It was the most westerly April since 1977, yet it was very dry, particularly in the east and south, but quite wet in the north and west. There was a cold snap at the start, with snow in the south on the night of Sunday-Monday 9-10th. The Premiership game at Sunderland was snowed off on the afternoon of Saturday 8th. There was 15 cm of wet snow at Tunbridge Wells on the morning of the 10th as heavy rain fell out of cold air. It became milder towards the end of the month; the temperature reached 19.7C at Herstmonceux (Sussex) on the 21st - the latest date 18C was exceeded somewhere in the UK since 1986. Overall temperatures were about average, although there were no very warm days. It was quite a sunny month. A CET of 8.9, about a degree warmer than average, and warmer than average across the UK. Rainfall across the country was well below average, with 48% of the UK average; parts of East Scotland (Fife and Lothian) had less than 5 mm. Sunshine was 109% of average. The highest temperature of the month was 25.5C at Cambridge on the 9th, and the the lowest -6.2C at Cromdale (Morayshire) on the 18th. After a showery start the month became extremely anticyclonic. It was warm until the 9th, but then dry, cooler, and with cold nights. There was a short northerly spell with some snow and sharper frosts between the 24th and 27th. The most significant rain of the month was the 30th in the far southwest. The month was very sunny in Jersey: Fort Regent saw 285 hours. Harley, T. A. (2018). Talking the talk: Language, Psychology and Science (2nd. ed.). Hove: Psychology press. A fine month. It was 27C in London and Norfolk on the 25th - in some places it was the warmest day of the year. Cold with northerly winds for the first three weeks, then milder after the 24th. Dry in SE England and SW Scotland.

The earliest date on which 90F (32.2C) has been reached was on the 22 May 1922; the latest date was 19 September 1926. or more has been seen 26 years, in (with the temperature being above 34 and beneath 35, 10 times: 1921, 1930, 1933, 1941, 1947, 1959, 1975, 1989, 2013, 2017), plus the 16 years below. Generally an unsettled month with cold spells. However, there was a fine, warm spell in the second week, when 26C was recorded at Cromer and Herne Bay on the 12th. It was a dry month in the north but wet in the south. The British Isles are one of the most interesting places in the world in which to live for exciting weather. The weather is particularly unpredictable here. The Gulf Stream keeps us much warmer than we should be for our latitude (look at places at similar latitude on the east coast of America, for example). We live in the battleground where maritime and continental weather often fight. I'm at my happiest when the continental weather wins: that's when we see the extremes of summer heat and winter cold.

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Harley, T. A. (1984). A critique of top-down independent levels models of speech production: Evidence from non-plan-internal speech errors. Cognitive Science, 8, 191–219.

