A Pleasantly Warm Day In March!
By Paul Homewood
We’re already three months into the year, and the BBC/Met Office look like they’ll be struggling to find much to fill their inevitable “Britain’s Wild Weather” programme at the end of the year.
No doubt though, they’ll resort to the pleasantly warm day we had this week , even though it was two degrees fahrenheit colder than another March day in 1968!
One eagle eyed observer though has pointed out that Kew Gardens is not exactly the sort of pristine site where you would want to measure temperatures:
As he rightly comments, Kew, along with Heathrow, regularly appear at the top of temperature rankings. I wonder why?
Of course, at the end of the day it was just another weather event. And particularly at this time of year, timing is an important factor. If this weather had occurred a week or two earlier, temperatures would likely have been a degree lower. Equally if it had happened two days later, it would have just been an unexceptional April day.
Looking back through the archives, we have had similar spells of warm weather in March, in addition to the record set in March 1968. For instance, in 1929 temperatures hit 77F (25.0C), which was higher than this week:
March 1948 saw a temperature of 75F (23.9C), remarkable because it occurred so early in the month:
March 1965 also recorded a hotter day than this year with 25.0C at Wakefield. The report also notes the large swing in temperatures during the month, from cold at the start to very warm at the end:
https://digital.nmla.metoffice.gov.uk/SO_7498a04d-6a40-4207-a27f-772663ffd2fc/
CET figures for March have not been updated on ECADS for this year yet, but comparison of maximum temperatures for March each year show that they are not on the rise. However, as I often like to point out, extremely cold days and nights appear to be less frequent, Beasts from the East excepting!
https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php?0m4jaj4nnnehujgk2qlblrkahr
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
March 1938…
Reading through Charles Lindbergh’s Wartime Journals, 1970, pages 11-12, he wrote this just outside London on Sunday April 3rd, 1938, 83 years ago… “Wonderful weather since we landed last month. Was beginning to become enthusiastic about the weather in England until Anne read in the morning’s Observer that it was the warmest March for 150 years.”
And in 2012… Accuweather.com wrote…
,
What’s Causing All the Warm Weather?
March 25, 2012; 7:59 AM
“First, the warm winter. Now, an unbelievably warm March. The question on everyone’s mind lately seems to be, “What’s going on?”
What’s going on? It’s a climate emergency!…an existential crisis, and we need to act soon?
…
According to The Times’ “Weather Eye” today “this freakishly hot spell may simply be a vagary of the British climate. More significant, though, is there have been seven new records for monthly high temperatures for the UK over the past 20 years, and yet no record low monthly temperatures over the same period.” It then continues to discuss Japan’s cherry blossom peaking on March 26, the earliest date since records began 1200 years ago.
Did we not have a record low temperature at some stage last summer? Or was that Europe?
As I commented before, nearly all the places near the March record were airports. Exclude those & other known dodgy sites, the temperature probably maxed nearer 21C.
The farmer was moaning on BBC Climate Propaganda File about the grass not growing and the cold late spring which seems at odds with the facts. His farm is in the Cotswolds so the CET is going to be pretty close to the mark.
March 2021 was joint 45th warmest out of 363 years in the CET, about 1.5C warmer than the baseline, as was February.
So maybe the length of the growing season (increasing because of rising temperatures we are told in the UK) is not a simple function of mean temperatures – well there’s a surprise!
Met Office monthly summary, they managed to scrape some ‘record’ hot stats for some places.
Paul, St James Park is a different meteo station than Kew Gardens! However it is certainly true that the UHI effect of London means that all the four London stations will usually show higher temperatures than outside. It’s usually 3 of 4c higher than here in Romford.
I don’t know where the Kew station is, I will look next time I go.It’s probably close to the river in which case the humidity will add a little to the figure and the wind speed will certainly be lower.The prevailing wind at Kew is directly from Heathrow, 6 miles distance and the gardens are directly under the flight path for most arrivals.
I am a butterfly bore and I use the Pearl bordered fritillary as a climate signpost. My main standard site is Eyarth Rocks in North Wales which is about 200 meters above sea level in the Vale of Clwyd. The larval stage is mostly in the spring and development is weather dependent . In cool , overcast weather, the larva is not encouraged to feed and grow because the ground level temperature is low. In sunny but cold springs, the ground level temperature can be elevated above the ambient by the radiative heating of sunlight. The upshot is that the flight time of this species , is perfectly timed. In this case , it is not the absolute temperature which defines activity but a combination of temperature and received sunlight and it is sunlight which affects the flora more than temperature. Last year was cool but sunny, remember ! The flight began around the 5th May. This year ,after a winter more like 2010, I predict a flight time of mid-May. but in the ten years I have observed this site, flight times have not consistently advanced as might be expected if we were experiencing damaging climate change !
In the early days of “global warming” I read that the science predicted because if increased co2 average temps would increase due to less cold extremes in winter, especially night time temps. Extreme Summer highs would be less frequent . Is this still the case?
It seemed like a good thing to me. Have the doom mongers changed their predictions as the original ones were beneficial.
I vividly remember that day in March 1968. As a management trainee, I had been sentenced to four weeks in Birkenhead – in those days the equivalent of being lashed over the canon. But there I was, walking down what seemed to be their main street, shirt sleeves rolled up, tie off, sweating cobs. No one worried about it being the harbinger of global warming in those days – the fear was of the approaching ice age, so that day was considered an anomaly in our steady progress to ice-covered doom. Mind you, in those days, Birkenhead under a kilometre of ice was not such a bad idea.
It’ll all be forgotten next week.
I see snow showers for early on Easter Monday for my Wunderground forecast.
My magnolias are just coming to life and they got hammered last year by the heavy April frosts.
If you have Google Earth (not Google Maps), check out the 09/2008 aerial photograph of ST James Park. The entire station is blanketed in the shadow of some trees. Prune (or fell) the trees and “Voila!” – global warming!
Kew Met Station is here . . . 51.481934, -0.294326
Or here (if you prefer) https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4820632,-0.2947211,2a,41.5y,110.17h,89.57t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sJG9Bz95-slKN5Bm7X79RiQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192