The Weather
The British love talking about the weather. Mainly because it is so hard to predict with any accuracy. I get my weather forecasts from three different providers and then work on using the average of all of them. If you are looking for the forecast for today, tomorrow or the day after then you have a good chance of being fairly close. Anything beyond that and it's all guesswork. However I have been caught out more than once when a fine day turned into a freezing downpour. As the saying goes there is no bad weather just bad clothing.
What can we say about the weather other than its unpredictable? Looking back at historic weather records we can see how the averages for the months worked out and use that to make long term plans. If you know that you are working on a new development and you will need photographs for the planning application in December then get them taken in August or September when the weather is nice. If you wait for December when the deadline is approaching you will have to make do with whatever is available and hope that it's not raining.
If the time frame is "We need them this week" then it's much harder to pick a nice day to take them on. With more warning you can have a much nicer set of photographs, with nice light and fine weather.
Looking at the historic data from Heathrow between 1967 and 2016 we can extract some interesting information such as the minimum and maximum temperature each month or the number of days with frost. These numbers aren't really that surprising, the average rainfall per month throughout the year is between 39.4mm and 61.3mm averaging between 1.4mm and 2.0mm per day.
| Monthly Rainfall | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum | 10.3mm | 2.4mm | 5.7mm | 2.4mm | 4.1mm | 6.1mm | 6.9mm | 0.3mm | 3.1mm | 1.6mm | 8.2mm | 8.9mm |
| Average | 55.6mm | 39.4mm | 41.8mm | 43.1mm | 48.1mm | 49.2mm | 47.4mm | 53.3mm | 50.8mm | 61.3mm | 61.0mm | 56.2mm |
| Maximum | 162.4mm | 100.4mm | 95.3mm | 101.5mm | 102.1mm | 127.7mm | 115.2mm | 150.3mm | 140.0mm | 174.8mm | 151.2mm | 119.3mm |
| Daily average | 1.8mm | 1.4mm | 1.4mm | 1.4mm | 1.6mm | 1.6mm | 1.5mm | 1.7mm | 1.7mm | 2.0mm | 2.0mm | 1.8mm |
Interested in learning more?
If you've looked through my site and have any questions, I'd be glad to help you. You can contact me on my mobile on 07801 103635 or send me an E-mail and I will get back to you as soon as I can.