December 2012.

The extreme weather patterns that have dominated the past
months were continued by December, and it seems that at last the
‘official’ statements from the Met. Office are beginning to acknowledge
that in a warmer world there are likely to be more unpredictable
patterns of rainfall. Certainly, there is no doubting the intensity of
the wet periods that have occurred over the past few months.

December’s weather fell into two unequal halves. Up to the
12th it was often cold, with some quite hard frosts. The coldest night,
11th  recorded a reading of -4.8C. This figure is about what I expect
for the average lowest figure in December. The days however, when sunny,
recovered the temperature quite well, and there was no day in December
when the maximum day temperature was lower than 7.3C.  This compared to
the coldest reading in November of 5.5C on the 30th. Only about 20mm. of
rainfall fell during this period, although there was an unwelcome fall
of frozen rain on the night of the 11th-12th  which made for some tricky
road conditions.

From the 13th the rain returned and each day thereafter
recorded falls including a spectacular hailstorm on the 16th.  Six days
recorded more than 10mm, and there were three ‘peaks’ in the totals,
notably during the three days 19th-21st when more than 70mm was
recorded. The final total for the month was 216.8mm – not as high as in
December 2000 (226.3mm), but making December the wettest month of 2012,
with June trailing only slightly behind. December 2011 happened to be
the wettest month of that year (remember the drought!) with just 86.9mm!
Amazingly, there were exactly the same number of raindays in both
Decembers.  Southwesterly winds directing air off the still comparatively
warm ocean also gave us a remarkably mild day on the 22nd with a
maximum temperature of 14.5C.  This was the highest December reading
since 2007. Overall December was a milder than average month, but half a
degree colder than that of 2011.

Peter at Pottlelake