High Heaton Weather and Air Quality– May 2025 

Weather

May 2025 was warm, dry, and sunny. It was the fourth successive month, and the fourth successive May, with above average temperatures. The average temperature was 12.1°C which is almost a degree warmer than the mean over the last 30 years. The hottest day of the month, by quite a large margin, was Thursday 1^st when the temperature reached 24.6°C at 1.30pm. This was the last day of a mini heatwave and is the highest temperature recorded in May since 2020. The minimum temperature was 2.4°C at 5.30am on Tuesday 6^th. This was the only day that a ground frost will have occurred, and it is now five years since an air frost was recorded in May. Rainfall amounted to 35mm, which is 71% of the average for the month. Nearly all of the rain fell in the last week, with the wettest day being Saturday 24^th when 13mm was recorded.  The end of May marks the end of the three months of meteorological Spring. The most noticeable feature for most of this period was the lack of rainfall. All three months were drier than usual, with March and April exceptionally so. Only 5mm of rain fell in the two months from March 23^rd to May 22^nd. Total rainfall over the three months was 56mm which compares to the average of 132mm, and to last year’s total of 304mm. Even so, it was not the driest spring - that was in 2020 when only 33 mm fell. It was, however, the warmest spring that I have recorded. The average temperature was 9.7°C which is 1.0°C higher than the 30-year mean, and 0.1°C higher than the previous warmest spring (2011). I don’t record hours of sunshine, but nationally it was not only the warmest, but also the sunniest Spring on record. 

Air Quality It was a very good month for air quality. The Air Quality Index was band one (best) on 27 days and in band two on 4 days (bands one to three are classed as ‘good’). The average PM2.5 particle concentration was 6.5µg/m³, and while we were over the WHO target of 10 µg on seven days, we never exceeded the UK’s target of 25 µg.

                                                                                                               John Telfer