There were three named storms in January. The first, Storm Henk, which passed over on 2nd and 3rd January, had the greatest impact for us, with heavy rain and strong winds. In fact just the first five days of the month delivered almost 82% of an average January’s rainfall, which following on from a very wet end to December led to a lot of surface water on local roads and some flooding. On the 2nd we had a total of 23.6mm of rain, our second wettest January day on record, and our lowest barometric pressure of the month at 975.1 hPa, the third lowest January pressure in our 16 years of comparable records, as well as the strongest wind of the month, a gust of 39mph or Gale Force 8, which is still less than our long term average for January.

There then followed a cool, settled period of a week and a half with northerly winds and significant frosts at night – in the early hours of 18th the temperature dropped to -6.2°C, making this the 6th coldest January minimum of our 40 years of records, and the lowest since 1993 (albeit we have no records for 2014-19).

Overall, despite the cold spell, all of the mean temperature, the average daily minimum and maximum, the highest day minumum and the lowest day maximum temperatures, were higher than the long term average.

Then we had two storms in quick succession: Isha on 21st-22nd, and Jocelyn on 22nd-23rd. both of these storms however passed further north, and the impacts for us were limited to strong winds and moderate rain. Following these was another depression on 26th delivering more rain. Overall, with 71.2mm, this January was significantly wetter than the average of 61.5mm, and the fifth month in a row that was wetter than average. And yet surprisingly there were only 11 days on which rain fell – only two of our 40 Januaries have had fewer! It’s a measure of the intensity of the depressions we experienced this January.

Measure	Unit	Minimum	Average	Maximum	Average min	Average max	Total
Relative humidity	%	62	83	94
Temperature	°C	-6.2	4.7	12.7	2.1	7.7
Wind source (most common/highest gust)	Sector		N	N
Wind speed	mph		3.8	39		20.5
Rain daily accumulation	mm		2.3	23.6			71.2
Barometric pressure	hPa	975.1	1016.2	1037.6
Solar irradiance during daylight	W/m²		85	410		239
Sunshine (sunny if irradiance > 120 W/m2)	Hours		2.4	5.5			74.5

So will we get any more wintry weather? February often brings snow and ice, but will the trend of warmer than average months continue? We’ll report on this again in due course – sign up to be notified!