Wettest February for past 43 years
FEBRUARY became the wettest month since 1977 in Leicestershire with 144.5mm falling at my station in Mountsorrel and is quite close to the February record set in Sutton Bonington in 1977 of 175mm.
Rain fell heavily and frequently once again with 23 days of the month recording rainfall with just six dry days.
The wettest day was the 16th when 32mm of rain fell but 25mm also fell between the 27th and 29th which caused extensive Flooding again on the River Soar as was the case when storm Dennis deposited 39mm between the 15th and 17th and this caused flash flooding to many local settlements.
The almost constant westerly wind meant the month was mild. Afternoon temperatures were logged at 10c which is 2.5c above normal and night time temps averaged 3.3c 2c above the norm. The average for the month was 6.7c 2.2c above the long term average.
The mildest day of the month logged 13.5c on the 15th while the coldest day the 11th logged 6c.
There were only two air frosts recorded in Mountsorrel with the coldest night temperature only -1.5c was recorded on the 7th. There were 69.5 hours of sun recorded about 10 per cent below normal.
The entire month was dominated by low pressure areas and two of these were named storms that seemed to arrive on most of the weekends in the month! Storm Ciara gave us winds up to 69mph at East Midlands Airport on the 9th with Storm Dennis on the following weekend bringing us 39mm of rain.
Winter 2019-20 was very mild. The average temperature of 6.4c was 2c above the long term average and this made the winter the 9th mildest ever recorded.
Only sven air frosts were recorded throughout the entire winter my lowest figure ever for the three months.
Snow flakes fell on just four days and all of these were in February but none of the snow settled on low ground. It was certainly one of the wettest winters with 280mm falling 63 per cent above normal.
The sunshine total of 180 hours was 10 per cent below normal.
So a very soggy winter but it did remain very mild with very little for the snow lovers to get excited about this year. So on to spring and lets hope for some drier and sunnier weather at last!