Is April giving up its reputation as the month of showers…”on and on for hours and hours”?

April broke the trend in that in Marlborough it was a much warmer and drier month than in recent years.

It was the seventh warmest April since 1984.  But looking more closely at the statistics many of the day time temperatures were well above average – excepting the beginning and end of the month – making it the fourth warmest when looking at maximum temperatures alone.

There were two exceptionally cool days when the thermometer only reached 9.4C – on the first and the fourth of the month. Due to clear overnight skies there were several mornings when a ground frost was evident and four nights were cold enough for an air frost.  April 20 was the coldest night with a minimum of -2.2C.

The warmest period was around the middle of the month when the thermometer peaked at 20.8C and 22.8C on April 14 and 15 respectively. Looking at the long-term trend for the average temperature in April, I notice that there has been an almost continuous rise since the late 1980’s.

There were 186 hours of strong sunshine and on six days the hours of strong sunshine were double figures – the highest being April 21 with dawn to dusk sunshine totaling 13.74 hours. It is not surprising that the solar energy count was high – in fact the highest since April 2011.

Rainfall, or lack of it, was another feature that took April 2015 out of the ordinary. The total precipitation was 17.7mm, which is only 29 per cent of the 31-year average of 61.54mm.

It was the fourth driest April since my records began in 1984.   In 1990 only 6.7mm was recorded.

Taking a wider view of the four months January to April, it was the fourth driest period with 197mm against the extremes of 125mm in 1997 and 495mm in 2014.

With so much sunshine and minimal rainfall, it is not surprising that the total amount of moisture evaporating into the atmosphere from the ground, water sources and plant life was high at 78.1mm.

This quotation from the poet Sylvia Plath written in 1960, perhaps typifies many of our thoughts as we enjoyed the very sunny, warm period last month: “I am now sitting on a bench, facing the sun in Regent’s Park. They are mowing the lawns everywhere and the smell of cut grass, plants and warm earth is delicious”.