Weather statistics

At last the longer hours of daylight are beginning to appear, despite the sometimes grey wet days. At the village pub yesterday, a friend who cycles to work every day, commented on how much lighter it was cycling to & form work now. We hadn’t particularly noticed it. However, when we left, we couldn’t help but noticed it was getting dark rather than actually being dark, when we left & yet we left at around our usual time.

This week’s local paper was full of the statistics for the weather in November & December 2015. We were not entirely surprised by some of the figures. I know I’ve been moaning on about the greyness & the wetness, so I thought you might like to see the reality, & not just my subjective feel.

November was the wettest month on record. So was December, which worked out 2.7 times the average for the month. December worked out as 306.44mm (12.06 inches). For the combined months it worked out as 556.2mm (22.3 inches). During the 24 hours from 9am on December 5, the day Storm Desmond hit, 59.77mm of rain fell, hence the River Lune flooding. There was only one day in November without any rain.

As for the sunshine totals they were half the average, with 28 hours in November, 23 hours in December. For two ten day periods there was no sunshine at all. There was only 6 hours in the period December 1-20.

It is also commented that it has been very mild. Our cyclist friend had commented that for the first time this winter he had had to put on an extra layer for his pre-dawn cycle to work. It certainly seems to be colder, if brighter, than we had before Christmas. But that’s what I expect for winter – an icy blast, with hopefully a few crystal bright frosty days – not all this drab grey wetness. Hopefully the weather is turning more normal now.