UK Met Office set to declare 2011 second warmest year on record

The UK’s government run weather organisation, the Met Office, reveals provisional figures indicate the year 2011 is set to hold second place for warmth since records began.

Provisional figures produced by the UK’s Exeter-based National Weather Service, the Met Office, on December 30, 2011 show that the mean temperature for the UK during the year was 9.62 degrees Centigrade, just a smidgeon cooler than 2006, which is the warmest on record with a mean temperature of 9.73 degrees Centigrade. Met Office figures also show that 2011 had the warmest April and spring on record and that Gravesend in Kent broke the highest day-time temperature for October ever when the mercury reached a sweltering 29.9 degrees Centigrade on the first day of that month. The autumn and winter so far of 2011 have been so mild that in Bournemouth in Dorset, on the South Coast of the UK, honeysuckle, lavender, forsythia, roses and the hedgerow plant Herb Robert flowered again during November echoing the second spring experienced in other parts of the country.