It seems to have been a very dull month here but I don't have a
sunshine recorder. The 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, 13th and 14th have been
the only days with any prolonged sunshine while there were only two
days with any sunshine from the 9th to 16th. I was away from the 17th
to 21st but saw a few newspaper summaries and each time the amount of
sun was either 0 or 0.1 hour. Today was supposed to be a bright day but
there turned out to be very little sun.

Average for the whole month at Dyce is 97 hours. I'd estimate that
there has been only 40-50 hours so far which is, nevertheless, well
above the total for October 1960 (only 30 hours for the whole month).
Last Octobers total was just 72 hours. There is a fair chance that this
Octobers total will be even lower. If it is less than 75 hours it will,
I think, be the first time since before 1893 that two successive
Octobers have had fewer than 75 hours of sunshine. Also given this
weeks wet forecast it looks as though rainfall will end up at least 30%
above average for an incredible 5th October in only 6 years.

Despite this year having several prolonged dull spells, sunshine at
Dyce was 1239 hours up to the end of September compared with average of
1205 hours. By now it will have exceeded 1270 hours, which is more than
in the whole of 1964, 1965, 1966, 1968 and 1969. Unless November and
December are extremely dull this years sunshine total should exceed
1404 hours, which was the highest annual total of the 1960s (in 1960).
By comparison the lowest annual total for this decade, so far, has been
1407 hours (in 2002). Over 1700 hours were recorded in 2003.

Richard Slessor,
Aberdeen.