Ascension : The Weather Report - Met Office
Submitted by The Islander (Met Office) 28.02.2013 (Article Archived on 14.03.2013)

I leave the island next week arriving back in the UK on the 6th. So with that in mind, I wanted to look back at something that happened the 6th March last year, where we had the most rainfall in a day since June 2011.

Statistics for the week ending Monday 25-Feb-13

	Max (Celsius)	Min (Celsius)	Rainfall (mm)
AIRHEAD	30.4	24.1	0.6
TRAVELLERS	30.8	23.2	0.1
RESIDENCY	26.6	19.6	1.4
GEORGETOWN	33.1	23.9	Tr
ST. HELENA	24.2	18.8	3.2
FALKLANDS	12.9	2.4	7.8
UK (Brize Norton)	9.5	-3.3	Tr

Past Week’s Weather

UK

High pressure has dominated bringing freezing temperatures and low cloud, especially along eastern coasts.  Some snow flurries mainly down the North Sea coasts during the week.

Falklands

Strong southwesterly winds at first this week with a mixture of rain and showers.  Change in the weather from Friday as high pressure developed across the Falklands, bringing low cloud, drizzle and occasional fog patches.

Ascension

A generally sunny week with plenty of long bright spells and light winds.  Some rain showers mostly during the overnight periods later in the week.

St. Helena

Showery and cloudy to start the week.  This giving way to some brighter conditions by Thursday with the pattern if dry and bright conditions continuing through into the weekend.

6^th March 2012, compiled by Cyril Cumulus

I leave the island next week arriving back in the UK on the 6^th.   So with that in mind, I wanted to look back at something that happened the 6^th March last year, where we had the most rainfall in a day since June 2011.

The day started bright enough, but soon a line of showers started moving northwest across the island.  Due to Ascension’s small size relative to the ocean, these lines of showers normally miss us, but sometimes they line up exactly across the island. 

The showers persisted from mid-morning on the 6^th and continued well into the 7^th, with over 40mm deposited on the Airhead in 36 hours leading to some minor flooding.   The same week the Residency saw about 60mm of rainfall and 30 mm fell on Georgetown.  While not on the same level as the April-June 2011 floods, it still represented a major downpour which thankfully did not prevent the airbridge from landing that evening.

March and April are the months where heavy showers and thunderstorms are most likely.  On average we see a thunderstorm on Ascension every three years.  With the last one seen in 2011, theres and increasing chance that the person writing this article next year could see one!