It seemed to me that November was a wet month although the rainfall figures for the month didn’t back that up. However, December has started off cold and wet. We’ve already had 21.8mm (0.86in) of rainfall in the first week which is getting on for as much as we had in the whole of November.
At least it fell as rain rather than snow.
On Sunday morning it was cold and wet in the garden after some overnight rain but somehow one of our roses is still in bloom.
The other blooms on the same stem haven’t faired as well. There’s another bud to open but I can’t see it opening this late into the year.
The weather forecast for the next few days is for more cold weather. Strangely, over the last few years, December has tended to warm up as the month progresses which is not what I’d expect.
As you can see from the chart above the daytime temperature average indicated by the red line has a gradual rise towards the end of the month. I’d expect the end of December to be colder than the beginning but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The rise is even more obvious with the blue line representing the night time average temperatures.
I’ve seen some talk this year of a cold spell towards the end of December but that’s a long way off yet and there’s plenty of time for the weather models to come up with something different.