After a bright start to Wednesday it wasn’t long before the cloud built up and a significant squall arrived. The wind gusted to 32mph at 09.21 with soft hail, called grauple, being observed at 09.34. Over the next 25 minutes the thermometer dropped from 8.4C to 3.0C in the blast of cold, gusting air. The early peak of 8.5C at 08.45 was the maximum all day being 2.1C below my 40-year average. The minimum overnight of 1.9C occurred at 05.00 early Thursday that was 0.6C below my 40-year average.
The deep depression, then off the Irish coast, produced a rash of frequent shower lines that formed roughly concentric circles around its centre, over the UK. The total rainfall in the past twenty-four hours amounted to 21.7mm making it the wettest day since 17th February (27.1mm) and took the monthly total to 94.4mm, which is 154% of my 40-year average or +33m.
Thursday began with strong sunshine but by 08.00 shower clouds had built up and showers arrived that in between gave brief spells of sunshine.
The intense depression at 08.00 was just off the tip of Cornwall. As it closes in the shower activity will become more frequent with heavy rain and the wind building in strength and likely to exceed 50mph after midday. The centre of the anticyclone had a reading of 965mb at 08.00 while in Marlborough it read 976.1mb, the lowest barometric pressure since 9th February (974.5mb)
