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
Stratfield Mortimer

On 9 Mar, 21:47, "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.


Very similar situation in Penzance.

1st 10 days
Rainfall 68.5mm (73% of norm for entire month)
Av. Temp 9.7 (+1.8C compared with 1971-2000 norm for entire month)

I don't record sunshine (sadly nowhere really suitable to locate a
sensor) but it has been very sunny.

Graham
Penzance

On Mar 9, 9:47 pm, "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
Stratfield Mortimer

Very similar in Southampton - of the first 9 days of the month, it
rained significantly on all but two (7th and 9th) but there were clear
skies first thing in the morning (which often persisted much of the
day) on all but two (4th and 6th - and on the 6th it quickly cleared
after 0900)

Nick

"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

The trend continues. Another 7 hours today (13 March), taking the
total to a fraction over 90 hours for the first 13 days, average 6.94
hours/day: the 1971-2000 normal for the first 13 days of March is 40.6
hours, 3.13 hr/day, thus 222% normal.

We are only 18 hours sunshine away from the monthly average - we could
_just_ reach this by mid-month.

Stephen
Stratfield Mortimer, Berkshire