February 2022 will be remembered for a cluster of three named storms: Dudley, Eunice and Franklin, which arose from an exceptionally active North Atlantic Jet Stream. They caused considerable disruption nationally, including flooding in some areas. Fortunately, we escaped the worst of it. Although it rained here on 21 days, most of it was light,...
Another month of record breaking weather started with the warmest New Year’s Day ever. It was also the sunniest January recorded for England, though we experienced many days of continuous cloud cover. Finally, in contrast to December, it was particularly dry, rainfall in England being less than 40% of average. Here, only eight days had...
December is usually one of the wetter months of the year, as was the case this time with 15 rain-days. Storm ‘Barra’ on 7th-8th produced high winds and heavy showers but was nothing like as damaging as named storm ‘Arwen’ in November.
November is generally a quiet time for wildlife. However, Ian Wolfenden reported a huge movement of winter thrushes at Hightown on 4th. He estimated an extraordinary number of 5000 Fieldfares and 2000 Redwings flying north. Strong winds from the southwest on 6-7th brought in an unusual bounty from the tropics, John Dempsey finding a colourful Portuguese-Man-of-War and...