Author: Eric Gilbert

Today I registered the greatest daily solar energy for this month. The sunshine was quite high at 4.8 hours but not the highest this month as on the 6th we received 6.2 hours but we are very close to the shortest day.
The recent mild weather brought three days with maxima greater than 11C with the highest on the 18th with a maximum of 11.9C. These days were all greater than 4C above the 30-year average for December.

With a rise of over 11C in the last twenty-four hours the temperature at 0800 was 10.3C, which is 3C above the long-term average for December. The overnight rainfall amounted to 12.2mm, which brings the total for December so far to 30.7mm, abut one third of the 30-year average.
After a foggy start yesterday with valley fog drifting around, the day brought 4.38 hours of sunshine.

Following a night with clear skies, no wind and an air frost with a minimum temperature at sunrise of -0.7C, it is not surprising to see valley fog drifting around with varying density.

Following a sharp air frost, when the thermometer dropped to -2.1C, yesterday brought clear blue skies and much sunshine totalling 5.96 hours during daylight hours.
The soil temperature at a depth of 5cm has reached it lowest since January at 0.7C.

As forecast the wind strengthened overnight with a maximum gust of 45mph at 03.38 as the barometric pressure dropped to a low of 991mb. This was accompanied by heavy rainfall totalling 13.5mm for the past twenty-four hours, which was the greatest daily rainfall total since 11th November.