Weather for the Year - 2012 (Published in the Raleigh Rag)
Hopefully this year has not been representative of the normal weather in Combe Raleigh ! Being our first year in the village, the weather has been rather wet and whilst not particularly cold not hot either, as you would expect in a valley from which Combe Raleigh takes its name.
With the dry spell at the beginning of the year, with January, February and March indicating a dry and the highly announced drought that was to follow for the year ! This was preceded by a very dry 18 months previously, however. From April onwards, the rain came in abundance, with well over the expected amount of rainfall falling on numerous days.
April was also the month that taught us that the water well here at The Old School needs around 100mm of rain to re-fill it after I decided it would be a good idea to empty it in March to check the state of the walls and the depth/silt levels. We then had 3 weeks of dry weather where I thought I'd wasted all my drought emergency vegetable watering supply !!
May was a month of contrasts with a wet start, tailing off to a warm and the notional summer for 2012. The Vegetable garden grew well because of this contrast, although later conditions did constrain some crops.
June, July and August just rained, lots. We have got used to wet weather in the summer, but not to this extent. That said, a number of sunny spells did appear at times which warmed up the temperatures but as can be seen from the statistics, not much to indicate summer.
September and October, more of the same !! That said, September was much dryer by volume of water, although small showers and heavy dew set in and still produced notable precipitation.
November and December, with more rain and the compounding effect of months of wet conditions, widespread flooding across the country resulted in a number of properties being damaged and flooding in the Main Street of Combe Raleigh. The main railway line from Exeter to Waterloo was also disrupted outside Honiton, resulting in rail replacement buses until the ballast was replaced. Prior to Christmas, the Cowley Bridge Junction on the Penzance to Paddington line also flooded with the loss of service, along with the Tarka Line.
2012 was notable with no significant snowfall, although a few flakes were seen in February.
The weather statistics collected over the last twelve months show some interesting values, highlighted here ;
When comparing with the Exeter Airport Long time average values (1980 - 1990), shows a much wetter and colder weather year in Combe Raleigh. Note the Yellow line denoting the monthly average of temperature always close to the long term minima temperature value.
The rainfall comparison clearly shows the first three months being very dry in comparison with the long term average at EGTE, but April makes up for all of that.
