The first ten days of January were mild and mainly dry, not at all wintry. However, on the 12th a change to cold continental air brought us back to winter with the first light snowflakes falling in the afternoon. Temperatures dropped over succeeding days with thirteen consecutive days of air frost and snow falling on six days with the main accumulations of 13cm and 4cm. The cold days, combining with winds from an easterly quarter, gave a wind chill as low as -7c on the 19th and 20th. The mean temperature was 0.6C below the long-term average with the lowest temperature on the 25th when the thermometer dropped to -5.4C. With winds changing into a southerly direction at the end of the month temperatures recovered and a maximum of 12.6C was noted on the 29th, the warmest January day since 2002. During this latter period strong winds set in with gusts exceeding 30mph over the last five days and a maximum gust, during a rain squall on the 27th, giving a maximum of 42mph.
Rainfall and melted snow gave a total precipitation of 87.8mm, almost equal to the long-term average.
With so much cloud cover it is not surprising that solar power was down almost 10% on the total for 2012 and with ten hours less sunshine.
The weather station of Marlborough, Wiltshire
