Once again, although, we had many hours of sunshine on Thursday we were still under the flow of cool air brought on a northwesterly and later a northerly airstream from the north Atlantic, not Arctic, so it moderated the rise in temperature. The maximum of 9.8C was logged at 14.39 being 1.4C above my long-term average. The clear skies saw the thermometer fall slowly late afternoon and early evening registering freezing point (-0.1C) at 22.29 where it hovered until after 01.30 when it fell further with a low of -2.7C at 07.40 early Friday, which was 4.5C below the average.
There were two significant meteorological events on Thursday registered on my station. The UV light was the strongest since 25th October with a value of 1.8 at its peak being at the top end of ‘Low’. The equivalent loss of rainfall through evaporation from ground sources and plant life totalled 1.32mm being the highest since 5th October as the ground had been very wet following the recent substantial falls of precipitation.
Friday revealed a sunny start to the day, even if the sun’s strength was weak initially. There were misty conditions at first with fog observed rolling in from the north after 07.40 but then receded and dispersed by 08.15. The thermometer climbed back above freezing at 08.18. The air stream has veered into the northeast today although the conditions last night and this morning are calm with the anemometer stationary.
The anticyclone has built considerably over the past twenty-four hours and is centred just to the north of Marlborough with the pressure reading at 08.00 of 1030.2mb, a rise of 10mb since Thursday at that time. This is going to give us a few fine, dry and sunny days although air frosts are likely to occur during the next two nights.
The synoptic charts indicate that this high pressure system will be dominate our weather for the next few days with much sunshine although not high temperatures as the air stream until Monday will come predominantly from a northerly quadrant, when it is then forecast to back into a westerly quadrant, which will see the daily temperatures begin to rise with the end of night frosts.