Following two months of fundamentally above average warm weather, the start of the month started the same. Normally as we celebrate bonfire night, the deciduous tress have shed their leaves for the winter but this year most of the leaves were still covering the trees in autumnal radiant colours. A cyclonic/southwesterly regime prevailed throughout the first twelve days, but from the 13th onwards anti cyclonic and northerly types were dominant, thus dropping the temperatures dramatically. The sharp frosts that arrived with several days of high pressures with insignificant winds, made ideal conditions for fog.

The briefest of northerly outbreaks was followed by a strong but short-lived build of pressure across the British Isles on the 13th and 14th, and this brought a general drop in temperature with frost by night and plentiful sunshine by day. Another northerly outbreak between the 15th and 17th preceded a prolonged rise in pressure which saw the establishment of a large anticyclone over the UK from the 18th-23rd. There were snow showers in the south west of England on the 16th bringing the M5 motorway to a standstill, however Lyneham only had a slight dusting. Otherwise this was a period of cold, settled weather with frosty nights and sunny days.

The cold snap during the last two weeks of the month, resulted in the monthly average temperature being 1.1% below the average for the month. The lowest minimum was recorded on the 20th, where thermometers dropped to -5.8°C. Despite the long periods of fog in the middle of the month, meant that sunshine figures were quite high, 136% of the monthly average, 96 hours were only recorded probably the long sunny days with frosts made up for the anti cyclonic foggy conditions. Fifteen days of the month we had rain, and on the 6th we had the largest downpour of 24.4mm. Lyneham had three days with small amounts of snowfall, making it feel very wintry and seasonally festive scenes around the hill slopes. Locally, neighbouring counties had significant flurries to cause disruption to the day-to-day routines, traffic accidents and train delays but Lyneham escaped the bad snowy weather again.