High Heaton Weather in 2023

This week we are looking at some of the extremes of 2023 along with comparisons with previous years.

2023 is probably best remembered as being very wet. However the picture was very different in the early part of the year. We had a period of over four weeks in late May and early June when no rain at all was recorded in our part of the country, and farmers, growers, gardeners and the river authorities were becoming very concerned. However the last six months of the year were all very much wetter than usual, and by the end of the year a total of 975mm (38.4”) of rain had fallen. That made it the wettest year since I began recording rainfall over 30 years’ ago and the first time we have received over 3 feet of rain!  The previous wettest year was 2000 with 873mm. The average is 656mm, so we received very nearly 50% more than this.  The wettest day was October 19^th when 31 mm fell.

June was an outstanding month as far as temperatures are concerned. It was the warmest June for at least 30 years, and over the UK as a whole it was the hottest June since records began.  The rest of the summer was disappointingly cool and so for the first time June was the warmest month of the summer in High Heaton. The year’s highest temperature was on 25^th June when 26.7°C was recorded. The warm weather returned in the autumn, and there were near record-breaking temperatures in September and October which were officially attributed to global warming. The year’s minimum temperature was -6.0°C on 2^nd December and this was the lowest temperature in High Heaton for nearly 5 years. In the past 30 years the average temperature (recorded every 15 minutes) has ranged from 8.3°C in 2010 to 10.4°C in 2022 with a mean value of 9.6°.  The average for 2023 was 10.2°C making it the third warmest in that period. There were no substantial snowfalls in 2023, but small amounts of lying snow were recorded in January, March, November and December. 

John Telfer