Diary of Highlights

1st - 7th
It was a dry start to the month as high pressure remained dominant across England and Wales. It was cold as well with freezing fog patches in many places and snow grains reported from southern England and East Anglia. Leek in Staffordshire remained below freezing all day on the 1st, recording a 24 hour maximum of -2.3°C.

8th - 10th
A cold front pushed southwards on the night of the 7th - 8th allowing a brisk northerly wind to sweep across the country, bringing plenty of wintry showers. As pressure built in from the west the wintry showers become confined to eastern parts of England. There were good spells of sunshine through this period but with widespread overnight frosts, Benson (Oxfordshire) falling to -8.2°°C in the 10th.

11th - 17th
It was very unsettled through this period with plenty of showers or longer spells of rain. Capel Curig recorded 43.8 mm in 24 hours ending 1800 on the 12th. Indeed the 12.8mm recorded in London was the first substantial rainfall since the 30th of December. Strong west to southwesterly winds occurred on the 14th and 15th with gusts up to 50 knots over parts of Wales and along the English Channel coast.

18th - 22nd
On the 18th an Atlantic depression moved into the Bay of Biscay but over the next few days became slow moving over northern France. This allowed cold, brisk easterly winds to spread across England and Wales with wintry showers in places. Hastings recorded 31.2mm of rain in the 24 hours ending 1800 on the 20th.

23rd - 26th
This period continued the cold and showery nature of the weather with brisk east to northeasterly winds and further snow in places. It did allow some reasonable sunshine with Torquay recording 8.8 hours on the 25th.

27th - 28th
The 27th was largely cloudy with a few showers down the eastern coastal fringe of England. During the evening a cold front pushed southwards across England and Wales, clearing the south coast by dawn on the 28th. This allowed brisk northwesterly winds to feed further wintry showers into Wales and western parts of England during the day.