A record breaking amount of rain fell over Keswick in October – more than twice the monthly average of 189mm.
Throughout the month a staggering 441mm of rain was collected, significantly more than the previous largest total of 356mm in 1998, writes The Keswick Reminder’s weather watcher Lorna G Holden.
The first week of the month was very unsettled as a wall of heavy rain pushed eastward across the UK on Saturday 2nd giving 27mm of rain to Keswick.
Further relentless rainfall with accumulations of 66mm saw the river and lake levels surge perilously close to their limits on Tuesday 5th.
The water levels receded as we moved through the middle portion of the front with only occasional, mainly light, rain or showers punctuated by ten predominantly dry days.
However, the towns’ flood defences were put to a stern test during the last full week of October when 258mm of rain fell, a sizeable proportion of this, 122mm, falling during Wednesday 27th into Thursday 28th courtesy of a slow-moving active weather front anchored over the north west of Britain.
It was during this exceptionally wet period that 441mm of rain was collected. There was no incidence of overnight air frost but on Saturday 16th the mercury dipped to 0.5 Celsius.
Overnight temperatures more typically were a few degrees milder than the October normal night low of 6.7 Celsius, averaging out at 8.9C.
Daytime maximums were a little cooler than average at 12.4 Celsius, the October normal is 13.3C.
