Durham Weather | The Weather at Durham, North East England

Durham Weather is Fantastic!

Durham Weather : Solar halo display, 28th May 2023
Durham Weather – Solar halo display, 28th May 2023

This Weather blog is dedicated to my weather station in Durham City. Unlike other sites in the top 10 Durham Weather results at Google, this one is a real one from a Durham resident.

I have been totally geeky about the weather ever since the blazing hot summers of 1975 & 1976. I started scribbling my weather measurements in a little notebook whilst still at school. Thinking that nobody else would be interested in them. But happily, I was wrong.

The Durham Climate

Durham weather is different as gardens are typically more sheltered, having hedges and plants rather than yards and concrete and outside netties (toilets). Temperatures can be modified a bit, but it’s gusty in windy weather as there are more buildings to disrupt the direct wind flow.

Have a look at the Durham Climate page detailing the typical climate of Durham and the North East and what to expect here.

Durham Weather - Picture of netatmo weather station equipment used to measure the weather at my durham weather station
Durham Weather – NetAtmo Weather Station

What Weather Station do I recommend ?


At the moment, I’m using the rather smart NetAtmo Weather Station. Everything is connected using wireless. I record temperature and rainfall, but not wind speed and direction. I don’t actually have anywhere to mount the wind gauge in a meaningful position, and really I’m just chicken about climbing on the roof to site it properly.

The shiny NetAtmo gizmos log everything automatically. All the averages and the figures are calculated for me, like magic itself. It’s a neat little system and not too expensive to own (under 150 quid). The sensors are battery operated and the AAA batteries last for ages.

If you want to buy a weather station, you can get one in the Durham Weather Shop.


Durham Weather Website Content

I’ve built up quite a pile of Durham Weather related photos over the years, which i’d like to show here if I can. There are photos of clouds, flooding, sunrises/sunsets, snow, sunshine and just nature and Big Skies. I try to write a little bit about each one and schedule them as if they were posted at the time I took them. These are all on my Durham Weather Blog. The blog also features monthly weather summaries, and any other content relevant to Durham City weather.

Durham Weather Photos

I’d also like to display any weather themed photographs sent by my kind readers. Please note I’d require accurate timings and locations of any you send if you could. There’s nothing worse than a photo where no-one knows who it was or where and when it was taken, I’m sure you’ll agree.

We’ve all got plenty of black and white photos of nameless, subjects and places  in shoe boxes like that haven’t we? So I want to avoid that if I can. I’ll give you a full credit for any weather photos I feature (your name in lights). I can’t afford to pay you though, unless you accept Coke ring-pulls as a weird kind of Wampum currency. Please contact me if you are interested.

Ferryhill Weather Website Archive

Durham Weather - Ferryhill Weather Archive screenshot

In addition to the Durham weather data i’m collecting now, I’ve also copied over the data from my old Ferryhill weather website. I was at my previous house for 18 years and have records from the end of 1999 up until 2011.

It’s got the legendary snowy winter of 2010 in amongst it, so worth keeping for posterity. Ferryhill is about 6 miles due South of Durham City and a lot higher up. About 250ft higher up actually, right on top of a hill next to the old Great North Road. The main railway to London goes through it too, but currently it doesn’t stop there!

I always got a good agreement between the Ferryhill stuff and the official Durham University Observatory site which I regularly mention in my blog posts here. It is the official Met Office one after all, so better keep in sync. It gives me kudos, see. The old monthly summaries are over on the Ferryhill Archive page.

Bonacina/O’Hara UK Snowfall History

This is a continuation of the UK Snowfall History catalog developed by an old Italian guy called Leo Bonacina. It shows UK snowfall by year and I add to it (because little old Leo is long dead) with information from other sources.

This brought it more or less up to date (the original only covered 1875-1975, a bit before my time). Each winter has been classified as ‘Little’, ‘Average’, ‘Snowy’ or ‘Very Snowy’ . They are colour coded, depending on the amount of snow and how generally it fell. I try to add to it each winter.

