ASCENSION:

Thursday morning saw a line of cloud drift across the island that gave most places a good shower or two. (though they managed to skirt past the Airhead where there were only a few spots of rain). Apart from that showers were isolated and in general the warm and sunny weather prevailed. In the second half of the week the big northwesterly swell, that has been such a feature around the coast for a long time, finally began to decay and English Bay became gentle enough to tempt your correspondent back into the water.

ST. HELENA:

St Helena had some wet weather as well last week. The headline figure being 30.6 mm. Despite that there were some good sunny spells too, working out, on average, at about 6 hours worth of bright sunshine per day. Temperature levels are ticking over at about the normal for the time of year.

UK:

UK had a spell of wet weather extending through to midweek. A slow moving trough gave a lot of rain to many places in this period. In the end the peak rating for rainfall in 24 hours was awarded to Exmouth, down in normally sunny Devon, where 35.4 mm helped to swell the rivers. The weather became drier and brighter during the weekend, warmer as well with the aid of a gentle southerly breeze. The hot spots turned out to be Gravesend in Kent, and Saunton Sands in Devon both registered 20 Celsius. The best of the sunshine was down in the south as well. The brightest place being Southsea in Hampshire with 11.5 hours of sunshine on Sunday. At the other end of the scale there were some chilly mornings too. A touch of frost occurred in the Highlands and Aberdeenshire, but the lowest temperature, -2 Celsius, turned up in North Yorkshire at Topcliffe.

FALKLANDS:

The best of the week’s temperatures came at the start, on Monday, when a northwesterly airstream was feeding relatively mild air across the Falklands. By Friday, however, it was a different story. The wind was back into the southwest, which is naturally a cooler direction. Indeed, on Friday morning the week’s lowest temperature was recorded, 0.2 Celsius, very close to giving a frost. Later on the weekend the wind was shifting again, moving into the Northnor’west this time, and persisting long enough to give a cross wind over the runway during Monday.