September will be remembered for generally benign conditions; more of a summer month than an autumn one. Nationally, it was one of the warmest on record, with some exceptionally warm days in the South East in the middle of the month. Infact, the year’s highest temperature of 34+C occurred at this time. It is easy to imagine that if the same combination of conditions had occurred a couple of months back, we might have broken through the 40C barrier for the first time in recordable history.

Back here in Umborne, we did not experience the extreme warmth (often the case). My highest recorded day temperature of 25C occurred on the 7th. This followed an exceptionally mild night when the low was 17.9C. This turned out to be the warmest night I had recorded since August 2003–the night following the day when the current U.K. highest maximum was set.  There was one ‘autumnal’ night–right at the Equinox, with a low of 5.1C on the morning of the 23rd. Otherwise the nights were generally mild although Exeter Airport recorded two of the U.K’s lowest minima on the 12th and the 28th. Overall the mean temperature here(16.3C)was about 1.75C higher than in 2015, but not as high as the warm, dry and sunny September of 2014.

Rainfall was pretty consistent in its distribution throughout the month and was often thundery in nature. There were five daily totals of more than 10mm recorded. The 3rd. 9th. (the wettest with 17.5mm) 19th. 26th and 30th. The fall on the 30th. actually occurred on the morning of 1st. October, but as I record at 1000 BST each day, the 16.4mm had to be added to September’s rather high total to give 110.6mm. The heavy showery nature of the rainfall is interesting, because on a site in the Otter Valley, not so far west of here, the monthly total was only 49.4mm. At that site, the observer recorded 19 days with no rain; here it was 10!

Peter at Pottlelake