"Stephen Burt" wrote :

A very wet but also very sunny start to the month here. Most of the
rain seems to have fallen overnight and every day but one has seen 5
hours or more of sunshine so far.

Total to today 58.7 hr, 6.52 hr/day - the 1971-2000 average total for
the first 9 days of March is 28.07 hr, thus we are currently at 209%
normal.

March 1995 was the sunniest March on record in the Reading area, I
recorded 193.6 hr - 6.25 hr/day - so it has to maintain this for most
of the rest of the month to surpass that extreme. The days are getting
longer of course.

Stephen, that ties in nicely with E&W-wide figures:

The 1st-5th and 1st-7th figures this month were lower than the
equivalent totals for March 2006.

The 1st-10th total this month of 57.0h compares with 50.9h last
year. It is roughly the same (I haven't normalised daily values yet)
as the equivalent periods in 1995 and 1976, and we have to go
back to March 1940 to find a significantly sunnier 1st-10th.

The E&W rainfall total for 1st-10th 2007 is the highest since 1998.

Philip