Winter is now officially over - and Wiltshire
is marked down as having one of the six mildest
ones since
temperature records started in 1659. A mild
winter, although still well short of the record-breaking
temperatures recorded in 1869, but a wet one. The last
three months have seen several water authorities drop their
hosepipe bans. Rising river levels and saturated gardens
in many parts of the country show how February just got
wetter as the
month went on. February often turns out to he one of the
driest months of the year, so this is an interesting development.
Final figures suggest that the South East was the mildest
and wettest part of the UK, helped by very heavy downpours
in the final few days. Almost twice the average rain fell
across the London area, with the rest of the South and
the Midlands also suffering. Most parts of the country
had a wetter February than usual, although the North West
saw only a fraction above the average
amount of rain and Southern Ireland's figures were about
normal.
The frosty nights, sunny days and heavy snowfalls at the
start of the month are now just a memory. The coldest night
of the winter was -10.7°C at Altnaharra in the Scottish
Highlands, but as the southwesterly winds became established
by the middle of the month so the rain became more widespread.
At the same time, the amount of sunshine dwindled, so by
the
end of the month only a few areas were left with
a sunny aspect. The North East enjoyed about 20 per cent
more sunshine than usual, whereas the north of Scotland
was 20 per cent down.
Lyneham's highest day temperature was recorded on the
22nd where thermometers topped 11.4°C and the lowest temperature
was recorded in the first week of the month on the fifth
at -5.2°C. The mean maximum for the whole month was quite
warm at 8.7°C which was 2.1°C above the averafe for a February
at Lyneham. Even though the mean minimum was recorded at
3.3°C we still had 7 days of air frost. Lyneham saw its
first significant snowfall on the night of Febraury
8th and the village
was
blanketed with a heavy downfall of 3cm. We have some of
the scenes around Lyneham recorded in our gallery, click
here. Traditionally February is supposed to be quite
a dry month, but 98mm fell for the 28 day period which
was twice the average. |
