Tuesday brought us a twenty-four hour period in two distinct halves.
We enjoyed 7.28 hours of strong sunshine during the day that with relatively modest breezes gave us a maximum of 17.3C, slightly up on the previous day but 1.4C below the September average due to the westerly air flow.
The wind backed into the south just after 4pm and after a quiet period, began to rise with strong gusts after 8pm. This evening period was marked by several hours of rain amounting to 5.7mm, the third wettest day this month, that ceased just before midnight.
Just after 1.30am the wind began to increase significantly with frequent gusts above 30mph and a peak gust of 39mph at 02.01.
The cloudy, windy night meant a mild night with a minimum of 10.2C, almost 1C above the 33-year September average.
This morning we have enjoyed bright sunshine since dawn but by 08.00 variable cloud had drifted in on the breeze that had veered back into the west. The humidity at 08.00, of 84%, was the lowest this month.
Summer 2017 summary
Both temperature and rainfall were above average, as was sunshine.
The total rainfall amounted to 192mm, which was 10mm above the 33-year average. It is interesting to see from analysis that the trend for summer rainfall is upward. In the period of the early 1990’s to 2005, the average was around 165mm but the upward trend shows that the average over the last ten years is closer to 182mm per summer.
There were three very wet days with heavy rainfall that produced 23.6mm on June 5th followed by 26.2mm and 23.5mm on July 11th and 21st respectively.
During the three months there were 40 rain days when greater than 0.1mm was recorded in a day and 29 wet days when rainfall equal to or greater than 1mm per day was recorded. The data for both features has a rising trend. For rain days an increase from around 35 to 43 days each summer with wet days showing an increase from around 26 to 31 occurrences each summer.
It was the 8th warmest summer since my records began in 1984 being 0.6C above the 33-year average. This was principally due to a very warm June, which was 2C above the average also the warmest June since records began in 1984. July was just above average although a sad August was 0.5C below average.
There were several very warm days. June gave us four days with above 30C maxima producing 32.2C on the 21st. July started warm with a peak maximum of 30.4C on the 6th, however August could only manage a maximum of 28.2C on the 28th.
In total there were 389 hours of strong sunshine, which was 75 more than that received in 2016.
