February 2008 will be remembered for sunshine
records being broken across England and Wales and some
exceptionally warm days during the second week. February
began and ended with northwesterly outbreaks, but the centrepiece
of the month was a long anti cyclonic period which lasted
from the 6th to the 25th in southern Britain, resulting
in long periods of warm sunshine during the day a chilly
and frosty evenings when the sun went down. High pressure
lay over the British Isles from the 10th till the 20th,
and throughout this period most parts of the country were
dry and sunny. At first the days were abnormally warm though
nights were frosty locally; at Trawsgoed (Ceredigion) the
temperature reached 18.2°C on the 12th and 17.2°C
on the 13th, the highest this early in the year since 2003.
It turned colder from the 14th onwards with overnight lows
typically between -4 and -8°C, and on the 18th a diurnal
range of 21.6degC (-7.5°C to
14.1°C) was obtained at Capel Curig (Snowdonia).
Fog
formed in many areas on the 18th, and freezing fog persisted
all day on the 19th in the Midlands, Lincs and Yorks, with
a maximum of -2.9°C at Dishforth (N. Yorks), the lowest
here since late-December 2005. The month’s lowest
temperature, -10.7°C at Copley (Co Durham), occurred
the following night. From the 9th-19th inclusive, Aberporth
(Ceredigion) had unbroken sunshine on ten out of eleven
days while Norwich logged 9.9 hours of bright sunshine
on the 17th, the month’s highest daily total. Lyneham's
February sunshine record was broken where a total of 124
hours was recorded beating the previous record way back
in 1952 with 116 hours. The monthly total was 172% of the
norm for February. The month was generally very dry where
only 17mm fell and this was a third of the mean average. |
