01, February 2020
Mildest January In Last 10 Years
It's been the mildest January since I started my record keeping a little over 10 years ago. Rather amazingly we had only one night where the temperature fell below 0°C (32°F) all month and almost every day was above the average temperature for January. However, although it was a mild month it was also a windy month as one low pressure system after another tracked in off the Atlantic Ocean. One good thing was that rainfall was below average which must help in drying out the allotment after the wet months that brought 2019 to a close.
As it was the mildest January I've recorded I have had a look through the Central England Temperature (CET) Records held by the UK Met Office to see where this January was placed in records going back to 1772. The current CET temperature for January 2020 is 6.5°C (43.7°F), a little bit lower than my value, so it's probably high enough to scrape into the bottom top ten of the CET January records.
Mildest Januarys from Met Office Central England Temperature Records
I was aware that this year was about the same as 2007, based on my figures, but I was rather surprised to see how far back in the records it was necessary to go to find some milder January temperatures.
Currently, there seems to be no break in the weather pattern with a windy and mild start to February forecast.