Harley, T. A. (2014). The Psychology of Language: From data to theory (4th. ed.) Hove: Psychology Press. (Earlier editions 2008, 2001, 1995.) September can be quite an exciting month for the weather: we can hope for a very pleasant warm spell (sometimes hot, but rarely with the searing intensity of summer); there is always the excitement of the chance of the first frost (or at least the first ground frost); we can still hope for violent thunderstorms; and the chance of gales increases, particularly in the second half of the month. The east of the country tends to be slightly drier than in the summer months (having fewer thunderstorms), whereas the west tends to be slightly wetter (having a higher frequency of cyclonic weather systems). The average amount of sunshine in September varies from just under three hours a day in NW Scotland to almost six hours along the SE coast. Anticyclones are only more likely in May. Our thoughts start to turn from the heat of summer to the cold of winter - and some months give us both (see 1919). See here for information about the British weather and extreme weather events in Britain, indexed by year . Exceptionally dry in the southeast, but very wet in the west.Some snow in the south on April 14. Notable later warm spell: 23.8 at Weybourne (Norfolk) on the 21st.Warm, sunny and dry: the third sunniest and third warmest in the last century in England and Wales, and the sunniest in the UK. Mostly it was an anticyclonic and westerly month, although there was a northerly cold snap towards the end of the month, when it became much more unsettled. The highest temperature of the month was 25.2C at St Helier (jersey) on the 15th, although there were some high temperatures across the country, including early high maxima in east and NE Scotland. The coldest temperature was -8.0C at Katesbridge (Co. Down) on the 27th. Average total England and Wales rainfall was just 23.2 mm (29%). The England and Wales sunshine average was 222 hours, 149%; the UK saw 212 hours, 7 hours more than the previous record of 205 in 1942. October . Mostly unsetted. Generaly rather cool, particulary in the north. It was wet in England and Wales, particulary Cornwall and Yorkshire, but slightly drier than average over Scotland, the NW, and Northern Ireland. It was sunnier than average where it was dry. The highest temperature of the month was 21.3C at Trawsgoed (Dyfed) on the 1st and the lowest -6.2C at Altnaharra on the 31st. On the 26th, 101.0 mm of rain fell in the recording day at Libanus in the Brecon Beacons. A dull month. There were cold northerlies for the first ten days, bringing lengthy and frequent snow showers, and frost. In Birmingham there were daily snowfalls from March 27 to April 10. There was 15 cm of lying snow in places in the SE on the 9th, and 45 cm in the Scottish Highlands. There was however a warm, sunny spell later in the month, with 23C recorded in parts on the 24th. Cool and unsettled. A stormy first week, with severe gales over England and Wales on the 2nd, and snow in the north. Cold from the 19th with NE winds and snow at times. Eskadalemuir nearly made -10C (-9.9, to be precise) on the 28th-29th.

There were some notable sharp frosts, including -9.0 at Thame, Oxon, on the night of the 4th. For many places the 4th or 5th were the coldest nights of the year. I remember the hoar frosts being particularly spectacular that year, even right on the Cornish coast. These severe frosts caused much crop damage. Ireland saw some snow on the 3rd. Yet it reached 25C at Aberdovery on the 30th, as a hot spell started on the 29th. The month was extremely sunny in eastern Scotland. April was unusually colder than March. Mostly dry and warm in the south, but more changeable in the north. On the 16th, it was 28C in London. For his PhD and later research he collected a corpus of several thousand naturally occurring speech errors, and focused on one word substitutes for another (e.g. saying "pass the pepper" instead of "pass the salt"). He concluded that speech production is an interactive, parallel process, leading him to an interest in connectionist modeling, and research on computational modeling, ageing, and metacognition. [1] The third warmest on record (after 2007 and 2011). Generally a southerly month. The south was particularly warm, dry, and sunny from the 8th to the 19th. The highest temperature of the month was in Scotland, at Aviemore on the 22nd (22.0C); the coldest night -5.2C at Aboyne on the night of the 19-20th. Very average rainfall (64.1 mm, 98%), with a lot coming in a showery start and end to the month. Monks Wood (Cambridgeshire) saw just 12.5mm all month. The England and Wales sunshine was an average of 163 hours, again close to the average (98%).A mixed month. It started unsettled and cool, but turned warmer from the 5th with easterly winds, before turning cooler again. Then Easter (late this year 19 - 22 April) was very warm. The hottest day of the year so far (since February of course) was Saturday 20, when Gosport (Hants.) reached 25.5C. Scotland (23.4C, Edinburgh), Wales (23.2, Hawarden), and Northern Ireland (21.0C, Helen's Bay, Co, Down) had a record-breakingly warm Easter Sunday. Easter Monday was even warmer, with 24.2C at Kinlochewe, 23.6 at Cardiff, and 21.7C at Armagh; it reached 24.6C at Heathrow. The final week was unsettled and stormy in places. Overall it was warmer than average, particularly in NW Scotland. It was dry overall, with 71% of average, particularly in the southeast. It was slightly sunnier than average (114%). The higest temperature of the month was 25.8C at Treknow (Cornwall) on the 19th, and the lowest -6.8C at Braemar on the 10th. 58.2 mm of rain fell at Buxton on the 27-28th.