Local Forecasts, History & Records
Winter Weather in Durham UK. Winter is December, January and February.
During the winter of 1983-84, there was a very snowy cold spell in the last week of January 1984. Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North of England were affected. Here’s a nice couple of black and white photos of the Fulling Mill and Cathedral taken by Craig Oliphant, who has very kindly given his permission to publish. Ice is just …
There was a very wild start to February, although it was relatively mild. Storm Ciara over the weekend of 8th/9th brought damaging gusts and flooding. The worst of it passed to the South of us, but there was major flooding in Yorkshire and winds gusted to 93mph in Wales. The River Wear in Durham rose dramatically during the morning of Sunday …
Snowfall, Winter 2019-20 Better late than never Well, after a winter composed almost entirely of wind, rain and relatively mild temperatures, the first snow arrived in Durham five days before the end of February. Amounts aren’t huge (2-3”), but at least it stopped the winter from being thrown on the ‘No snow’ pile. It’s melted rapidly though after turning to …
Storm Ciara batters the UK After spending a fair bit of time concentrating on the wind speeds, we sort of forgot about the rain that Storm Ciara was going to deliver. Thankfully we missed some of the squall lines that hit further south. My total for rainfall was only 22.9mm, but obviously far more fell on the catchment areas on …
January 2020. Very mild. Anticyclonic for the first week and again from the middle of the month until the 26th. The month saw an intense anticyclone develop; London’s highest ever pressure of 1049.6 mbars was recorded at Heathrow on the 19th, and then 1050.5 was recorded at the Mumbles, Swansea, on the 20th. There were fewer frosts than usual and …
The recent trend has been that winter months in Durham have been on the dry side. January 2020 was very much in that vein. It was also very mild for first week. On the 8th/9th there was overnight snow in the High Pennines, although only rain fell elsewhere. This was heavy in places. This was actually the wettest day in …
February 1986 (who remembers that one then?) It was one of the coldest Februaries ever recorded in modern times. Trevor Harley, in his famous weather summaries pages, describes February 1986 like this: February 1986. Extremely cold (-1.1C CET), with frequent light snowfalls. The second coldest February of the 20th century (after February 1947), and fourth coldest month of the twentieth …
Here’s a song by one of my favourite artists, Loudon Wainwright III. It was written during the cold spell in 1987, when Loudon was living in England. Loudon Wainwright III – You don’t want to know (1987) It was colder than a witches tit, colder than a Polar bear’s nose, Colder than the shoulder of my old flame, colder …
The harsh realities of the brutal winter of 1946-47 are chronicled here in a writeup of The Time Traveller clipped from the Northern Echo some time in the 1980s The churches worry about war-devastated Germany, but most people say that Britain has enough to do in feeding herself. Rationing is worse than in the war – dwindling allowances of basic …
December 2019. The month was unsettled with a very wet first three weeks, particularly in the east and south of England, where rainfall was close to double the average; overall rainfall was 116% of average. It was milder than average with a few colder interludes. It was sunny in the east but dull in the west, with 113% of the …
After 6 months of way above average rainfall in Durham, December 2019 has finally stopped the rot. As has been previously mentioned, the wet sequence started in June and ran all the way through to Novemeber. What usually happens when December is dry is that it’s also frosty. This time, it’s been both mild here and on the dry side. …
As Christmas is over for another year, and we’ve been disappointed by the lack of snow again, we start looking forward to the New Year. What’s sort of weather is normal for Durham in January? Well. looking at the means for Durham, and the extremes, we can see what range is ‘normal. Durham Weather Extremes since 1850 JANUARY Mean Temp …