Wet February was the mildest recorded
Last month was the mildest February ever recorded.
While it may have been warm, it was also wet, with just one dry day all month.
The average air temperature for the month was 9.4C, compared with the 30-year average of 6.9C.
‘A predominantly west to southwest flow brought mild tropical air across the islands for most of the month leading to the mildest February on record, some 0.4C above the previous record,’ a Guernsey Met Office spokesman said.
The coldest air temperature recorded in the month was just 4.1C.
‘With all those mild temperatures we saw no ground frosts, which is unusual for February and the first time that has occurred in the last 10 years,’ the spokesman said.
The mean winter temperature was 8.7C, which makes it the fourth-equal mildest on record, being 1.4C above the long term average.
More than 12cm of rain fell over the month.
This was well above the average of 7.5cm, however it was only the wettest February since 2020. The rain followed a wet year.
From the end of February 2023 there has been 1102.6mm of rain, the highest total recorded over a year since 2013.
Monday 26 February was the month’s only dry day, although there was only a trace of rain on Friday 16.
The wettest day was Sunday 25, with nearly 1.9cm.
‘Sunshine suffered as a result of all that rain with just 53.9 hours by month’s end, making it the eleventh-dullest since records began for sunshine back in 1894,’ the spokesman said.
Overall, there were 12 days with no sunshine and a further five days with 0.2 hours or less.
It was also a difficult month for visibility, with 17 days of fog recorded.
Winter itself was much wetter than usual, with all three months providing above-average totals.
While February was wet, it was still well below the record for the wettest February.
In 1978 18.2cm of rain fell over the course of the month.
