Huddersfield Weather Watch - August 2014

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 10:19:00 BST

‌“...Coolest August since our records began...”

August can best be described as cool, wet and windy!  The Met Office states that this was the coolest August for the UK since 1993, ending a sequence of eight warmer than average months.  Rainfall and wind speeds were above average.  Ex-Hurricane ‘Bertha’ passed over the UK on the 10^th to 11^th bringing some unseasonably windy and wet weather.  The average figures are those recorded since 1990 from the School of Applied Sciences weather station.

It was the coolest August since our records began!  The monthly mean temperature was 15.26˚C, over 1.5˚C lower than the average figure for August of 16.78˚C.  The warmest day of the month was Tuesday 5^th with an average temperature of 19˚C (average 21.8˚C); a disappointing highest temperature of 24.3˚C (average 27.7˚C) was also recorded on this day.  The coldest day of the month was Saturday 23^rd with an average temperature of 12.3˚C.  The lowest minimum temperature of 7.9˚C was recorded on Monday 18^th.

It was the wettest August in Huddersfield since 2008 and the seventh wettest since our records began.  A total of 89.8mm of rainfall was recorded compared to the average figure for August of 68.6mm.  The wettest day of the month, with 25.8% of the month’s total rainfall, was Sunday 10^th.  Only nine days of the month avoided any rainfall and there were no significant dry spells; Sunday 3^rd until Monday 4^th were the only two consecutive dry days!

It was by far the windiest August since our weather station was installed in 2005.  The mean wind speed for the month was 13.1km/hr, this is probably accounted for by the passing through of Ex-Hurricane ‘Bertha’; wind speeds were particularly higher than average between the 9^th and 12^th of August.  The highest mean wind speed was 29.5km/hr recorded on Sunday 10^th.  The maximum gust of 98.28km/hr was recorded on Sunday 17^th.

The prevailing wind direction for the month was south west.

Julie Walker
Resource Centre and Environmental Technician
School of Applied Sciences

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