A Summary of the 2009-2010 winter in the Doncaster area
Cold it certainly has been over most of the 3 months of official meteorological winter, 1 December – 28 February, with a mean temperature of 2.8C. The 13 year average for Cantley is 5.3C. Taking it back to 1943 and including the RAF Finningley figures the average over that whole period is 4.3C (the years prior to about 1988 being generally colder than more recently).
Another way of comparing this winter with those over the past 65 years is to take not only the mean temperature into account but also days of snow falling and lying along with days of air frost. When this is done then this winter ranks 6th in all those winters. Only the extreme winters of 1962-63 and 1946-47 along with other quite notable winters 1981-82, 1978-79, 1955-56 showing colder and snowier winters.
So a pretty remarkable winter all round. February was not that notable apart from the snow of Sunday 21st which gave 7cm along with a slight fall early in the month. January of course was the coldest winter month and notable for the fall of 16cm on the 6th, the 3rd highest ever snowfall in this area. Only January 1987 with 21cm and December 1981 with 19cm beating it. In December after a fairly mild start with the first 10 days averaging 6.6C it turned progressively colder with snow covering half or more of the ground (by Met Office definition) on 9 mornings and patches on a further 4.
One other feature of this winter has been the lack of days with the afternoon temperature exceeding 10C. The last time this occurred was on 9 December with 10.3C. The January maximum was 9.4C on the 18th and in February the highest reached was 8.2C on the 26th.
Our heating bills are going to make unpleasant reading for us all I imagine, regardless of which fuel we have used.
As of the evening of 28 February there is little if any sign yet of many days breaching the 10C value in the next 2-3 weeks either.
A final note= February is the coldest since 1994.
for the video to go with the charts, please scroll down to the box below-click and then move your mouse over the charts as I go through the weather day by day
