Wettest April for many years

With the month total now on 151mm and a wet day predicted for tomorrow (Sunday) it is looking like an exceptionally wet month for any season, especially unusual when April is often rather too dry if anything!
Since the station began recording the wettest month was August 2006 with 208mm.
It's unlikely that total will be exceeded in the final two days I hope.

It's also been consistently chilly with highest temperature only 13.7C so far, although Monday 30th could top that.
The average is running at 5.6C which is about 2.5C below the norm for recent years (somewhat skewed by last years very warm April)
March was 7.8C, a good 2C warmer.

Trees and plants were starting to grow rapidly during the warm days at the end of March but progress has slowed to a crawl through this month although perhaps only to a more or less 'normal' stage at present.
Even on chilly days when the sun comes out it is powerful and feels pleasant.
A memorable month but not for the best of reasons!

April Rainfall

The last two years have seen exceptionally dry Aprils, but 2012 could hardly be more different.
At the 23rd we are on 112.3mm, there will almost certainly be more through this final week.
The total for January, February and March was only about 68mm so it is likely April will triple the annual total!
The snow in the first week would have not all be counted, so the real total should likely be about 5mm higher.

Going into May it looks rather less rainy but still 'changeable' and certainly no heatwave but perhaps near average or just below.

More April snow!

Another wet and wintry start to the day this morning, but being April by midday the sun and breeze made it feel like a different day with temperature getting above 10C for the first time since the 12th.

Chilly April

You will have noticed(!) it's been cold, but compared to March the chill is especially striking.
Currently April Average is at 5.7C which is almost 3C below average.
March meanwhile came in at 7.8C which was 1.6C above average!
It's unlikely April will catch up to March now although it does seem like becoming a little less cold as we go into the second half - still rather unsettled though - but with winds tending more to the NW we may miss the worst here in the east.

Incidentally the weather website has been having a minor glitch after a Windows 7 update on the 11th, the software kept stalling.
After tinkering with a few settings to no avail, I have simply uninstalled the Windows updates which I hope will resolve it.
No data is lost but sometimes the site might not update if the program has got stuck.
If that happens it will typically need restarting manually.
Data is then downloaded from the weather station software and everything updates.
Fingers crossed it will be OK again now. Usually it will run for weeks at a time with no attention.

You can see how long it has been continuously running at the bottom of the page - and the data received numbers will increase all the while (it gets a packet about every three seconds).
It is doing quite well if it gets above 500,000, the most so far was just over a million.
Then there was a windows update requiring restart ...

April snowstorm

It happens depressingly frequently, but the wet snow blizzard 3rd into 4th April will be a serious lamb-killer with many lambs less than a week old being very vulnerable to hypothermia when wet for hours.

Although the forecast was reasonably accurate it was hard to believe it could snow for hours after temperatures of 20C just a few days previously!

Although the blowing snow will not have been accurately recorded as precipitation, the 3rd of April has had more 'rain' than February and March combined.

 Update:
What an extreme event this turned into, estimated 18inches of snow over high ground in little more than 12 hours. Lower down, the sticky snow combined with wind at just above freezing also caused extensive damage to overhead power lines which meant some properties were cut off from late Tuesday until the following Saturday.