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.
My month with nature started well when Joyce and David Jarvis showed me two flowering Broad-leaved Helleborines at Ainsdale National Nature Reserve. I hadn’t seen this orchid on the Sefton Coast since 2008. Other notable plants during the month included a small colony of Whorl-grass that I found on a freshwater seepage zone on Hightown...