The River Alyn froze overnight: Fig 1: Some Observations on Weather in and around Buckley by Neville Dunn: PLUS a bad weather report from the Wrexham Advertiser for 1883: PLUS an article on the weather for Jubilee days by Neville Dunn"
Fellows Lane, Caergwrle
2 February 1954
JUBILEE WEATHER by Neville Dunn
July 2007
I can remember my two elder brothers, Frank and Allan, telling me as a boy that, when they attended the Buckley Jubilee with Zion Presbyterian Church, Brunswick Road, in the 1920's, the weather was always warm, sunny and dry on both the Jubilee Tuesday and the Ladies' Day following on the Wednesday.
With June 2007 being the wettest month I have recorded in 25 years and the first week in July staying cool and damp, I thought I would check from my records for the past 32 years whether the second Tuesday in July still deserved this reputation, knowing that people's memory of the weather is not infallible. The results of my analysis follows:-
Temperature
By my calculations, the minimum and maximum temperatures one can expect on an average July day in the Buckley area, even with recent global warming changes, are 12.3C (54.1F) and 21.1C (70.2F). I have always used a maximum of 21.0C (70.0F) as a mark of a warm day, 26.5C (75.0F) as a mark of a very warm day and 32.0C (90.0F) as a mark of a hot day. When I analysed the past second Tuesdays in the month since the warm, dry summer of 1976, I got an average minimum temperature for 32 years of 12.2C (53.9F) and an average maximum of 20.7C (69.2F). The averages are therefore very close to what one would expect for any July day in Buckley.
What perhaps makes the figures more interesting though are the variations over the years. In more than half of them, the day failed to reach the average temperatures and Jubilee Day in 2007 was typical of these, being cool and cloudy with a northerly wind but luckily with no rain. It broke a run of four warm, sunny Jubilee Days we have had since 2003. However, one only has to go back to Millennium Year 2000 to get a dry, sunny Jubilee Day but with everyone shivering in a strong north wind and a maximum of 14.5C (58.1F) which is what one might expect on a typical day in late April. By comparison, Jubilee Day in 1983 dawned with a cloudless sky and a gentle south wind which allowed the temperature to get up to roasting 31.0C (87.8F) which approaches the highest I have ever recorded at 33.5C (92.3F) in August 1990.
Rainfall
July is normally one of the drier months of the year unless we happen to suffer a downpour in a thunderstorm, and the average rainfall for a typical July day is only 1.6mm (1/16 inch). Since I started recorded rainfall in 1983, 14 out of the 25 Jubilee Days have been dry but the average rainfall for the 25 days is a surprising 2.9mm (1/8 inch). However, if one leaves out the Jubilee Day in the hot summer of 1995 when we had a severe thunderstorm in the early morning bringing 51.0mm (2.0 inches) out of the sky, the average falls back dramatically to a very small 0.9mm (1/30 inch) confirming Jubilee Day as being usually a dry day.
Wind
It would be very unusual to encounter a gale in July and a check on Jubilee Day winds shows that on two out of three of the days, the wind speed was no more than a light or moderate level making the walk through the streets pleasant. On only four of the 32 days was the wind strong enough to give the Jubilee banner men any problems.
One would expect the winds in July to come from the southerly half of the compass, ie anywhere between west through south to east, south easterlies coming from the Continent being particularly warm and pleasant in the summer. However, it is surprising that, on as many as 10 out of 32 Jubilee Days, the wind came from the northerly part of the compass putting a decided chill into the air. Only in the year 2000 did we have a combination of a fresh wind and a northerly direction.
Author: Dunn, Neville, 3
Tags
Year = 1954
Month = February
Day = 2
Event = Other
Landscape = Cultivated
Extra = 1950s
Copyright © 2015 The Buckley Society