Met Office marks the weather highlights of the year

The past year saw April being one of the driest months in the past 84 years and July being slightly cooler and less humid than in the past 57 years, according to a 2008 review by the Meteorological Office.

The rain in April, the Met Office said, was a good 7.3 mm below average. The wettest April since 1922 was in 1994 when 118.4 mm of rain drenched the Maltese Islands.

The Met Office said that February was characterised by a lower than normal minimum temperature. An extreme minimum temperature of 5.2 degrees Celsius was recorded at Malta International Airport on February 18 although there were even colder days in previous years.

July was slightly cooler and less humid than in the past 57 years. The warmest day was the 8th when the thermometer reached 35 degrees Celsius. But the warmest July days ever recorded since 1951 were in 1988 when temperatures of 42.7 degrees Celsius were reached. Humidity was slightly lower than the norm of 68 percent recorded since 1951.

The Met Office said that August was characterised by dry, cooler days but warmer nights while September was wet but slightly warmer.

A total of 88 mm of rain fell at Luqa Airport in September, well over the past 30-year September average of 55.4 mm.

October, on the other hand, was cooler but drier with the days being 0.4 degrees Celsius cooler than the recorded average in the past 30 years.

A total of 60.6 mm of rain fell at Luqa Airport, less than the 30-year October mean of 72.5 mm. The wettest October on record was that of 1951 with 476.5 mm and the driest was that of 1923 with 1 mm of rain.

The Met Office described November as thundery and windy with nine days of thunderstorms, accompanied by hail on November 18.

But this year’s weather highlight was the hail storm of December 27, which covered Valletta in a thick sheet of white. This hail was attributed to sub-zero temperatures at lower atmospheric altitudes which did not allow the rapid melting of the ice.

The Met Office said global temperatures remained about 0.3 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average.

At the same time, last year saw global temperatures a shade below preceding years. However, globally the 2008 still ranked among the 10 warmest years on record. At 14.3 degrees Celsius, the global average temperature for 2008 was significantly above the 14 degrees Celsius average for the 1961-1990 period, which is a commonly used climatological baseline.