Slowly on Wednesday the temperature eased upwards during daylight hours reaching 8.0C in the afternoon. However, as the warmer air began to filter through after 20.00, and with the ground releasing some of its chill, there was a more significant rise to reach 11.2C at 08.00 on Thursday morning. Therefore, within twenty-four hours the thermometer had climbed from 0.2C to 11.2C with the highest temperature during the night rather than the daytime. There were spots of rain just after 21.00 but the main rain began just before 22.00 last night with the more continuous rain falling between 22.00 and midnight, further accumulations were recorded between 04.00 and 08.00 with a day total of 5.6mm. That additional precipitation took the monthly rainfall to 31.1mm compared to the long-term monthly average of 68.0mm. The UV level at the peak op the brightness rose to 1.4 again.
Thursday began dark and damp under low cloud ahead of the depression easing in from the west. As the depression began to take charge of our weather the wind has backed from the cold southeasterly to south and southwest today and will increase in speeded as the day progresses. A maximum gust of 21mph was recorded at 02.04 early Thursday morning. The barometric pressure had dropped again to read 1012.1mb at 08.00.
The rain radar shows bands of heaver rain moving in from the west associated with two weather fronts that will cross our region this morning. There were brief flashes of lightning over Exmoor earlier in the morning. One of the wetter periods today, indicated by the rain radar, will be just before and after mid-day as a narrow and more intense band of rain arrives. The deep depression in mid-Atlantic is dragging up the warmer air from around the Azores region, with the temperature continuing to climb as I write.
The soil temperature at a depth of 5cm, read at 08.00 each day, indicates that the recent chill in the ground has recovered quickly in the last twenty-four hours with the reading on each of the last four days being 0.9C, 0.1C, 1.0C and 8.9C respectively.
The shrub shown in the pictures for the next few days will be Mahonia Japonica, much loved by bees, it also produces a very pleasant, strong scent.
