Category: Commentary

Maximum down slightly on Friday with 23.1C, which was 2.4C above average
Minimum up again at 13.6C, which was 2.1C above average
Very light winds with maximum of 10 mph. Much of day and night were still conditions.
Fourth consecutive dry day
Lowest humidity at 08.00 since 10th August with reading of 89%
Soil temperature at a depth of 5cm up again with reading of 17.1C at 08.00
Barometric pressure up again at 1018.3mb

Friday was a glorious late summer’s day wth 9.89 hours of strong sunshine and very light winds, mainly from the west but backing into the south west late afternoon.

The strong sunshine and very light winds, with a maximum gust of 12 mph, gave a very pleasant day. The maximum of 23.4C made it the warmest day this month and since 18th July, almost 3C above the August average.

A large lump of slow moving cloud deprived us of early evening sunshine.

Overnight the temperature slowly fell away to a minimum of 12.1C in the middle of the night at 02.46. From this time the thermometer slowly started to rise as more cloud drifted in.

The cloud thinned just before 7am to give intermittent, weak sunshine. Nevertheless, the temperature at 08.00 had recovered to 15.5C.

Thursday was the brightest day of the week so far with 2.64 hours of string sunshine that produced a maximum of 20.1C, just below the August average. With a light breeze from the west it was a pleasant end of summer day.

With clearing skies the thermometer plummeted to a minimum of 7.4C at 06.54, which was 4.1C below the August average.

At dawn there was initially fog in the Kennet and Og valleys that grew into a larger fog bank.

The influence of strong sunshine shortly after dawn meant that the fog cleared by 07.15 and the thermometer recovered to 10.8C at 08.00, the second coolest start to the day this month, with the promise of more sunshine to come.

This week has proved to be a warmer and drier period to date with just 1mm of rainfall, Monday into Tuesday, bringing the August total to 58.2mm, which is 87% of the 33-year average.

Tuesday night was the warmest of this month with the thermometer not dropping below 15.4C giving us the warmest morning at 08.00 this month of 17.1C, just pipping the previous record of 17.0C on the 17th.

After a sunny morning, with 2.11 hours of strong sunshine on sunday, the cloud steadily built up during the afternoon with rain arriving just before 5pm

Thanks to the southerly air flow the thermometer rose to a maximum of 19.6C at 13.53, which was 1.1C below average, before cloud began to obscure the sun.

The rain late evening and early morning amounted to 9.3mm, the second wettest day this month, bringing the total for August to 57.2mm, which is just 9mm short of the August average.

The thermometer did not fall below 13.7C overnight, which was 2C above the average.

This morning has dawned very dull with low light level and fog with visibility down to 200m at 08.00 from the cloud.