While bemoaning the prolonged period of cold which has beset the country this year to date and putting on my deeply rose-tinted spectacles for the thoughts of better years past….
I am reminded that April 2012 was the coldest April since 1989, the dullest since 1998 and the wettest since 2000. More remarkably, it was around 1C colder than March 2012, a rare, but not unprecedented occurrence. The upturn in rainfall from March was the most noticeable feature of this month last year; there have been only three wetter Aprils in 285 years of records in England and Wales and across the UK as a whole it has been the wettest April for at least a century. Much of the rain was associated with low pressure systems close to southern Britain in the second half of the month; many southern areas thus had over twice their average rainfall.
What records will be broken this year?
The Teddington Gardener 