It doesn’t just show Durham snow or north east snow. They are referenced in the UK snowfall statistics. As I say, for my sins against the human race I have continued the UK snowfall history series at Durham Weather.  It has been extended to the present day. I try to summarise each winter snowfall in the same Leo Bonacina way.

See the UK snowfall statistics in the Bonacina/O’Hara UK Snowfall History page here.

Get the Met Office weather for Durham here

(Visited 15,284 times)

13 thoughts on “Durham Weather | The Weather at Durham, North East England”

  1. Would it be possible to get .CSV (or other file format) for the “Today’s Weather and Durham Weather Forecast”, more specifically “Barometric Pressure – Indoors” ?

    I have an environmental sensor (Bosch BME280) and would like to calibrate/compare data to that in a similar location (I am central Durham).

    Kind regards.

    Reply
  2. Hi
    I am not sure how my search brought me to your site. I read your front page and I have a Netatmo weather station as well. I’ve often wondered if it was possible to extract the data from it and on reading your review you mention an app called Smartmixin. I had a look and downloaded it. I had not heard of it before and was amazed that it allowed me to access all my Weather records back to 2014 when I set the station up. Thanks very much for the pointer and I now have all my data in a spreadsheet. The only problem I’ve had with the station is that it goes off-line now and again. It seems to do it over a period of a few days and then it stops and is up for many weeks at a time. I’ve not been able to find out what triggers it. I did speak to Netatmo about it and they suggested dedicating a port for it but I have not been able to find the menu in my Talktalk router to do that. It is a Huwaei

    Reply
    • Hi Simon,

      Good to hear from another NetAtmo user. The station never usually causes any bother and like you say it can run for long periods and then experiences a glitch. I put it down to broadband problems and sometimes it downloads firmware updates which may cause a problem when it tries to install them.

      SmartMixin (strange name) is really just a query tool that accesses the data on the NetAtmo servers, where the data is stored. Why NetAtmo don’t make their own client better, I don’t know, but I produce all of my monthly reports from SmatMixin and can’t fault it really.

      Where exactly are you from?

      Dave

    • The far south. Well not quite far south as you can get a lower latitude and still be in the UK. Bexhill is the answer. It is rain that has been my interest this year or the lack of it. One of my favourite weather prediction apps is WeatherProHD. Many times this year I have seen an odd phenomena. I see a prediction of rain but when the time comes Bexhill seems to just miss it. It is almost as if there is ray machine that pushes the rain away at the last moment. I have had no rain this month, 13.6mm in July, 19.1mm for June and only 2.7mm for May. All very low. My poor garden is very dry. It would be great to have data for nearby towns such as Eastbourne, Hasting and Battle. I do not know if that data is available or not.

  3. I find your site very interesting and wonder if you could help me.

    I am looking for historic weather details (mostly about rain) relating to the Castle Eden/ Peterlee area.

    Do you know of any person or group that has recorded data for this area over the past few years?

    I woud bre grateful for any help or guidance about this matter.

    Thank you in anticipation

    Bruce Adams

    Reply
  4. This is great Ang will be super exited by this,she is Durham born and Bred and strangely enough a bit of a weather geek too

    Reply
    • Hi Rory/Ang, always great to connect with local people! As you’ll see from the website, i’ve been a bit of a weather ‘freak’ since the mid-70’s and it’s my passion. Looking forward to talking in the future as we’re often in Claypath Deli.

      Dave.

    • Thanks Rob, it was a really good walk out. The weather was superb and the colours were absolutely gorgeous. We did about six and a half miles altogether and only stopped for one cup of americano and a sandwich. Some of the cloudscapes were immense, especially earlier in the day. We should do it more often as a lot of the woodland is just across the road from us. Durham is a fantastic place to live.

      Dave

Leave a Comment