Durham City UK Weather from Gilesgate

Welcome to Durham City Weather

This Durham Weather website and pages are dedicated to Durham City and also my Weather Photography.

I also have a Weather Shop where you can buy weather kit.

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 I was wrong.

I moved to Durham City

I used to live in Ferryhill, but since 2014 I live here in Durham. The Durham climate is a little bit different. It’s not as high above sea level as Ferryhill, so not as draughty. It’s also warmer and slightly closer to the coast. It’s a city rather than a large pit village, so is slightly more urbanised.

Durham weather is a bit different as gardens are 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. You also don’t lose the use of your legs in the outside netty.

I have a Durham Climate page detailing the typical climate of Durham and the North East and what to expect here.

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.

I did have a little battery problem when I first got the kit, but NetAtmo sorted it out by sending me a replacement sensor in a couple of weeks. In April 2023 the outdoor sensor failed, but again NetAtmo provided a new one pretty quickly.

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

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, unknown relatives 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 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

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.

Sad I know, but 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. I get a lot of moans about it because I don’t mention the few flakes that drifted down in a hidden shower in the middle of the night, but I do my best.

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 and have extended it to the present day. I try to summarise each winter snowfall in the same Leo Bonacina way. Also very sad, but hey, you probably have some weird habits too!

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

Get the Met Office weather for Durham here