Friday, 24 January 2020
What An Odd Month So Far!
I think it's true to say that so far this month hasn't been all that much like January. It looks as though it will finish up as a very mild January.
Temperature and Barometric Pressure Records 18-24 January 2020
Looking at the chart above it shows the temperature falling below zero last Sunday. That's the only time this month that's happened which is unusual for January. With no more frosts forecast that might be the only day this month with a below 0°C (32°F). The lowest number of such days over the last ten years was in 2018 when we had 4 such days. The average temperature for the month stands at 6.9°C or 44.4°F (up to the 23rd of January) well above the 5.9°C (42.6°F) the highest previous value I've recorded back in 2014. I think the highest value for January, from Met Office records, goes all the way back to 1916 with a temperature of 7.5°C or 45.5°F.
The record high pressure earlier in the week brought with it some dry weather but it hasn't done an awful lot of drying up at the plot. We did make one visit during the week to make a little bit more progress at sorting out our old honey berry bed.
The lavender plants which edged 2 sides of the bed were dug up. The ground was very hard to say the least and a pick axe came in handy to prise the biggest of the lavender bushes out of the ground. After some deliberation we have decided to try and take some lavender cuttings from the existing plants rather than attempt to replant the old plants. The bed was dug over and left for the winter weather to break down the soil.
I've still got to clear the edge of the bed adjacent to our plot boundary. I'm planning to remove the existing post and wire fence after cutting back the grape vine which grows along it. Once the bed has been dug over I'll replace the post and wire fencing and re-attach the grape vine.
Thursday, 30 January 2020
Weather Extremes?
There’s not been much to report weather wise over the last week. It’s remained mostly mild for January although we did have a few flakes of snow at times on Tuesday morning. We’ve had just enough rain to prevent the allotment from drying out so gardening activities remain on hold.
Temperature & Rainfall Records January 2020
I’ve been thinking for some time now about doing a blog post covering weather extremes. In the UK we are well known for talking endlessly about the weather, especially the extremes of weather we get. The thing is though, we don’t ever get any real extremes of weather. We live in a Maritime temperate weather climate which means the weather never gets really hot nor does it get really cold. These facts become clear after reading other people's blogs and watching YouTube channels from around the world.
I’ve been thinking about the best way to explain this and I think I’ve found just the table to show it. My Davis weather station has software to cater for all types of climates around the world. One table in particular summarises the extremes of temperature throughout the year. This summary table for 2019 is shown below.
The four columns outlined with a red box are an indication of extremes of temperature. It might not be all that obvious what each column indicates. The first column shows the number of days in the year that the temperature exceeds 32°C or 90°F. The second column indicates the number of days each year where the highest temperature during the day never gets above 0°C or 32°F. The third column indicates the number of days where the temperature falls below 0° C or 32° F at sometime during the day and finally the fourth column includes days where the temperature falls below -18°C or 0°F.
In 2019 we had one day where the temperature exceeded 32°C (90°F) and one day where the temperature never got above 0°C (32°F) all day. We had 35 days where the temperature fell below 0°C (32°F) but no days at all where the temperature got down to -18°C or 0°F.
Taking into account our climate I think that columns one, two and four record extremes of high or low temperatures. This is certainly true for where we live in our Maritime temperate climate. I’ve looked through the summary tables from 2010 to 2019 to produce the table below.
Extreme Temperature Record Summary 2010 to 2020
As you can see from the chart we very rarely manage any numbers in columns one, two and four. In fact in 10 years we’ve never had a temperature as low as -18° C and only on three occasions have we exceeded a temperature of 32° C.
I wonder how many people get many days above 32°C and correspondingly cold temperatures below -18° C.