After four dry months, October set to work to address
the balance with regard to rainfall. After the wettest day of the month with 28.9mm on the 3rd following two increasingly high totals, the monthly total had already easily exceeded the rainfall for the whole of September.  The next eight days were drier, with just occasional light falls, but from the 11th onward there was just one day when no rain was recorded. The daily totals began to increase reaching a peak on 27th with just about one inch of rain. Overall there were twenty five days with recordable rainfall, and ten days with over 10mm. the total of
213.9mm made October 2013 the wettest October I have recorded.  Overall this was the fifth wettest month in my records. The order of wettest months with totals above 200mm runs: September 1999, August 1997, November 2002, December 2012, October 2013 and June 2012. The most
significant statistic from this being that three of these have occurred in the past seventeen months.

With all the cloud and rain, October proved a mild
month.  The warmest afternoon occured on the 6th with a high of 21.8C, but another warm spell mid month gave us 21.3C on 17th. This is the latest date in the year that I have recorded a maximum reading above 21C.  In 2009, a figure of 20.6C was recorded on the 24th however. The night time temperatures remained frostfree with a lowest reading of 1.1C on 30th. Until that night all the October minima had remained above the
cold night that had occurred on September 7th, and this made an interesting opposing ‘mirror’ to what occurred six months ago. On March 5th there was a mild day whose afternoon high was not to be exceeded until six weeks later. The average temperature for October came out at around 13.2C, over 2.6C warmer than last year, but very slightly cooler than that of October 2011. This was the month that started with record
breaking warmth, with the first two days recording maxima above 25C.

Peter at Pottlelake