Sunday 3 January 2016

A Look Back

It was a shock to the system when winter finally made an appearance. The temperature fell to -1.1°C (30.0°F) by dawn on New Year’s Day. It was the first time this winter that I'd to pour hot water into the birdbath to thaw out the water. It didn't get very warm all day, failing to make it much above 4°C (39°F)in the hours of daylight. It began to rain in the early evening and got a little bit milder too. Since it started to rain it’s continued cloudy and wet and we’re still awaiting our first glimpse of sunshine for 2016. 
Temperature & Rainfall from 01 January - 03 January 2016 (09:00)
It's time to look back at last year's weather statistics. The stand-out factor for me over the last year has been the very windy conditions we've experienced almost throughout the whole year. We did have a bit of a respite through the summer. The graphic below compares the wind speeds of the last few years and shows how this year is easily the windiest.
Obviously it's impossible to leave out this December’s exceptionally mild weather. The average temperature for December finished fractionally higher than November’s average. Generally temperatures for the remainder of last year were around average. The annual average temperature has finished in third spot out of five years of my temperature records. I've added tables below for rainfall and average temperatures for the last five years. 
I don't suppose there can be many people living in the UK who are unaware of the recent flooding. Leeds and York situated only a few miles from where we live have been badly affected. Therefore it seems a little surprising that December’s rainfall record for Ossett wasn't particularly high. Our annual rainfall was a little above average.
2015 did see a couple of all time records set. Although we didn't have a long spell of hot weather through summer 01 June this year was the highest daytime temperature I've recorded reaching 33.1° C (91.6°F). The second record is much more unwanted with a high wind gust speed of 43 mph on 29 November.

For the first time since five had my weather station I've put together the annual average temperatures since 2010. It would seem from this chart that the winter months are the ones with the greatest deviations from the average. December seems to be worst culprit. 2010 was very cold with an average temperature of 0.3° C (32.5°F) for the month compared to December 2015 with 9.6° C (49.3°F). January and February in 2010 together with March in 2013 have also been coolish months. The summer months seem to have been far more consistent.
I wonder what lies in store for 2016.

2 comments:

  1. Finally snow reached your place! hahahahah! You have done detail study on weather! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Malar, I don't know what you've read or seen about it snowing here but so far this winter has been wet and windy but very mild. So far we haven't seen any snow at all. With a bit of luck it might stay that way.

    ReplyDelete

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