November 2012.

The first eighteen days of the month, other than one, 3rd, were actually quite dry, perhaps a little cooler than average, with a few light frosts, with a predominance of winds from the NW. A swing round to a SE wind on the 14th brought the month’s
highest temperature of 16C. This was about five degrees above average, but last year’s mild month brought a higher reading four days later, and this year’s highest was the lowest, (if that makes sense) since 2008.
The last three Novembers have started very mild, and whilst 2010 ended very cold, giving a lower average temperature than in 2012, the wet, frost free month of November 2009, and the drier November 2011 were 2.5C and 3.0C milder overall than 2012. November 2012 ended with three consecuative dry days, the longest such stretch since early September. The 30th became the first true winter’s day, with a maximum temperature of 5.5C after an overnight low of -4.7C. If 2012 had not been a leap year, this day would have fallen as December 1st, the meteorological start of winter, exactly three weeks before the Solstice.

But for the sixth time since April, an excessive rainfall event occurred. The week of 19-25th produced over 157mm of the
total of 193.2mm for the whole month. The monthly figure  was virtually the same as November 2009 at 193.3mm! I know that it is easy to say ‘Climate Change’ these days, but it really does seem that the weather this year has been quite abnormal. Yes, we get wet seasons. These are usually followed by a balancing, so that a ‘poor’ summer is followed by a ‘good’ autumn.  It seems increasingly likely that we are experiencing the reverse of what we were led to believe would occur as a resulting of ‘Global Warming’.

Autumn 2012:

Not surprisingly, with its total of 396.2mm, this year’s Autumn has turned out far wetter than any other autumn since 2000, which totalled about 440mm. Infact, November 2012 was wetter than the whole of Autumn 2011, which was also one of the warmest
on record. The period April-November has notched up a remarkable 1160mm. I really need to find out if there has ever been such a wet eight-month sequence.  With regard to warmth, or lack of it, the average temperature for the past three months was just 0.05C warmer than November last year.  The figure of 10.6+ was about a quarter of one degree warmer than in 2010, which had fourteen airfrosts as opposed to nine this year.

Peter at Pottlelake