Winter 2014/15 Seasonal Report

Oakdale Weather Station has been logging weather data continuously since 24 November 2014, which means we have a complete 3-month record of weather through December, January and February, the meteorological winter.  This means we can give a view on the entire season.  For comparison purposes, we have used data from the internet (weatherbase.com for average temperatures and msn.com for all other data, both of which reports monthly data that we have averaged out across the season).

So what does this mean for Winter 2014-15?  Firstly, let's look at temperature.  December 2014 was warmer than average (mean 4.8°C against an average of 4°C, but January and February were both cooler.  Overall, winter 2014-15 was around 0.4°C cooler than a typical winter, and minimum temperatures in particular 0.8°C below normal.  We had an average 84.6mm of rain per month, well above the expected 70.6mm, and it rained on 67 days, above the expected figure of 58 days.  We haven't any data to compare for wind, but we did note that December and January were windy months.  Finally, we had several snowy days in winter 14-15, mainly in January, where snow fell for 9 days in the month.  Overall, the 11 snowy days we had was above the 8 expected.

Here's this information set out in a table (expected figure in brackets where available):

Temperature
Mean temperature: 4.1°C (4.5°C)
Mean maximum: 6.6°C (7.0°C)
Mean minimum: 1.5°C (2.3°C)
Highest temperature: 12.9°C
Lowest temperature: -5.1°C

Rainfall / Snow
Average monthly rainfall: 84.6mm (70.6mm)
Wettest Day: 18.3mm
Rain days: 67 (58)
Dry days: 23
Snow days: 11 (8)

Wind
Average windspeed: 6.6mph
Highest gust: 36.5mph
Wind run: 13,112.9 miles