The UK in March

Mike Hulme on last month’s weather

DAYTIME TEMPERATURES

March was another mild month in the UK - only two of the last 14 March's have been colder than average and during the 1990s March averaged well over 1ºC warmer than the 1961-90 average. This translates into about a two week earlier spring. March 2000 started and ended rather cold, but the middle fortnight was exceptionally mild with daytime temperatures reaching 3ºC, sometimes 4ºC, above average. The east of the country enjoyed milder anomalies than the west and Leuchars, in Fife, was more than 3ºC warmer than average.

RAINFALL

Unusually for a mild March, rainfall was below the average. Most of the month's rain fell during the first week - the country was almost entirely dry between the 11^th and 22^nd. Rainfall over England was less than 50 per cent of average - Lowestoft recorded less than 15mm of rain - and only the northwest of Scotland was wetter than normal.

SUNSHINE

Sunshine totals for the country as a whole were close to average in March, although England and parts of eastern Scotland gained sunshine at the expense of Wales and the northwest. Overall, March just continued the sequence of nine sunny UK months (see Graph). Bournemouth was a nice place to be in March with 30 per cent more sunshine than usual, temperatures more than 2.5ºC above the average, and only half of the normal March rainfall.

Dr Mike Hulme is a Research Climatologist at the University of East Anglia

(more details at web site: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~mikeh/)

March 2000: Mild and rather dry

Daytime Temperature: 1.8°C above average; Rainfall: 31% below average; Sunshine: 2% above average.

[all average figures are based on the 1951-80 average]

Mean monthly extremes:

Warmest Bournemouth 12.6°C

Sunniest Bournemouth 161 hours sun

Wettest Lerwick 129mm

Coldest Lerwick 6.2°C

Cloudiest Eskdalemuir 80 hours sun

Driest Lowestoft 13mm