Our first dusting of snow

We had a dusting of snow in the early hours of Thursday morning. 

The sun came out in the morning and as we were short of fresh vegetables we decided an afternoon trip down to the plot was required. The plot although not far away seemed a little more snowy than the garden.

Looking in some directions it was difficult to even tell there was any snow and in the sunshine it looked a beautiful day. It was just a bit chilly on the fingers picking vegetables. 

On the shadier side of the plots the remnants of the snow still lingered on as the temperature hovered just above freezing. Not much else could be done on the plot in this state so after harvesting our vegetables we headed back home for a hot drink. Details of our December harvesting record can be found here.

A dry day

Wednesday produced the first dry day of the month. There was plenty of sunshine and although dark clouds threatened a few times throughout the day we missed the showers that were around. Once again it was windy at times which has so far been the main feature of the month’s weather. 

Our garden is fairly sheltered and I reckon if my anemometer measures wind speeds above 15mph then it’s windy. That covers most of December.

What storm?

Fortunately we once again seemed to avoid the worst of the storm although at times it was fairly windy. Through the day there was a reasonable amount of sunshine. Just glancing at the maximum temperature of 9.8°C it might give the impression of a mild day for December but that temperature was very short lived and occurred just after midnight. Throughout daylight hours the temperature didn't get above 6.0°C and in the stiff breeze if felt pretty cold.

I just couldn’t resist these two collared doves perched on the remains of our old arbour. They look as though they have already paired up ready for spring as they sit out the remaining cold winter days.

Lull before the storm

Monday wasn't too bad a day. In the morning and afternoon we had some sunny spells and it wasn’t too breezy either. The forecaster’s are predicting more storms this week so we decided to take advantage of the decent weather and visit the RSPB reserve at Old Moor.

By mid afternoon the storm clouds were starting to gather but the wind and rain held off until evening time. 

Computer glitch

Sunday was dull but mostly dry with just a few of our now customary showers around lunchtime. 

It’s been interesting this month to follow my weather station’s rainfall storm total for December. This totals the amount of rainfall until a dry spell of 24 hours occurs. Unfortunately like all PC’s do now and again mine crashed and the result was that the storm total reset itself to zero. We certainly haven’t had that 24 hour dry spell so I’m putting it down to a computer glitch rather than lack of showers. The little chart above shows the rainfall pattern for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

A hint of frost

Saturday morning started off cold and just a little bit frosty. For the first time this winter there was ice on our bird bath. It was a flimsy coating and didn't need any warm water as it soon melted. 

Not that the temperature rose to anything special only managing 5.1°C, which along with our cold frosty start gave us a daily average of 2.8°C the coldest of this winter.

Our birds are now starting to return after disappearing over the last month or so. This goldfinch was an early morning visitor tucking into niger seed as I snapped a picture of the ice on the bird bath.

Cold and cloudy

Friday saw the wind die down in the early hours of the morning. It was cold and cloudy with more showers following the theme of the month. There were times during the day when it looked like we might just get a real heavy downpour but we missed any really heavy rain.

The rainfall for this month is now starting to mount up. Even though we haven’t had any spells of ‘real’ rain only lots of showers we’re now up on the average amount of rainfall for December. My weather station records a “storm” total for rainfall which is simply the total amount of rainfall that has occurred until a 24 hour dry spell is recorded. This amount has now reached 33.0mm. We haven’t had a day in December without any showers.

At the moment as the weather is pretty awful for doing anything outside we are re-vamping our main web sites. As part of the re-vamp I was re organising some of our video and thought just for something a little different I’d add some of the video from our visit to North Wales back in September. First up is the Welsh Highland Railway filmed when we visited Caernarfon.

We missed the worst

Scotland and northern England were battered by hurricane force winds on Thursday but fortunately we were just south of the worst of the storm.

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It was our second very windy day in a row but strangely enough our strongest gust (33 mph) was recorded on Wednesday and we could only manage a mere 30 mph for Thursday.  The forecasters to their credit seemed spot on with our forecast, even down to the blip in the temperature which shot up to 11°C for a few hours before falling again just as quickly.

Another 7.4mm of rain added to this months growing amount as the strong winds continued well into the night.