Biting cold and April showers... and then the drought kicked in
The average April temperature in the 20th century was 8.2C, but since the turn of the new millennium the average has gone up 1.3c to 9.5C.
APRIL was another dry and sunny month – the seventh time in the past 10 years this has occurred at my Leicestershire station.
High pressure and dry weather dominated the weather after the first showery week. There was no rain recorded at all after the 13th of the month so we recorded a 17-day dry spell which was officially a drought as it reached then surpassed the MET Office’s 15-day drought threshold.
Only 12.6mm was recorded at Mountsorrel, or just 25 per cent of the usual total, with Dean Whittaker at his Hinckley station recording just 14mm or 29 per cent of average and Dave Mutton at Cosby logging 12mm, just 24 per cent of his longterm average. April 2021 was even drier than this one, recording just 2mm at my station.
Temperatures were close to the average for the month, with the afternoon maximum logged at 14.6C and the average minimum recorded at 4.6C.
There were seven night-air frosts at Cosby, five at Hinckley and four at Mountsorrel. The overall mean temperature for April was 9.6C, which is 0.3C above normal.
This was 3C above last April’s very cold weather, but 2C lower than the very warm April of 2020.
Steve Jackson, at his nearby weather station at Bablake School, in Coventry, has again been looking at long-term trends.
The average April temperature in the 20th century was just 8.2C but since the turn of the new millennium the average in April has gone up 1.3C to 9.5C.
This is yet another month showing considerable temperature rises and these have been most marked in the autumn and spring months since 2000. Rainfall has also seen a considerable drop in this same period, down 25 per cent from the totals in the 20th century.
Once again it was a sunny month, with Dave at Cosby recording 171 hours of sunshine which was 14 per cent above normal
The first week of the month was actually the most unsettled and indeed cold.
The first two days of the month saw snow falling and at Cosby this settled, giving a 1cm cover on the opening day of the month.
The coldest day of the month was also the April 1, with a maximum of 7.3C at Mountsorrel. Overnight at Cosby the temperature dropped to -5C, the coldest night of the year so far!
The first 12 days were showery, but April 13 brought the last rainfall of the month. Much warmer weather then spread in for a few days, with the monthly high of 21.2C being reached at Hinckley on April 15 and the warmest night of the month following on the same date with a low of just 9.9C.
The rest of the month saw the drought set in. The sun shone, with a monthly high of 13.1 hours logged at Cosby on April 21.
All in all it was a pleasant April, with sunshine and decent temperatures, but by the end of it people were concerned by the lack of rainfall. Farmers were particularly worried about the arid state of the soil. Many thanks once again to Dean Whittaker, Dave Mutton and Steve Jackson for their help compiling the April report.