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Happy Christmas! 2018 Weather Review (Part 1)

Well, as we prepare for our Christmas feast, that’s another year almost done then. A year in which “The beast From The East” entered the weather lexicon.

We had every weather event in 2018; cold, heat, floods and drought, just about everything the weather machine could throw at us.

So, over the next couple of weeks I’ll review the weather of 2018, starting this week with the first 6-months of the year from January to the end of June.

The year started with westerly winds bringing some snow across northern parts of the country as one would expect during January, whereas most of the country is rather mild, unsettled and windy. This led many to wonder if winter overall would follow this rather uneventful pattern.

We didn’t have long to wait before we realised this was not to be the winter story. February turned into a cold month, but one which was rather dry and sunny, especially at first. By the end of February temperatures had become exceptional cold.

Some very snowy weather took us into March. In fact the 1st was the coldest March day in over a century as the temperature did not rise above -5.2C at Tredegar in Gwent. A second hit of March snow came about on the 17th as ‘the Beast’ returned.

Both March and April were wetter than average months over much of the country and we fielded many calls on our WeatherLIVE service assuring farmers that drier weather would arrive. Indeed it did. May was drier with around 70% of average rainfall.

Now the taps had been turned off it seemed the weather machine did not know when to switch them back on. Rainfall in June was less than 10% of average over the southeast, with the UK as a whole seeing 48% of average rainfall.

Temperatures in June were almost 3C above average and we began to become increasingly concerned about when rain would return. More on that next week.

I wish you all a Very Happy Christmas. 

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