Not a particularly memorable year: a cold and snowy November and a very mild December stick out. A dull, wet, cool summer, but a very sunny winter (209 hours of sunshine in London). From this year the frequency of mild westerlies and southerlies increases markedly; winter hasn't been the same since.

January. Mild and very wet, although quite sunny.

February. Unsettled, sunny, quite mild (4.9), but with cold end. Stormy and wet beginning, with some snow. Strong gale in the north and west on the 9th, with damaging gusts of 90 mph. Many places had record sunshine totals: 144 hours on the south coast.

March. Record-breakingly wet in places in Northern Ireland, and very wet across most of the country.

April. Wet in Scotland, alternating spells of cold and warm weather. An interesting sequence of temperatures at Aviemore: it was 20C on the 6th, but with a maximum of only 5.0C on the 8th, and a minimum of -8.1 on the morning of the 13th. It was 21.3 at Coningsby (Lincs.) on the 18th.

May. Thunderstorms on the 8th led to widespread flooding on the morning of the 9th in west London. 89mm rain at Ruislip; 25mm in 25 minutes in one storm. In Coventry (where I was) this was the first May without frost since 1970.

June. Very dry over England and Wales. Very warm in Scotland.

July. An unremittingly disturbed month. It was dull and cold (overall CET 14.7, the coldest since 1965); the temperature did not exceed 21C in many places of the south during the whole month. Even London failed to exceed 22C. The highest all month in Plymouth was only 18.3, and at Land's End it was beneath 16C all month. It was the wettest July since 1936 in the south and the wettest of the century in Scotland. It rained every day of the month in Cumbria and western and southern Scotland, and on 23 days over most of the UK. We haven't had a colder July since.

August. Unsettled and mixed; wet in the west, but dry in the east.

September. An average month, often unsettled.

October. Variable across the country, but mostly warm, sunny, but wet. On the 19th a severe thunderstorm affected Merseyside. Crosby had 82 mm of rain, resulting in severe flooding.

November. Anticyclonic, with much fog and frost. Cold and dry. There was a substantial snowfall on the 20th; Dover was cut off following six inches of snow; 5 cm more generally across Kent. I remembering waking to a respectable (and surprising) covering of snow in Leamington; we'd just moved in to our new house, so it was one of the most notable weather events of the year. All the locals were amazed at the snow. It was a very sunny month in central Scotland, and the sunniest November on record until 2005, with 89 hours average sunshine. This was the last very dry November.

December. Exceptionally mild (7.5) - the second warmest this century. Dull but very dry. Very mild on Christmas Eve (14.9C at Torquay) and Christmas Day (14C).