November: the month began with mild temperatures by day, 14.4C on 1 November but the nights were cold. There were three nights when the thermometer dropped below zero producing a minimum of -2.1C on the morning of 6 November.
The month continued in this pattern as frequent weather fronts crossed the country followed by brighter, cooler periods. The coldest night occurred on the night of 25 November when the thermometer dropped to -2.8C, being 6C below the November average minimum.
Although the daytime temperatures held up well, being 0.3C above the 33-year average, the average night temperatures were 1.5C below. This gave a mean of 6.01C (-0.6C) compared to the very cold November of 1985, which produced a mean of 3.7C and 1994 with 10.1C.
There were eleven nights when an air frost occurred compared to seven for the long term November average.
The other notable feature was the lack of rainfall with just 60.3mm, the second successive month with a below average total. This was 32mm below the 33-year average compared to 53mm in October, a significant reduction of 85mm over two months compared to the average, so it is no wonder our rivers continue to run very low.
The sunshine total of 86.6 hours was the highest figure over the past four years since this instrument was installed. It is interesting to note that November produced four more hours of sunshine than October. The gloomy November of 2015 only gave us 16.4 hours.
The Autumn in summary: the three complete months of September to November constitute autumn for meteorological records. This autumn the mean was 0.1C above the 33-year average being exactly the same as the autumn of 2016.
The rainfall total for this three-month period was 167mm, being 69 per cent of the 33-year average or 73mm below. The contrasting years were in 1985 with 116mm and 2006 with 401mm.
We enjoyed 284 hours of strong sunshine over the three months.
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