I recorded 4.3 hours of sunshine today (R&D recorder) taking the
monthly sunshine total above 100 hours, to an exceptional and
outstanding 102.7 hours.

Only 4 days have recorded no sun in December - 10th, 13th, 15th and
29th. 4 hours or more has been recorded on 16 days with 5 hours or more
on 10 days.

The 13 days from the 16th to 28th had a total of 60 hours with 22.2
hours between the 23rd and 26th.

The figures are all the more remarkable given that sunshine is cut off
in the late afternoon due to a row of trees to the south. On days when
it has remained clear throughout, sunshine has been recorded from
approx 9am to 2:40pm giving just over 5.6 hours. If the horizon to the
south was relatively unobstructed there could have been an additional
35-40 minutes recorded on each of those days.

Another notable statistic is that December was sunnier than November
(96.6 hrs) which in turn was sunnier than October (77.2 hrs).

December has also been very dry, rain amounting to only 22.8mm. Yet
another absolute drought of 15 days was, however, spoiled when 0.4mm
fell on the evening of the 27th - the only rain between the 13th and
28th, inclusive. No day from the 8th to 28th had as much as 1mm of
rain.

In addition December recorded both the highest (1040.7mb) and lowest
(961.1mb) pressure of 2006.

Richard Slessor,
Hazlehead, Aberdeen.