By Mike Trigger

October was much milder and much wetter than average.

Weather patterns in October were changeable leading to an unsettled month overall. The first half of the month saw short lived ridges of higher pressure develop in between Atlantic weather systems driven by winds from a mostly south-westerly point. During the second half of the month a series of pressure centres developed to the Southwest of the UK. These produced southerly winds which were unusually warm although there were also frequent spells of rain which were at times heavy and thundery.

In terms of statistics:

The average temperature for the month was between 14.5 Celsius, that's about 2 degrees above the 30 year average. The highest temperature occurred at the start of the month with top values around 21 Celsius in the Teignmouth area on the 1st and Dawlish area on the 2nd. Due to "warm" southerly winds the day and night temperatures from the 19th were unusually high. The coldest night of the month was on the 11th when temperatures fell to around 5 or 6 Celsius in most places but to 2 or 3 Celsius in some of the valleys and to just above freezing in Netherton. In fact the temperature at Exeter airport did fall below freezing on the 11th so it is possible that some sheltered parts of this district had a ground frost.

Rainfall totals were typically between 120 and 150mm which was above the October average of 90 to 100mm. The wettest day was the 23rd when 30mm to 40mm occurred during a particularly thundery spell. Typically, October has roughly equal numbers of dry and "rain" days (defined as days with 1mm or more of rainfall). This month, however, there were 17 to 21 rain days across the district and between 5 and 8 dry ones. There were 3 or 4 days with at least 10mm of rain recorded in 1 or 2 days with 20mm or more.

Sunshine was estimated at around 110 hours which is close to the average.

The sea temperature at the Dawlish wave buoy has been steady at 16 Celsius for most of October.