Buddies basked in the sun

The glimpse of summer that Paisley saw last Saturday turned out to be the hottest day of the year for the town so far.

Families basked in warm sunshine for most of the day, prompting people to abandon their winter clothes and look out their shorts.

According to Paisley’s Coats Observatory, which records weather statistics, the temperature reached 18.9C, which was the highest temperature for the town so far in 2018.

The highest temperature ever recorded in Paisley goes all the way back to the 19th century.

It was on June 25, 1887, that people sweltered in a temperature of 31.4C.

By contrast, the thermometer sunk to its lowest ever on February 10, 1895, when it went down to -15.1C.

The day that saw the most sunshine ever recorded in the town was June 22, 1956, when 15.8 hours were notched up.

Last Saturday’s fine weather did not last, however, with Sunday proving dull and wet.

And the early hours of yesterday saw prolonged heavy rain, with 2.2mm recorded in a month that has seen very unspringlike weather.

The wettest day of this month so far came when it was just a few days old.

On Tuesday, April 3, there was 11.4mm of rain recorded by Coats Observatory, and on Wednesday, April 4, the figure was just slightly less at 11.2mm.

This was in stark contrast to April 2017, when there was a rainfall of just 15.6mm for the entire month.

Paisley’s highest- ever recorded rainfall for an April was 43mm in 1922.

This was nothing, however, to the rainfall that led to the notorious Paisley floods of 1994 when 89mm were recorded on December 10.

Among the worst affected by this were the residents of the low-lying Stockholm Crescent, who were flooded out of their homes.

It has been windy too this month.

The observatory recorded a windspeed of 42mph on Tuesday, April 17, while the highest wind for April 2017 was 36mph on the 25th.