We are delighted to announce that the Kernow Weather Team have agreed to send us a monthly weather round up.
Despite being incredibly busy keeping their 55,000 followers on social media up to date with forecasts, at least four times a day, they will be sending us a comprehensive summary of what the weather has thrown at us over the last month – with a hint of what lies in store.
So what about December? Well, it’s been a pretty stormy one!
What a month December was. Mostly dominated by a series of low pressures, four named storms, and high-pressure, which brought us some delightful anticyclonic gloom. Of course, plenty of mist mizzle and fog. The sun was in very short supply, with it being a very mild month, I do believe temperatures reached highs of around 13°C. Temperatures for December should be around 5°C or 6°C. Even the nights were unseasonably mild. There were also plenty of rainfall and flood alerts issued. The jetstream was very powerful and brought a procession of lows in off the Atlantic. The amount of rainfall led to plenty of flooding. In one 24-hour period alone, weather stations recorded 2-3 inches of rain. There were several yellow weather warnings, including KWT own advisories.
First names storms
During the weekend of the 9th and 10th, two storms were named back to back, Storm Elin and Storm Fergus was named by Met ‘Eireann, Ireland’s national forecaster. Although Cornwall didn’t see the worst of these storms, we still saw plenty of wind and rain.
Two more storms followed
The second half of December we still saw a few low weather systems, then along came Storm Pia on the 20th December, which was named by the Danish Meteorological Institute. This passed North of the UK, but Cornwall still saw strong winds of 40-60mph and plenty of rain to go with it.
By now most of us were rather fed up with the constant dull murky and wet weather. We continued to see weather front after weather front, with only a few days of high-pressure until the next named storm arrived, Storm Gerrit named by the Met Office for the 27 December. The storm came with Met Office yellow weather warnings for wind and KWT advisory for rain. Storm Gerrit brought problems to other parts of the UK, but we still saw a gusts of wind at 91mph along Cornwall’s south coast, 69 mph from our weather station in Illogan, even sustained winds of 64 mph for a period of two hours, again, plenty of torrential downpours of rain bringing flash flooding.
The outlook doesn’t look great
At the time of writing this (28 December), we are looking at another low pressure system to sweep in at the weekend, we wouldn’t be surprised to see yet more yellow weather warnings and this even COULD be another named storm. Even into the first week of 2024 it looks unsettled as there is another procession of lows waiting in the wings to bring further stormy conditions.
Hold on to your hats one and all, the new year is expected to be a rough start.
We wish everyone a very happy and prosperous new year
From all the team at Kernow Weather Team
Weather photos please
If you are out and about taking weather pictures over January or the coming months do please email them to us – lindsay@roselandonline.co.uk – and we’ll put together a gallery of pictures to help illustrate the Kernow Weather Team’s monthly summary.
And if you want to know more about this volunteer weather team here’s the article we published in the summer explaining who they are and what they do.