1910

There was a fascinating event in August 1910.

January. A mild, dry, windy start, and then very cold and unsettled from the 21st, with some heavy snowfalls. It reached 14C in places on the 2nd. On the 27th the maximum at Aberdeen was only -8C; at Balmoral the minimum was a respectable -23C.

February. Mostly mild, windy and unsettled.

March. Quiet, mild, and sunny; many places recorded no rain in the final two weeks. Only 9 mm of rain fell at Wakefield all month.

April. Dull, cool and changeable.

May. Cold with rain and hail in the first half; the second half was mainly fine and warm.

June. The first three weeks were fine and warm, but with some notable thunderstorms. On the 9th over 130 mm of rain fell in storms at Reading and Oxford. The weather became more inclement from the 20th.

July. Cold, wet, and very dull - just 111 hours of sunshine in London.

August. On the 6th Shetland reached 28C - the highest temperature of the month anywhere in Britain, as a tongue of very warm air crossed the North Sea. Very unusually, nowhere else in Britain exceeded 20C. On the whole the month was wetter than average everywhere apart from SE England.

September. The "snow" reported at Epsom on the 19th was almost certainly just soft hail (the temperature was recorded as 11C). In general, it was a very dry month; indeed, the second driest of the century over much of the country, with a E&W average of 16.4 mm. It was however quite cool, but with a warm spell between the 26th and 29th, with 79F recorded at Maidenhead on the 28th. Sunny in the SW but dull in the NE, with just 67 hours of sunshine recorded at Newcastle. It was though a dry month everywhere, particularly in Durham and Yorkshire.

October. An unsettled month with a reverse north-south that was reminiscent of August. There were some warm sunny days in the north but the south tended to be cool and dull. It was particularly dull in the S midmonth, with only 5 hours sunshine between the 9th and 15th, and no sunshine at all in Birmingham from 23-29th.

November. Very cold (3.2C CET). Some flooding in the north on 17th following heavy rain.

December. A very mild and wet first half. There were four days of continuous rain in parts of the south early in the month: for example, 170 mm of rain fell between the 4th and the 10th in parts of Devon. One and a half inches of rain fell at Nottingham on the 1st. There was a violent westerly gale in southern England on the 16th. The equal record highest maximum for Christmas Eve was set this month, with 15.6C at locations in North Wales.