Record Breaking March

Well we've just spent a week on holiday in the Midlands staying in a thatched cottage in the small Worcestershire village of Abbots Morton.

The bad news for us was that the weather wasn't much better further south than if we’d stayed at home. It was bitterly cold too with a biting easterly wind blowing for most of the week we were there.

The media seem to have decided it’s the coldest March since 1962. I know strictly speaking Ossett isn't in the Central England Temperature area but it’s the only list I have to work with. The average temperatures for the ten coldest months of March are shown in the table below.

Currently in Ossett we’re lower than the 1962 average temperature with an average value of just 2.6°C by late afternoon on Good Friday. That puts this March the 7th coldest on record in this Met Office record going back to 1772 and the coldest in 176 years since March 1837. If nothing else it shows how exceptionally cold this March has been.

With the forecasters predicting that this weather may continue for a least another week or maybe longer it’s getting pretty tricky deciding when to start sowing seeds in any great quantities. The average temperature for January this year was 4.1°C compared with 2.6°C for March. I can’t convince myself sowing seeds in such cold temperatures will be worthwhile so I might wait another week and mull over the pros and cons of seed sowing in these ridiculously cold temperatures. 

Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett