Weather Banter - [WR] Bracknell_Tawfield - first autumn frost & comparision OCT1997

First air frost of the year he -0.4degC, with grass min: -3.0degC.
(Lot's of scraping of car windscreens)

In 1997 (October), (when we were in St. Albans, Hertfordshire), not that
long ago in climatological terms:-
Over the last 10 days of the month, 9 had air-frosts, with lowest
min -7.5 on the morning of 29th. That October was also sunny (sunniest
since 1959 for some places - & 1959 was a remarkably sunny October), and
also dry overall. Heathrow airport had it's coldest October night since
1983 (-2.5/30th), with 155% of average sunshine (data extracted from
'Weather Log'/R.Met.Soc). There was low RH reported and some warm days
early in the month - again at Heathrow, the warmest October day since
1985. If I may quote from that log, Philip Eden wrote:... " As October
gave way to November, many streams in East Anglia, the northern Home
Counties and the south and east Midlands were bone dry ...."

November 1997: A mild (warm?) and wet month. One of the warmest
Novembers in the 20th century. Reports of flooding from Aberdeenshire to
Cornwall.

December 1997: Mild, often windy (Severe gales/storms Christmas
Eve/exceptionally mild in south) .. with many stations reporting well
above average rainfall.

January 1998: Mild, and often stormy especially early in the month.

The current dry spell is of interest: if it goes on through the winter
and into spring - even with only 'average' rainfall, then we will be in
*real* trouble next summer. Farmers/growers are having problems *now*
but it has happened before, and not that many years ago. It *may* be
that we are seeing some fundamental shift from very recent years, but
taking a longer period (50 to 100 years), I'm not convinced - blocking
patterns will produce both very dry and very wet periods - only 3 years
ago we had a very wet period, now it's very dry - Lamb was often
pointing out that even in the supposedly 'stable' climatological states,
large swings in type could/did occur.

Martin.

--
Martin Rowley: data via:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/booty.weather/metindex.htm
Bracknell (Wooden Hill/Great Hollands), Berkshire.
NGR: SU 854 667
Lat: 51DEG23MIN30SEC(N); Long: 00DEG46MIN28SEC(W)
Height(amsl): 80 metres (262 feet)