Disclaimer
This weather site is operated as an amateur weather station site and should not be used as official data. I make every effort to ensure my data is as accurate as possible but I cannot guarantee that the data meets the requirements of the Meteorological Office or other professional weather monitoring organisations.
Sunday 01 March 2015
Spring’s not in the Air
The overnight gales died down through the morning and we had few nice sunny spells. The wind that remained had a cold edge to it.
Through the afternoon we had some rain, more than any day in February, but at least it was rain and not snow which fell in parts of West Yorkshire.
The day’s total rainfall amounted to 2.8mm (0.11”).
The weather statistics for February weren't too much out of the ordinary. Yesterday, I commented about it being a dry month. Temperature wise it was around average but much colder than last year when February was exceptionally mild for February.
The start of March brings the beginning of meteorological spring. Looking back at the three winter months we haven't done too badly. With temperatures around average, although once again not as mild as winter 2014 I don't think I can complain too much. It was however a windy winter especially in January which produced our worst gales in the last five years.
Providing we get some fairly average weather for March the end of the month should see the start of the sowing season getting into full swing. March can be a month of large weather swings from lovely warm weather giving the impression summer has arrived to bitterly cold nights making us wish we’d held back on sowing seeds for a little while longer.
Monday 02 March 2015
Snow Showers
Monday had some lovely sunny spells somewhat spoilt by persistent snow showers especially through the morning. The snow didn’t settle and amounted to very little rainfall. Despite the sunshine the temperature only managed a high of 6.4°C (43.5°F) and it felt even colder in the strong and blustery wind.
There wasn’t much to be done outside and as I hadn’t used my camera for a couple of days I thought I’d try a few bird photos just to keep my hand in.
With the forecast set for cold weather any gardening looks like being on hold this week. Temperatures are forecast to be milder by the weekend.
Tuesday 03 March 2015
Late This Year
Tuesday was another day with plenty of sunny spells but spoilt by a bitterly cold wind .
I haven’t seen many blog posts about the earliest ever spring bulbs to come into flower. Perhaps that’s because things aren’t particularly early this year.
As you can see from the two photos above our little bed of spring bulbs is well behind early March 2012.
Wednesday 04 March 2015
A Greenhouse Surprise
Wednesday was another day with plenty of sunny spells but once again a cold blustery wind.
The sunshine made it lovely and warm in the greenhouse so I decided to pot up a few more onion sets in modules. As we’ve lots of sets I decided to pot them up with 3 little onions to each module. This will result in smaller onions but they should be plenty big enough for our needs.
I managed to find a little more space in the greenhouse for the onions sets so they’ll get a few weeks of warmth before they get moved out into the coldframe.
I was inspecting out nectarine, apricot and peach tree which are now growing in large pots in the greenhouse. I was looking for some nice fat green buds to indicate that the trees had come through winter unscathed. To my surprise I saw this on our apricot.
There was only one flower so pollination is going to be a bit tricky however there are more buds to open.
We’ll now need to keep a careful watch on these buds. There aren’t many insects about to do any pollinating at the minute so the flowers might need a little help to give us the best chance of apricots this summer.
Thursday 05 March 2015
Final Note on February
Well we lost the sunshine on Thursday but it was still breezy and it didn’t feel any milder.
The Met Office have now published the Central England Temperature figure for February 2015. By the end of the year this is the go to figure that tells us just how warm the year has been in comparison with previous years.
I’ve included last year’s completed table on the left for comparison purposes. Both months this year have been much closer to the long term average than they were last year when the first four months of the year were exceptionally mild. February had the highest anomaly* of any month last year but that isn’t the case this year.
The monthly Central England Temperature data published by the Met Office can be found here.
*
I think I understand how the anomaly figure is worked out. Records from the CET between 1961 and 1990 are averaged out for each month and Jan 2014 is compared against the average value for the Januarys between 1961 and 1990 records. The difference between these two values is the anomaly. The result is that January 2014 was 1.9°C warmer than the long term average.
Our first camellia flower of spring looking a bit battered and bruised by the wind.
Friday 06 March 2015
Tied for Mildest Day of the Year
I was expecting Friday to produce the mildest day of the year but as it turned out it tied with 10 January 2015 at 14.2°C (57.6°F).
We made the most of the mild weather with a visit to RSPB Old Moor. As we’ve come to expect on our visits the ducks and geese were positioned nicely out of camera lens range but to make up for that there were lots of reed buntings around the garden area and feeders.
All my photos of reed buntings always seem to be against backgrounds which camouflages them and for me makes them tricky subjects to photograph well.
Saturday 07 March 2015
Railway Anniversary and Mildest Day of the Year
Saturday produced our warmest day of the year when the temperature reached at 17.8°C (64.0°F).
We set out for the North Yorkshire Moors.
It was on 08 March 1965 that British Railway closed the line between Grosmont and Malton under the infamous Beeching Axe. The North Yorkshire Moors Railway were running some special trains this weekend to mark the 50th anniversary of the line’s closure by British Railways. Amazingly two of the steam locomotives that hauled the last train along the line back in 1965 were saved from the scrap yard and were in action over the weekend hauling trains between Grosmont and Pickering.
This is the scene at Goathland station at lunchtime on Saturday as on the right of the photo 60007 Sir Nigel Gresley waits to depart for Pickering with the 12:30 Pullman Dining service from Grosmont.
The other train in the station is the 12:00 train service from Pickering heading to Whitby and hauled by locomotives 61994 The Great Marquess and 62005 the two locomotives that operated that special train 50 years ago when the line was closed. The two trains cross at Goathland station.
Goathland (famed as Aidensfield in the TV series Heartbeat) has free range sheep and extra care is needed driving through the village as the sheep can decide to cross the road at a moment’s notice. They assume rightly or wrongly that any passing cars will stop.
We had lunch at the station tearoom. It was a hot Yorkshire pasty, I don’t think it had lamb in it, but it was very tasty nevertheless. The weather up on the moors was windy but the railway runs in the river valley and was sheltered from the worst of the wind. The weather wasn’t too bad so after lunch we decided on a walk from Goathland towards Darnholme to get some shots from one of the more scenic spots on the railway.
We headed back to the station tearoom for some coffee and a cake before heading back to the car park.
