32 | 18.6 | |||
| Rain daily accumulation | mm | 3.7 | 24.8 | 114 | |||
| Barometric pressure | hPa | 994.1 | 1011.3 | 1030.6 | |||
| Solar irradiance during daylight | W/m² | 248 | 1164 | 844 | |||
| Sunshine | Hours | 9.7 | 13.0 | 300.5 |