Local Forecasts, History & Records
The Extremes of Weather at Durham are the most interesting bits. We are fortunate enough to have one of the UK’s most famous Frost Hollows (Houghall) and Durham University Observatory has one of the longest continuous Meteorological records in the country.
After the heavy rain of 14th August 2023, I set about looking back on days with similar totals in Durham since I started recording here. The total for 14th August was exactly 30.0 mm, which seems a suitable total to use as a threshold. Here’s what I found: 20th September 2025 32.5mm 26th September 2024 51.1mm 14th August …
On most winter mornings you can stroll down from Durham city centre, past the Botanic Garden, through the woods, and by the time you reach the meadows at Houghall your breath hangs heavier and your toes feel that extra bite. It’s not your imagination. Houghall is a frost hollow – and one of the most efficient in the North East. …
I have been increasingly discussing new UK daily records on Facebook. This year, as summer has progressed and the weather has become hotter, people are noticing. Here’s a list of new daily maximum records that have been broken this year. I’ll update it as the year progresses and write a similar post each year. January 2025 14th January 15.7C Cassley …
A Legendary Summer The summer of 1976 is legendary in the UK. It is often talked about as being ‘The Best Summer Ever’. As a 16 year old kid, there were lots of outdoor activities for us. Tennis was high on the list as the footie season had just finished (I’ve hardly played since 😳). I also remember my paper …
As some of you might have noticed, the World is getting warmer. As that happens, statistically we begin to notice that the distribution of cold/warm months are no longer scattered equally amongst the temperature record. The cold months get less frequent, whilst the warm months are more recently distributed. I first visited this on my post about long standing CET …
April 1917 – Perishingly cold at Durham Towards the end of World War 1, with fighting still going on in the trenches of France, April 1917 was quite extraordinary and was the coldest April recorded at Durham. The mean temperature for the month was 4.4C, which is -3.9C when compared to the 1990-2010 normal for April. This was 0.1C colder …
Severe weather events in Durham, North East England Just for a bit of fun, I asked ChatGPT to compile a Top 10 of severe weather events for North East England. I don’t think it did a bad job overall. The weather is such a fascinating subject, isn’t it? Now, let me dive into the meteorological history of the North East …
As some of you may have noticed, yesterday (October 5th 2021) was extremely wet! After a long spell with no real heavy rain, it seemingly all arrived on one day. We’d been warned to expect heavy rainfall, but it proved even wetter than that. Durham and North East England just seemed to be in the wrong place this time! Here’s …
Just after the end of WW1, September 1919 was an unusual month as it went from a late summer heatwave to early winter snowfall in the space of just a few days. A hot southerly flow had allowed temperatures to climb as high as 32.2C at Raunds on the 11th September 1919. However by the 12th, the wind flow switched …
The upcoming cold weather is expected to hit us hard in Durham next week. It will come from the continent and traditionally, this is where our coldest weather comes from. Over here on the East Coast, we have no protection from any Easterly or North Easterly, so we tend to bear the brunt of this weather type. The phenomenon occurs …
Flooding, heatwaves, winter storms – extreme weather is about to start hitting you in the pocket. Lost among the latest barrage of national and international news events is the ongoing nightmare faced by almost 600 households unable to return to their homes in Lincolnshire because of flooding in June 2019. In the last week the River Steeping burst its banks …
This is a post I made to the NetWeather forum in November 2014 about some of the longstanding records in the Central England Temperature Series (CET). This series goes back to 1659 and is a record of temperature in the Midlands of England. The stations the average is computed from are very rural, so Urban Heat Island effects should not …