2019 was the wettest year since my records began
Extremes we have experienced will become more commonplace
ONCE again December proved to be a very wet month. 86mm of rain fell at Mountsorrel which is nearly 40 per cent above normal.
The rainfall total for the year at Mountsorrel rose to 992mm a staggering 50 per cent above our normal total of 650mm here in the Soar Valley.
No doubt many upland locations such as the Charnwood Forest received well over 1,000mm.
The year 2019 was the wettest year I have recorded since my records began 20 years ago. Most of this rain fell between June and December when 800mm of the 992mm fell.
The cause was slow moving areas of low pressure with rain fronts ground to a halt over us on at least six occasions giving us up to 50mm in 24 hours at times. Between September 22 and December 22, there were 72 days with rain and just 18 dry ones!
The rain did stop finally falling after Christmas.
The resultant rain has caused flooding on numerous occasions with some of our flood prone spots being underwater for up to six weeks during the autumn.
The rains have badly affected farmers too with many crops unable to be planted due to the saturated conditions. On the plus side December was milder than normal.
Afternoon temperatures were logged at 8.3c ( +1.1c) with night time temperatures recorded at 3.3c (+1.4c). The warmest day was on December 19th when 12c was recorded and the coldest night was on the 2nd with a low of -2.7c
The mainly mild damp conditions meant frost was rare with just 3 air frosts recorded here and there was no snowfall recorded at all.
This makes five out of the last seven Decembers totally snow free at this Soar Valley location.
The sunshine total of 55 hours was about average for this location. The average temperature for the year was 10.2c at this location a fraction above normal but there were some big extremes.
February saw temperatures rise to 18c on the 26th and in London they reached 21.2c when the average is 8c making this the warmest winter day ever recorded. Indeed 21.2c is the average July maximum so for this to happen in February is remarkable! In July we broke the National temperature record with a high of 38.7c recorded in Cambridge. Here we broke our record too with temps up to 35.2c on Thursday 25th July.
December then reached some very high temperatures in Scotland with 18.7c recorded making this the warmest December day ever recorded.
So three temperature records were broken in a year but as the planet continues to warm up then we must expect this to happen on a regular basis.
The planet continues to warm every year and all the earths warmest recorded years have been in the last 20 years with 2016 being the warmest on records that go back to 1850.
A warmer world gives us more extremes with both heatwaves and flooding becoming more common place so perhaps the extremes we have experienced this year will become more common place in the future.