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JANUARY 2008 January has been a month dominated by the Atlantic influence, meaning on the whole a very mild month. It has also been a very wet one with floods again making the headlines. At the beginning of the month high pressure tried to take hold from Scandinavia. This introduced cold east to south easterly winds and the first snowfalls to north eastern Britain, but unusually this did not set the scene for a prolonged cold spell as is often the case with this situation. Instead it merely lasted a day or so, before milder air swept in from the Atlantic. The Atlantic then took complete control of our weather, sending a stream of increasingly active depressions and frontal systems into the UK. Initially it was the north and west that took the brunt, but as time went on this spread further south. Rainfall totals began to mount up, and it wasn’t long before a saturated ground could take no more. Flooding occurred widely causing renewed misery for many, especially after the deluges of last summer. Our total rainfall of the month of 102mm or 4.08 inches is not too far off twice the average. With the Atlantic influence, there was little snow or frost with only one air frost recorded for the whole month. Some colder air incursions on the back edge of the depressions did occur at times, but generally these were only of short duration. Around the middle of the month we saw some exceptionally mild weather for the time of year with daytime maximums reaching over 14°C 57°F . London had it’s warmest January night on record with the temperature around 13°C not unexpected for a July minimum! The weather though remained unsettled with further bands of rain frequently moving across the UK from west to east. The month ended on a stormy note. A major Atlantic winter storm system passing to the north of Scotland, swept a cold front south across the UK bringing severe gales to many areas, and as Arctic air dug in behind it, snow became more widespread in the north heralding a much colder start to February. Colin Harwood |
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