Two very mild starts to January in a row

[LetItSnow]

There were two spells of extreme mildness in both January 1998 and January 1999, occuring uncannily almost to the day.

January 1998 started extremely unsettled with flooding, gales and even tornadoes.

The night of the 7th/8th was a wild night for the south coast with widespread thunderstorms. The infamous Selsey tornado occured at 11:45pm and wrecked the town.

A remarkably mild spell followed:

9 January 1998

16.7°C at Hawarden

15.9°C at Tivington

15.0°C at Heathrow

10 January 1998

17.3°C at Prestatyn

16.2°C at Rhyl

15.7°C at Trawscoed

15.6°C at Nantmor

January 1999 similarly started off unsettled. Blustery showers became widespread on the 2nd, bringing hail and thunder to parts of South Wales and Southern England. In Euston, London, hailstones up to 15 mm in diameter were reported. Strong winds on the 3rd brought down trees in parts of Southern England, and the Whitstable lifeboat capsized in rough seas. Two people died in West Sussex and Somerset.

An extraordinarily mild flow of air on the 5th/6th brought incredibly mild temperatures but also some severe flooding in the north-west. Honister Pass in the Lake District recorded 197 mm of rainfall over 27 hours from the 4th to the 5th. Gravesend reached 16.3°C on the 6th, with 16.1°C recorded at Kensington on the 6th, and 15.7°C at the rooftop site of the London Weather Centre, marking the highest January temperatures in London since 1841.

 

Edited October 30 by LetItSnow

[MP-R]

I remember early January 1998 quite clearly, despite being very young. It was the last time we had a gale so strong that the fence panels between our house at the time and the neighbours fell down, but one. It was a thundery day on the 03rd with frequent hail and squally showers, and we had a wintry mix on the 05th. An unseasonably mild but also, weirdly, sunny weekend on the 10th, then a rather uneventful remainder of the month. It became quite blocked and chilly in the second half of the month before the springlike Feb.

Conversely, I don't remember anything specific about January 1999. The stats however suggest it was much wetter but also sunnier than 1998 overall.

[Summer8906]

I remember both of these and the similar weather conditions at the start. I also remember that both years produced the unusual (for so early in the year) combination of mild and sunny, with the 1999 instance being earlier than 1998. The 1998 case coincided with a weekend producing unseasonably mild and sunny weather on the 10th/11th; by the 11th the nights had drawn out just enough to notice (proper daylight well after 4pm) meaning there was just the slightest hint of something approaching spring in the air, the earliest I've ever had that sensation with no other year featuring it before late Jan.

I was in South Hampshire at the time and remember unseasonably vivid lightning that night to the south - it was like watching a major summer storm. Didn't come overhead. Presumably SSTs were incredibly warm following the persistently warm conditions of much of 1997, for the airmass wasn't especially cold. The wind was presumably straight W-ly, keeping the storms out to sea.

January 1998 was an odd month of two halves, for around the 18th there was a sudden switch to dry and coldish and the last two weeks featured no rain at all, IIRC. 1999 stayed mostly unsettled throughout, though the most extreme weather was at the start and there were short settled breaks at times, mostly and happily coinciding with the weekends.

Following the warmth there was a short coldish dry spell around the 10th, then a dull, dry and coldish spell around the 24th and finally a further dull and dry spell (aside from some drizzle) with average conditions at the very end of the month. The other weekend (16th/17th) was an unstable W-ly though showers were well scattered so that weekend too was usable.

Edited November 3 by Summer8906