November finished up as the third mildest November I’ve recorded.

It didn’t manage to beat November 2011  or 2015 which are the mildest I’ve recorded. With September and October being on the mild side autumn in general turned out to be mild finishing in second place to the autumn of 2011. The average values for autumn temperatures are shown in the table below.

Of course just because the temperature is on the mild side it doesn’t mean that the weather has been great. In general, it’s been damp and dull, not the sort of weather for visiting the allotment. As you can see from the table above this autumn has been wetter than normal making up for the dry summer. The plots are now very wet so there’s no point attempting to do any more winter digging. The ground will need to be left to dry out as digging it over when it’s too wet will do more harm than good.

The beginning of December brings the start of meteorological winter and right on cue the weather is forecast to turn much colder over the next week or so. As always there’s some doubt about exactly how cold it will get and whether we will have any snow.

The weather charts for the next week don’t look very good for the central heating bill. If this forecast turns out to be correct we’ll have several days during the next week when the temperature won’t get above 0°C or 32°F all day.