Year 2016

A bright, mild start to 2016 with sunshine out over Lyme Bay, Devon on New Year's Day.

The year 2016 had an annual mean temperature of 11.7°C which was a little warmer than my estimated long term average and slightly warmer than 2015. My warmest annual mean temperature was in 2014 with 12.1°C.

The year of 2016 was one dominated by rather benign and pleasant weather. There were no extremes of temperature and the only really notable events were the torrential thundery downpours in June making it a rather wet month. And the very dry July, the driest of any month in my record.

The year started with a mild January which was wetter but sunnier than normal. This theme of warmer, wetter and sunnier months continued into February.

The end of February usually heralds a change to spring with warmer, sunnier and much drier weather but spring was delayed a little until the 11th March when there was a change to something more akin to the season. This rainy start to the official spring meant March was rather a wet month with over 150% of the normal rainfall. Things dried up considerably into April and sunshine levels remained high but there was no early heat wave and the temperature remained around average or slightly below.

Then May arrived and with it lots of dry weather, sunshine and summer-like warmth. This summery weather continued into mid-June then a series of thunderstorms over 5 days brought an end to what had been a prolonged dry, sunny spell since mid-May. During each afternoon the thunderstorms brought deluges of rain transforming the countryside from a parched brown to a lush-green. This meant that the normally dry June ended up one of the wettest I have recorded. This rather unsettled weather dominated through until the end of the month then it was all-change as July arrived.

The weather became warm, quite sunny and very dry during July. The wet soils from June's thunderstorms soon dried out and the month ended up with the countryside looking as parched as it had looked in the late spring. This warm, sunny and much drier than average weather continued right through August and into the 3rd week of September. The summer of 2016 will go down as a good one.

October heralds the start of the rainy season but not in 2016. Whilst it did rain at times, most of what fell was generally light and patchy with the month ending up with only 65% of what would normally be expected. It was also another sunny month but with average temperatures.

The dry weather continued well into November then a spell of very weather turned what was looking like a dry month into a very wet one. November is often the wettest month of the year and even with it usually being so wet the month still had 170% of its normal rainfall. This led to the worst flooding in the Otter Valley since that very wet year of 2012. And then, during the final week of the month it was all-change to dry, settled conditions and it stayed that way through to the year's end with December being the driest winter month I have ever recorded with only 18% of what would normally be expected.

What will 2017 have in store for us weather-wise? Well, the trend to ever-warmer winters seems to have resumed after a run of colder winters culminating in the severe December of 2010, when Devon resembled a foreign, snow-laden land for 10 days. I suspect that a mild winter will lead into an early spring and then a warm start to summer. The weather since July seems to have 'settled' into a pattern of being dominated by lengthy dry spells being only briefly interrupted by rainfall events. This blocked anticyclonic type weather with the Azores High being ever present to our south and west could bring a dry start to 2017 and the prospect of an early, sunny spring. It's all guess work! But fingers crossed for a beautiful spring and a long, hot summer.

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