A very average winter

Meteorologically, Winter runs from December to February, so we are now into Spring. But was the Winter really as bad as some were reporting?

Winter food for the birds (Photo credit: Alan Rowley Photos)

Here at Bracken House, it has been a very average Winter. Temperatures ranged from a high of 13.3°C  on January 29th, to a low of 6.3°C on January 16th. The average temperature for the period was 3.2C, just 0.1C below normal. The average daily high temperature was 5.7°C, exactly the same as the all-time average, and the average daily low was 1.0°C, just 0.1°C above the all-time average.

Rainfall in the period was 140.8 millimetres, 16.2 millimetres higher than the average, although this can be accredited to December, which was extremely wet. Snow was recorded on 14 days producing a total of 41.5 centimetres.

The Winter of 2012/3 wasn’t particularly windy either, although a gust of 40.3 mph was recorded. The average maximum wind speed for the period was 19.0 mph, 0.4 mph stronger than average.The average wind speed for the month was 4.8 mph, 0.3 mph above average.

This is the first year that sunshine hours have been measured at Bracken House, and the Winter total was 172.8 hours. For comparison, Autumn’s figure was 223.0 hours.

Related articles

• January 2013 snowfall – the facts (alanrowley.info)
• Bracken House weather site improvements (alanrowley.info)
• Estimating Wind Speed With Only a Flag (mrsiderer.wordpress.com)