Hello and welcome to a look back at our weather in December 2020 – We cover the Western Isles and take a look at the rest of the UK’s weather further down in the blog.
It was a mild and rather dull start to the month with temps getting into double figures for a time. Snowfall on the 27th and turned settled but colder on the last few days of the month. It was a mild Christmas and no white Christmas for the Western Isles. The windiest day was on Boxing day with 66 mph at South Uist range but it was a noticeably calm month.
Stornoway airport Met Office site stats.
Stornoway Airport had recorded 19.6 hours of sunshine during December. December 2019 had 17.5 hours of sunshine.
There was 182.4 mm of rainfall in December this was the wettest December since 2015 which had 268.4 mm of rainfall
SEPA rainfall Gauges in the Western Isles
Creed Bridge – 142.6 mm of rain in December. December 2019 had 176.8 mm of rainfall. It was the 6th Wettest month of the year.
Laxdale (Harris) – 185.4 mm of rain in December. December 2019 had 315.2 mm of rainfall. It was the 6th wettest month of the year.
Mill Croft – 161.8 mm of rain in December. December 2019 had 241.6 mm of rainfall. It was the 7th wettest month of the year so far.
All the information for above can be found here https://www2.sepa.org.uk/rainfall/
Daily Records
Just the one daily record on December 30th where South Uist recorded 30.6 mm of rainfall.
There was multiple days of flood warnings mainly around the spring tides.
Weather Warnings year to date
We had five weather warnings during the month of December. One Ice warning and 4 Snow and Ice warnings.
The total number of weather warnings to date for the year for the Western Isles stands at 31.
Yellow – 26
Amber – 0
Red – 0
A further break down of the warnings.
Wind – 14
Snow and Ice – 6
Rain – 5
Thunderstorms – 3
Wind and snow – 1
Ice – 2
The highest and low temps of the month
Stornoway 10.5C and South Uist 10.5C
Stornoway -0.7C and South Uist -1.1C
December for the UK from the Met Office
Most of the Western Isles had below the average sunshine for December with just South Uist and Barra having more sunshine then on average.
Lewis and Harris had above average rainfall for December. Uist and Barra was roughly about average
The link to the above images can be found here https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2021/2020-statistics-round-up
Thank you for reading. Feedback is always welcome.
