Marlborough’s February weather did not ‘fill the dyke’ but it was pretty chilly

February has the reputation for heavy and persistent rain – hence the ancient rhyme ‘February fill the dyke…’ (- see below.)  But this year February started dry and cold with air frosts on nine consecutive days, there were also nine consecutively dry days.

As depressions crossed the country for the latter half of the month temperatures recovered at the expense of cloud cover and rainfall.

The mean temperature was 3.3C, which is 0.9C below the long-term average since I started readings in Marlborough in 1984. The coldest night was on February 2 when the thermometer dropped to -4.1C.  

The warmest day was February 25 with a maximum of 11.9C – and that scored as the warmest February day for three years. The record for the warmest February day was set in 1998 with a peak of 15.5C. This year an air frost was recorded on 14 days – half of February’s days – and that is three days greater than the long-term average. During the very wet February of 2014 there were no air frosts.

The total rainfall for February was 57.2mm, which is 87 per cent of the long-term average. This is such a contrast to February last year when the total rainfall was 152mm. The wettest day occurred on February 19 with 15.5mm and there were 15 dry days.

There were eleven days with no direct sunshine. The peak days were February 17 and 27 with 7.98 and 8.0 hours respectively.

For those with solar panels, solar energy was 10 per cent above the average for the last six years and very close to that recorded in 2014.

We were all correct, so far it has been a colder winter than we have been used to lately.
The mean temperature for the three winter months of December, January and February was 0.4C below the long-term average. But this contrasts with the very cold winter of 2009, which was 2.1C below the average.

There is a marked contrast in total rainfall for the past winter, which at 209mm is 41mm below the long-term average. The previous winter was notable for several very wet months and brought us 528mm.

Snow was recorded in Marlborough on six days during the winter, but on only three of those days did it linger on the ground for several hours. Morning fog was noted on four days.  There were 41 days when an air frost was recorded and is seven greater than the long-term average.

To summarise, the past winter has been colder and drier than average with solar energy just a little above the average for the last six years.