Frosty nights but warmer month than it used to be
JANUARY 2023 was a month of two halves.
The first half was very mild and wet with low pressure and strong south-westerly winds.
After mid-month, the weather changed completely as high pressure took control, giving us dry and fine days with plenty of sunshine at times, but also the return of night frosts.
Afternoon temperatures averaged 8.2C at both Dean Whittakers’ station in Hinckley and my recording site in Mountsorrel, which was 1C above normal.
Night-time temperatures were logged at 1.9C, which was the expected figure but the mild nights were all in the first half of the month with most of the frosty nights after the 15th.
There were nine consecutive frosts between the 17th and 25th of the month. The average temperature for both stations was 5C or 0.4C above normal with the cold second half to the month largely cancelling out the very mild first half.
So once again January has been a warmer month than it used to be historically. Steve Jackson at his site at Bablake School in Coventry has calculated that January temperatures have risen by 0.4C since the turn of the century so continuing the trend of upward trajectory in terms of temperature in every month since the year 2000.
The pattern of rainfall was also very different with almost all the month’s rain falling in the first fortnight with the second fortnight being almost completely dry as high pressure established itself.
Dean recorded 48.8mm for the month in Hinckley or 80 per cent of the usual total while in Mountsorrel I logged 51.4mm or 84 per cent of the usual figure. Only three January months have been drier in the last 10 years, namely January 2015, 2019 and 2022.
In terms of sunshine, January did well with 86 hours being recorded in Mountsorrel, which was 36 per cent above normal. Virtually all this sunshine occurred in the second half of the month. Only two months have recorded more sunshine than 2023 since 1895, namely 2000 and 2001.
The very mild and wet first half of the month produced almost 50mm at both stations. The wettest days of the month were the 10th and 14th at Mountsorrel, when 15 and 11mm fell respectively. Dean at Hinckley also recorded 12mm on the 14th. The mildest day at both stations was recorded on the 4th when 13C was logged, double the usual figure.
Night-time temperatures were also high with our mildest night recorded on the 4th with a minimum of 9.7C in Hinckley, which was much higher than it should have been in the daytime, let alone the night!
And it was windy at times with our maximum gust of 42mph on the 12th.
The 16th provided the most dramatic weather event for some of us when we had a heavy thunder snow shower move south across Leicestershire at lunchtime with areas to the north of the city seeing 2cm of
snow with thunder and lightning. The cold air this brought then stayed for 10 days. There was no further snow to speak of but once again as in December a string of cold nights. The lowest night-time temperature was recorded on the 17th in Hinckley with -5.4C and in Mountsorrel on the 22nd I logged -6.2C, my coldest January night for two years.
The position of the high pressure began to change and milder air spread in for the end of the month. So not too disruptive a weather month with a mixture of rain and sunshine but very little snow so far this winter. Let’s see what February throws at us! Many thanks to Dean and Steve for their help in writing this monthly summary.