Retrospectives
February 2008 -a gloriously sunny month
By half way through the month the sunshine totals across the UK were very high indeed. In fact it was already sunnier than an average February for England and Wales. Also, it was already sunnier during the first half of February (across England and Wales) than the second half of the wet month of June 2007 and the first half of July 2007, quite a remarkable statistic. However with clear skies in February comes fog by night, and some freezing temperatures . In fact Topcliffe saw as low as -9C on the 18th and Dishforth (Yorks) only rose to -2.9C on the 19th giving some areas one of their coldest February days for 20 years or more. The fog was thick enough also in places for freezing precipitation to fall from it and up to 2cm of this icy/snow like feature collected and was reported in places in the Midlands and north.
However by the months end it was clear that February would be remembered as a dry and very sunny month with some local sunshine records for February being broken, especially across part of eastern England, East Anglia, Southeast England and parts of the Midlands where some sites recorded more than twice the long-term average. London, Birmingham and Nottingham for example all broke their February sunshine records.









