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A
wet December
December
continued where October and November left off, with very wet conditions
continuing across all parts of the region. Rainfall was about 30%
above average.
It
will come of no surprise to all of us fed up with the lack of sunlight
that it turned out to be a dull month, with an extraordinary 18
days without any measurable sunlight at all!
Temperatures
were close to the long term average, and another extraordinary fact
is that there were no days of lying snow recorded across all but
the higher parts of the region.
East
Coast floods anniversary
We
are rapidly approaching the anniversary of one of the biggest weather
disasters ever to affect this country.
Some
of you will remember the flooding which occurred on January 31st
1953, when over 3,000 people died in this country and in the low
countries as a two metre tidal surge swamped low lying parts of
the coast.
To
mark the anniversary of this, I will be presenting a five part series
to be screened on Look North during the last week in January.
Watch
the programmes here
We
will begin the story on Thursday January 29th 1953, which was the
date which the Met office first noticed a storm developing to the
north of the Azores.
Incidentally,
the path of this storm was correctly forecast to produce storm force
northerly winds in the north sea during the following Saturday.
The
earliest indication of loss of life came when a passenger ferry
capsized in the Irish sea, with over 100 casualties on the morning
of Saturday January 31st.
The
following 24 hours were disastrous for the east coast, as the Storm
force northerly winds coincided with very high spring tides to produce
a storm surge in excess of two metres in places.
Of
course, the Yorkshire coast escaped the worst, with its high cliffs
and relative shelter.
The
same could not be said for Lincolnshire and Norfolk, with its flat
and featureless coastline no match for this huge storm surge.
In
places, the sea came inland by a staggering three miles, causing
devastation to the surrounding land.
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Rainfall in December was 30% above average.
