ROB THE RAINMAN 

RAINFALL REPORT 

April’s total was 14.7mm, about a quarter of the average expected. The March lamb went and, rather meanly I thought, took the unseasonable but lovely warm spell with him (or her). A dry start and Easter wasn’t too bad as after chilly and frosty mornings the days improved to be sunny and, on Easter Sunday, warm. That is until Easter Monday which was a very cold, dull day with a brisk northerly wind all the way from The Arctic. Snow showers on the 6th, waking up to a covering on the 7th and another covering on the 12th. So the little precipitation there was over this time was a mix of rain and snow. Then from the 12th to the 26th we had no rain at all due to a huge lump of a high pressure system sitting firmly over us. It continued to be chilly overnight often enough to result in a frost by morning. This was followed by mostly sunny days and therefore, if there was no wind, a warm afternoon. We were heading for a ridiculously dry April until some rescue was provided by 9.5mm of cold rain over the 27th and 28th and, just to keep the cold theme to the end, the 30th saw a fierce hail shower to see the month out. What a weird April’s worth of weather it was: one of the driest on record and two new records; the sunniest April on record and the most frosts recorded in April on record.