14 Jan 2025
Weather experts from Harpenden’s Rothamsted Research have released their report for 2024 – a year which was warm and wet with below average sunshine – offering an insight into our changing climate.
Researchers said 2024 had above average rainfall with 992.5mm recorded (+228.97mm above average) making it the third wettest since records began. It rained (0.2mm or more) on 204 days. The most on one day was 60.7mm on May 21. The wettest month was September with 185.2mm (+127.51mm above average).
In fact, there were three months that had over 100mm of rainfall with the other two being February (130.0mm; +73.03mm above average) and May (114.8mm; +61.54mm above average). The driest month was June with 21.5mm. Of the 12 months six had above average and six had below average rainfall. Precipitation fell as snow on November 19.
2024 was also a dull year with just 1,573.7 hours of sunshine (-78.87 hours below the annual average). June was the ‘sunniest’ month with 241.4 hours. Of the 12 months nine had below average sunshine. Only January, June and August had above average sunshine.
The overall mean air temperature for the year was above average at 11.0 °C (the annual average is 10.23 °C).
This makes 2024 the fifth warmest year since Rothamsted’s records began in 1878.
The mean maximum air temperature and mean minimum air temperature were above average at 14.6 ºC (+0.61 °C) and 7.3 °C (+0.97 °C) respectively. The hottest day was August 12 reaching 31.8 °C. The coldest night was January 17 which dropped to -5.2 °C. We had 23 air frosts and 64 ground frosts, of which eight were below -6 °C.
Meanwhile, December was also warm with below average rainfall and sunshine.
Rainfall was 68.1mm, which is 7.5mm below average. We had 21 days where at least 0.2mm of rain was recorded, five of these with at least 5mm. The most was 14.5mm on the 8th. Precipitation fell as snow overnight on December 4-5 before turning back to rain later.
Sunshine was 34.7 hours, which is 26.12 hoursbelow average. The most sunshine was 4.9 hours on the 6th. We had 10 days with no sunshine recorded.
December had above average mean maximum and minimum temperatures with 8.6°C (+1.22) and 4.3 °C (+2.33) respectively. The highest maximum temperature was 13.2 °C on the 18th and the lowest minimum was -0.5°C on the 20th.
We had no air frosts and four ground frosts.
