January 2015 Monthly Report

The monthly report for January 2015 is now available:

January 2015 has certainly brought us plenty of lively weather, with strong winds for a sustained spell mid-month, and a cold end to the month with several days recording fairly light snowfall.

Temperatures overall during the month have been about average, but this hides a slightly warmer than usual first two weeks, followed by a noticeable cooling with temperatures in the second half of the month really quite cold on most days, especially when the wind chill factor is included (see graph below).

One of the notable features of the weather this January though has been the wind, with a sustained spell of strong winds between the sixth and the seventeenth, and picking up again at a lesser degree from the 27th through to the end of the month.  I also have my doubts that the anemometer we have is capable of recording high wind speeds accurately, as I was expecting higher figures, particularly gusts, than we have actually recorded.  The kit we use is more the budget end of the market, and I suspect that as the wind speed increases, there is a widening gap between the true speed and that we have recorded.  I've no evidence for this other than what I expected from seeing the local and national forecasts throughout the month.

There has also been a higher number of 'snow days' - days where snow has fallen - than is usual for January in Blackburn (where the mean number of days according to MSN is 4).  The nine days we had snow falling is well above this figure, and whilst the snow so far this winter has been quite modest, it was still enough to cause problems on the roads on the estate and even the main roads through Darwen and Blackburn at the end of the month.  This was more due to the timing of the snowfall rather than the amount we saw.

So we look to February, which starts on a cold note but much calmer than recently.  With the forecast suggesting such conditions will persist for most of the week, perhaps we're due a spell of unremarkable weather compared to what we've seen over the last few weeks.  But then again, the British weather is rarely so uneventful!