In February, rain fell on just four days. In March, there were only five days when rain didn’t fall. After a record dry February came a record wet March. How quickly the weather patterns can change!

The month began relatively settled, with a cold snap giving six nights of frost – it was even cold enough for a covering of snow on 8th March, but it didn’t last long. The weather quickly moved into an unsettled pattern and stuck there for the rest of the month. Altogether we had 100.6mm of rain, comfortably the wettest March in our 39 years of records, and 222% of our March average.

The unsettled weather was shown by the barometer. You can clearly see in the graph how a succession of low pressure systems passed over us, each coinciding with the higher rainfall days. We only have 12 years of records of air pressure but we recorded our second lowest monthly minimum, our second lowest monthly average, and our third lowest monthly maximum for March.

Despite the cold start, it was pretty average temperature-wise. The highest temperature of the month was 16.3°C, exactly the same as the average March high, and the lowest at -2.2°C was just 0.1°C cooler than the average minimum. Overall the monthly mean at 7.1°C was still a little higher than the historical average of 6.7°C.

Surprisingly perhaps it wasn’t a particularly windy month. The maximum gust for the month was 31mph (force 6), the second lowest monthly maximum for March.