Local Forecasts, History & Records
A superb start and end to April April 2025 opened superbly, with perfect blue skies and reasonable temperatures for early Spring. There was a nagging Easterly wind though; the position of the stable high pressure cell was feeding air from a chilly direction, meaning that it was warm in the sun as long as you were out of the breeze. …
Sometimes, in the world of amateur meteorology, it’s not the technology that trips you up. It’s the humble bin. Yes, a bog-standard plastic bin. And not doing anything remotely interesting, just sitting there, quietly minding its own business. Or so I thought. I always try to validate my data Since I started logging daily weather readings here back in 2019, …
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 …
County Durham—my own stomping ground. It’s a place that doesn’t get nearly enough credit for its beauty, charm, and personality. Tucked neatly between Northumberland to the north and Yorkshire to the south, it’s one of those places in England where the landscape changes every few miles, and you’re never far from either a rugged hill, a windswept coastline, or a …
Three Rivers The geography of the North East of England is fairly uniform. Its westward flank is fortified by the rising spine of the Pennine Mountains, of which is embedded the origin point of its three main rivers, the Tyne, the Wear and the Tees, who flow down the hills eastwards into lower plains which then meet the North Sea. …
March 2025 was a little above average temperature-wise. The Grassland temperature sum (the sustainable start of vegetation growth in Europe) reached 200 on March 7th 2025. This was 12 days later than the previous year, mainly due to the coldness of January 2025, which was on the colder side of average. The mean temperature was pegged back a bit by …
The month began with a blocking high giving cold easterly winds, but as easterlies aren’t what they used to be, it wasn’t exceptionally cold. The high started moving away on the 19th, allowing frontal systems to bring some snow to the north, but then mobile westerlies meant the rest of the month was changeable and mild. Maxima in Durham went …
A little late this month, but here are the numbers for January 2025 in Durham. It was the coldest January since January 2021 in Durham. Mean temperature was about 1.5 degC below the long term average. The spell from Jan 2nd-12th averaged just 0.1 degC. The 10th-11th was the coldest night nationally for 15 years, with -18.9 degC at Altnaharra …
A very mixed and mild month. Storm Darragh battered Britain, mainly in the west facing the Irish Sea. Mobile phone warnings accompanied a Red Met Office warning. There was then an anticyclonic spell mid-month. Christmas was very mild. It was also very wet in Scotland, but not in Durham. Most of the monthly rainfall total fell in the first week. …
The first two weeks of November 2024 were marked by a large stationary anticyclone, giving “anticyclonic gloom”, with many areas particularly in the south being very dull, although dry (only 6% of the expected rainfall had fallen by the 16th). There was a notable northerly outbreak in the third week bringing snow to some areas and some sharp frost. The …
Ah, October in the UK—a month where the weather often feels like it’s playing a game of “guess what’s next.” In 2024, October didn’t disappoint, serving up a mix of sunshine, showers, and a few surprises. A Tale of Two Halves The month kicked off with a blend of wet and dry spells. Early October saw rain sweeping across the …
After a disappointing summer, we had all hoped for a September similar to the record one in September 2023. Alas, we were all to be royally disappointed. The gentle transition from Summer to Autumn never really materialised and leaves started falling earlier than we are used to. In the first week, the temperatures touched the 20 degC mark on 3 …