The 7th was very different however, as a cold front brought an inch of rain and a thoroughly miserable day. The cold front and low pressure combined to bring another spell of very disturbed weather for the next few days, with heavy rain between the 9th and the 11th.

The weather improved on the 12th and 13th, which was a fine, mild and sunny day, though there were showers on the 14th. Then followed a quiet spell of weather which lasted between the 15th and the 24th. The 17th, 19th, 23rd and 26th were all fine and sunny and the weather turned briefly warm for the time of year on the 27th.

Very disturbed weather returned at the end of the month with the arrival of a deep depression. The 28th was a miserable, wet day throughout and whilst the 29th started fine and sunny, it clouded over in the afternoon and heavy rain fell from that tea-time and didn't stop for the rest of the night. The 30th was even more disturbed and from 6.30am, along with heavy rain, strong winds were recorded for two hours causing structural damage in many places and at around 9am snow and sleet fell but didn't last for long. It was the earliest fall of snow in the year for a very long time. The air pressure fell to 962MB, the lowest recorded since the notorious burns day storm on 25th January 1990, which killed 47 people across the UK. From a personal perspective I remember two slates being blown off the roof whilst I was in the bath that evening.

Back to October 2000 - the storm finished later that day. Though there were sunny spells during the storm. 32 millimetres of rain fell, making it the wettest day of 2000 so far.

There were no exceptionally high or low temperatures anywhere but the high rainfall totals for the month largely was down to two very disturbed spells of weather which occurred between the 7th and 11th October and between the 28th and 30th October.

There was a symmetry with April 2000 during October this year. When describing April 2000's weather I wrote that you would have thought it would be a long time before such a wet April as that of 1998 would occur again. Well it took only two years, and the same occurred with October. The month was exceptionally wet and rainfall was over twice the expected amount, but it was not as wet as October 1998. Is this a sign of things to come with Global warming? This could be the wettest Autumn since 1960 if this wet pattern continutes.

Temperatures for the month were around average overall, for day and night time temperature and for the month in general. Sunshine totals were above average despite the very wet weather as there was a generally quiet first four days and a quiet spell between the 15th and the 24th.

Kevin Phillips – 8.45pm – Sunday 5th November 2000.