MONDAY 24th JANUARY----EVENING

UPDATE @ 1700Hrs
  A very reasonable January day, with temperatures up to 7.7 (a little ABOVE normal ) & a fair amount of dry, bright weather. The promised small amount of rain is still desperately trying to cross the high ground to the NW of us, but is mostly disintegrating & only a few spits & spots are likely to affect us.

THIS EVENING & TONIGHT
The odd patch of slight rain in the next hour or two, but becoming dry with some cloud clearances later. This is problematic for the gritters, as minimum temperatures may just dip slightly below freezing as a result.

OUTLOOK
It's still set to be a quiet week weatherwise, with no extremes on the radar .High pressure will re-assert itself to give a mainly dry week, with some cloudy spells, but also a few bright periods. Any clear spells overnight are likely to lead to a slight frost & day-time temperatures are likely to drop back somewhat as the week goes on.


CAN YOU REMEMBER THE VERY MILD JANUARY OF 1989?             Looking back through the temperature records for PITLOCHRY to which I have access, the mildest January of all was 1989. .During the 31 days of that month, the average maximum temperature was an exceptionally mild 9.5 degrees! We haven't even reached that figure once so far this month.The average minimum temperature was an impressive +3.5. Just 1 minimum this month has bettered that figure. In terms of the long- term average, January 1989 was, overall, 4.3 degrees above--- a similar POSITIVE anomaly to the NEGATIVE anomaly of the December just past. In other words, January1989 was just as exceptionally mild as December 2010 was exceptionally cold.  Somehow I think that the exceptionally COLD month will stick in the memory longer!          Just out of interest, January 2011 is likely to finish colder than average, but not by a great amount.