Local Forecasts, History & Records
I don’t think I would be being too harsh on Summer 2019 if I said I thought it was slow getting started. After the first half of June, the prospects of summer were looking dire. There had already been over 100mm of rain by the time we’d reached the half way point. There had already been 5 days with more …
Noctilucent Clouds over Durham City, June 17th/18th 2019 by Mike Ridley Photography Some of you eagle-eyed skywatchers will have noticed a ghostly glow in the sky on the way back from the pub in recent days. Was it real? Was it just an illusion caused by too much Gin? No, what you saw was real and is called ‘Noctilucence’. It …
May 2019 Summary May opened disappointingly cool, with the preponderence of winds from an Northerly and Easterly sector, the direction no-one wants at this time of the year. There was no real warmth until the 13th and then only for three days! Temperatures did recover a bit in the second half, to give an overall mean of 10.9 degC, which …
The report above appeared in the Northern Echo newspaper on 29th May 2019. The axis of funnel clouds may be vertical, inclined (as seen here), or sometimes long and sinuous. In the UK it is usually tens of metres in diamater (not huge). It is much rarer for funnel clouds to touch the ground and that is when they become …
April 2019 began quite cold, with some snow over high ground and even to lower levels in Durham. None of it lay on the ground, but the strong north westerly and northerly winds made it feel unseasonably cold. It gradually began to warm up by day, but cold at night before mid month. It was quite wet in the first …
March 2019 was another month of above average temperatures in Durham, with the monthly mean coming in at 7.2 degC, which is about 1.3 degrees above the long term average. The Maximum temperature was 17.1 degC on 29th, with the Minimum at 0.1 degC recorded on the morning of the 8th March. The rainfall total of 51.7mm fell mainly in …
Heavy rain overnight on 16th March resulted in the River Wear in Durham rising to 2.36m just after 9pm. This was a rise of 1.8m in less than 12 hours. The river was a raging torrent, lapping over riverside paths. The river also carried lots of broken tree branches and wood downstream, snagging on bridges and the weirs further around …
Photos of the daffodils in Durham Botanical Gardens and Shincliffe in March 2019
February started very cold in Durham, with the first 3 days averaging below freezing. Rain was plentiful until the 9th, but then the dry weather of February returned, accompanied by increasingly warm unseasonal temperatures. The airstream was coming from the Canary Islands. The all-time February record was smashed in England and Wales on 26th and 27th, topping 20 degC for …
The New Year opened much the same as the old one ended, with dry benign weather and extraordinarily persistent High Pressure for the first half of the month. The high was a cloudy one, so temperatures stayed above freezing, with no fog or frost. It’s very unusual for a January to have such a high average pressure and not be …
The first half of January 2019 was very mild and incredibly dry in Durham, leaving us with pleasant conditions by the River Wear. We even spotted 3 otters out for a swim.
