November was a grey, damp, mild month, enlivened by a couple of snaps of cold but sunny weather with widespread night frost. If you own a hall barometer you will have noticed how consistently high the reading has been during the last five weeks, and high pressure at this time of the year usually brings quiet weather with little or no rain but widespread mist and low cloud. Averaged over the entire month barometric pressure was higher than in any other November in the last 50 years with the sole exception of 2001.

The average afternoon maximum temperature ranged from 7.4C at Lerwick in Shetland to 13.0C at Torquay in Devon, while the average overnight minimum varied between 1.8C at Braemar in Aberdeenshire and 10.1C at St Mary�s in the Isles of Scilly. November�s Central England Temperature, which takes into account daytime and night-time readings, was 7.7C which is 0.8 degC above the average for the standard reference period of 1971-2000. It was significantly less mild than the Novembers of 2003 and 2002, but during the last 100 years there were only 19 which were warmer.

The mildness was persistent rather than exceptional and the temperature nowhere exceeded 61F (16C) on any individual day. There were, however, some remarkably low temperatures during the cold spell between the 18th and 21st; Loch Glascarnoch in Sutherland recorded a maximum of 25.2F (minus 3.8C) on the 20th, and Kinbrace, also in Sutherland, logged a minimum of 8.2F (minus 13.2C) overnight 20th/21st. These were both the lowest in November since 1993.

Although drizzle was frequent and occasionally persistent, the quantity of rain that fell during November was the lowest, taking the country as a whole, since 1988. Over England and Wales the month�s total was 52mm which is just 53 per cent of the norm, in Scotland the equivalent figures were 77mm and 74 per cent, and in Northern Ireland 58mm and 64 per cent. Less than 25mm fell in parts of southeast Scotland and northeast England where Durham reported its driest November since 1958, and also locally in southern counties of England.

In spite of a handful of sunny days, monthly sunshine totals were below the average everywhere in the British Isles apart from a narrow strip along the east coast between Newcastle and Aberdeen. Nationally it was the dullest since 1997, but at a local level, Valley in Anglesey recorded its lowest November total since the station opened in 1945 and Aldergrove in Northern Ireland had its dullest November since 1962.

© Philip Eden