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Rainfall: 53.6mm (99%)
Rain days (>=0.2mm): 18 (+2)
Wet days (>=1.0mm): 14 (+3)
Days with snow/sleet falling: 17
Days with >50% snow cover at 9am: 9
Max Snow depth: 12cm (14th)
Total Sunshine: 74.0 hours (58%)
Max Sunshine duration: 8.0 hours (28th)
Sunless days: 8
Rating for this miserable cold, grey March would be about 2/10. 1 for the fairly notable snowfall on the 13th/14th and 1 for not being as bad as the Marches of 1964 and 1996.
Unofficial figures for Hampstead, north London (51N 0W)
Mean maximum: 6.1C (-4.3)
Mean minimum: 1.0C (-2.6)
Mean: 3.5C (-3.5)
Absolute high: 15.5C
Absolute low: -2.8C
Frosts: 16
Snow lying days: 4
Ice days: 2*
Rainfall: 51.1mm (+0%) on 12 days
Sunshine: 62.3 hours (-42%)
Less than one hour sunshine: 16
* Does not include two highs of 0.0C and one of 0.3C, all of which were date records for late March!
The coldest March in 105 years of local records, and the third dullest. If not for a relatively sunny last few days the dullness record would also have gone. The really odd thing about it was that unlike many cold Marches it didn't start off particularly cold at all, but just got colder. Having a record-late ice day on the 11th was surreal enough, but from the 23rd to the 26th we had 82 consecutive hours of no higher than freezing (and full overcast the whole time), including an afternoon on the 24th which never got above -1.5C, something completely unheard of for this part of the world so late in the season, and the complete opposite of the weather a year earlier. Last March had nearly three times as much sunshine and an average high of 13.6C, 7.5C warmer than this year!
Even though it has been colder than a normal January, the daffodils are mostly out, likewise some of the forsythia and almond/cherry blossoms, though much later than last year. The roads are in the worst condition I have seen here, but considering the winter has had more rain, snow and frosts than usual that's not surprising.
One of those freak months that a few years ago we thought we'd never see any more: colder than any March since 1883, and the first time since 1786 that it has been colder than both a below-average January and February. From 1997 to 2010 we didn't even have a month this cold in winter, never mind March! What's really remarkable is the fact that, like locally, we didn't have a cold start and it just got colder as the month went on. The last nine days of the month were the coldest since 1785. We also managed this without many particularly cold nights, though the 30th and 31st were both national date records - the average maximum of 5.66C was the lowest ever recorded.
The snow down here was nothing that special except for its longevity for the time of year, but up north had some of the biggest drifts seen for decades.
We've had a December recently which if it had started and finished four days earlier would have been the coldest in over 350 years, now a March on a par with anything from the Little Ice Age, but even though we've had all-time rainfall and dullness records threatened or broken in summer recently, the really cold summer months from centuries past have seemed out of reach because the cloud cover has kept the night temperatures up. I'd always thought those records were just beyond our reach nowadays for whatever reason, but maybe not?
Snowfall: 2.0cm
Snowfall Days: 2
Days of lying Snow: 1
Air Frosts: 1
Days of visible Ground Frost: 3
Overall it was a cold month, though the first week was actually quite mild. Despite it being cold many nights, like the days, were cloudy so it stopped any really low temperatures & because of this the mean came in 2.1C below the LTA average for Southsea.
No figures for Motueka this month , so I'll will use nearby Nelson. Motueka's figures would typically be a little warmer for maximums and a little cooler for minimums, than Nelson.
Nelson 41.16S 2m asl
Average maximum: 23.2C/74F (+2.1C)
Average minimum: 12.6C (+1C)
Rainfall: 63 mm/2.5 inches on 4 days
Sunshine: 225 hours
Warmest maximum temp: 27C/80F
coldest maximum temp: 19C/66F
Warmest minimum temp: 17C/64F
Coldest minimum temp: 8C/46F
The first warmer than average month since December. Rainfall was down by about 25% and sunshine was just slightly below average.
Interesting to see some places in the South Island had average diurnal ranges of up 21C/43F over the whole of February.
Average High:14,5C
Average Low:7,3C
Average Temp:10,9C
Highest max:28,6C(City center)Sariyer district was 30,1C
Lowest max:4,9C
Highest min:16C
Lowest min:1,2C
No snow no frost.
Little correction
Average High:16,2C
Average Low:7,3C
Average Temp:11,7C
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