And the weather outside is frightful

Pretty chilly weekend as the Arctic lands in Southern England.  For a country that prides itself on its terrible weather our winters are normally bleak, dull, wet and long. So some snow always raises the spirits at least it would do in any normal year, but 2012 / 13 has been a stinker and here are some highlights:

The UK mean temperature of 8.8 °C for the year - that's a good reason to emigrate now!  This was  0.1 °C below the 1981-2010 average (that pretty F---ing cold). It is worth noting that only 2 years (2010 and 2012) of the last 16 have had annual temperatures below this average.




The summer (what summer I hear you say) was a little warmer than 2011, but otherwise the coolest since 1998, and it was the coolest autumn since 1993.

The UK annual rainfall total was 1331 mm (115% of average), the second since 1910, narrowly beaten by 2000 (1337 mm). England had its wettest year ever.

We had  1356 hours of sunshine, which is 15% of all time or about 27% of day light hours - pretty bloody dire when you consider that I would have been in the office at work of 65% of this sunshine. That's about 1 hour and 20 minutes of sunshine on average per day!!  In statisticians speak - bugger all!