Daytime temperatures in October were generally close to average, or slightly above. The east of the country was generally cooler than normal, while the west was generally warmer. The weekend of 9^th-10^th was very mild, with the nationwide daytime temperature averaging nearly 4° C above the average. The coolest spell was the 18^th-21^st. The 1999 UK temperature is about 1° C above the long-term average (see Graph) and a mild November and December will likely lead to the warmest year yet recorded in the UK, beating the previous record of 1990.

October was only the second month in the last 14 months where rainfall totals in the UK have been below the average. After a very wet start to the month, very little rain fell in Britain between the 5^th and 20^th, before the rain returned during the last 10 days. The distribution of rainfall was quite uneven with some locations (Birmingham, Skegness) recording more than 50 per cent above average and others (Exmouth, Kinloss) recording more than 50 per cent below average. Lerwick was the wettest location monitored here in absolute terms, recording 144mm of rainfall.

The sequence of sunny months in the UK continued in October and the nationwide average was 20 per cent above normal. Most of this excess sunshine was recorded during the dry spell between the 5^th and 20^th. Only Scotland missed out on this autumn sunshine, but elsewhere sunshine totals were up to 30 or 40 per cent above average. Bristol, for example, recorded an average of nearly 5 hours per day compared to an average October sunshine rate of about 3 hours per day. Lerwick was not only the coldest and wettest location monitored here - it was also the cloudiest.

Dr Mike Hulme is a Research Climatologist at the University of East Anglia

(more details at web site: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~mikeh/)

Daytime Temperature: 0.2°C above average; Rainfall: 9% below average; Sunshine: 18% above average.

[all average figures are based on the 1951-80 average]

Mean monthly extremes:

Warmest Guernsey 16.8°C

Sunniest Folkestone 173 hours sun

Wettest Lerwick 144mm

Coldest Lerwick 10.7°C

Cloudiest Lerwick 63 hours sun

Driest Exmouth 27mm