By Philip Eden

It rained every single day in November in parts of Cornwall, Devon and west Wales. In Glasgow there was just one dry, in Birmingham four, and in London six, and this compares with an average November when rain falls on about 20 days in western Britain and on 15 in the eastern half of the country.

Not only was the frequency of rain last month well above average, the quantity was too. Averaged over England and Wales November's rainfall amounted to 168mm which is 73 per cent above the long-term mean. There have been four wetter Novembers during the last 100 years, 1929, 1940, 1970 and 2000, while the wettest of all happened in 1852 when the national total was 202mm.

As is often the case, many records were broken at a local level, notably in southwest England and south Wales, and at Milford Haven the monthly aggregate of 372mm was more than three times the average there. Other notable totals were 365mm at Cardinham, near Camelford, and 359mm at Bastreet on Bodmin Moor, both in Cornwall. By contrast, north-west Scotland had a relatively dry month, and at Aultbea in Wester Ross the month's rainfall amounted to only 49 per cent of the local average.

There were serious floods around mid-month in south Cornwall and in Morayshire, but it was surprising that flooding did not affect many more of us especially as October had also been a wet month. We have the long dry period from mid-August to early-October to thank for that; the water table was very low when the rains arrived.

Mean monthly temperature was above the long-term mean in all parts of the UK during November, and frosty nights were rare even in the Scottish highlands. Average afternoon maxima ranged from 7.7°C at Lerwick in Shetland and Strathardle in Perthshire to 14.0°C at Torquay in Devon, Pendennis Point in Cornwall, and St Peter Port on Guernsey, while average overnight minima ranged from 2.0°C at Strathardle to 10.5°C at Portland in Dorset. The provisional Central England Temperature was 8.5°C and there have been only six Novembers in the last 100 years which have been as warm or warmer: 1938, 1939, 1951, 1953, 1978 and 1994. Although there were several sunny days especially during the first half of the month, November's sunshine fell short of the normal in most parts of the country. Averaged over England and Wales, the sun shone for 60 hours which is some nine per cent below the long-term average. Coasts and islands did much better than inland areas; monthly totals ranged from 103 hours at St Helier on Jersey to just 28 hours at Buxton in Derbyshire.

(c) Philip Eden

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