It's not been a bad week for December. Last weekend was wet before turning cold for a couple of days but since then it's been dry and mild although not very sunny.
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| Temperature & Rainfall Records 23-29 December 2018 |
We needed some fresh veggies for Christmas dinner so we had a trip down to the plot on Monday a cold Christmas Eve afternoon.
It didn't take long to collect some sprouts, leeks, carrots, parsnips and a savoy cabbage. It certainly hadn't been cold enough to freeze any of our vegetables. That might be our entire sprout harvest for the year but the savoy cabbage "Sabrosa" was a pleasant surprise. I didn't really think they'd formed a decent tight head but that wasn't the case.
Later in the week we braved the holiday traffic and had an afternoon trip to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park. Although there was a little bit of sunshine when we arrived around lunchtime, it didn't last very long. I did manage a photo of a lioness making the most of a bit of winter sunshine.
By the time we'd walked around to the polar bear enclosure the sunshine had disappeared leaving a rather dull but mild afternoon.
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| Yorkshire Wildlife Park |
Last Wednesday I posted that the weather models were predicting a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) event to take place over the North Pole during the Christmas period.
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| Output from The Tokyo Climate Center |
The models were correct and as the chart above shows the temperature over the North Pole has risen dramatically by some 50 degrees Celsius over the last few days. We'll now have to see if this SSW has any effect on our weather. A similar occurrence last year was thought to have resulted in "The Beast From The East" bringing us a cold and snowy late winter and early spring. On the other hand SSW's, as I understand it, have occurred without any dramatic effects on our weather. We may have to wait a few weeks before we know one way or another.
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Isn't this earlier in the year than last? Could it all be over by spring? I am hoping so.
ReplyDeleteYes it's much earlier than last year. It's by no means certain that it will produce us cold weather. More than likely will set up high pressure systems and block the Atlantic low pressure systems. Depends on exact location of high pressure as to what sort of weather we get. I'm hoping we miss out on any really cold weather altogether
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