Submitted by Bill Caulfeild-Browne
I guess it’s common knowledge that the past winter was the warmest ever recorded worldwide, and that Tobermory was a full participant in that warmth. Not that is was actually warm – but it was a whole lot less cold than any winter hitherto.
December was 5C higher than the 20th century mean; January was 3.6C higher, February a whopping 5.9C higher and March 4.3C higher. On average, the season was just shy of 5C warmer than would be expected.
The high temperature for February was 12.4C – the warmest my weather station has recorded. But March exceeded even that at 14.4C. These are temperatures normally associated with April and May. The lows were equally unique – the mercury only sank as far as -12C in February and -8.4C in March. We had no negative temperatures in the teens, let alone any nights in the minus twenties that were routine in the past.
February was dry – just 27mm of water equivalent against a norm of 40mm, while March evened things out by providing 51mm, 6mm more than average.
I don’t have much to say about weather events as we were away for much of February and March. I can deduce from the statistics that the last couple of days in February must have been stormy as winds exceeded 70 km/hr and there was 9mm of rain. The first week of March was the warmest – several nights didn’t go below freezing. We returned to Tobermory for the first day of Spring to find many green shoots of daffodils and iris, several weeks earlier than expected.
