After a brief flash of colour in the skies, before breakfast on New Year’s Day, the clouds returned, and January began with a run of wet windy weather which had persisted through most of December 2023, with 2 named storms ‘Gerrit’, and ‘Henk’ striking us in the space of a week.

Rainfall, particularly from ‘Henk’, which fell onto already saturated ground, caused our stream to flood in one of the worst episodes we’ve ever witnessed. 

However, the very mild December meant that we had many snowdrop cultivars already open for the new year, as well as Crocus sieberi ‘Firefly’ and Crocus tomassinianus flowers up, if not open. Even Narcissus ‘Rijnveld’s ‘Early Sensation’ had popped up for the New Year – these flowers have never before appeared so early for us.

At least we saw more sunshine and sky colour in the opening week of the New Year than we had for most of December. Finally, on January 6th, we had another frost to minus 4 degrees C, and at last, the rain stopped falling.

The cold weather, wonderful light and fabulous sky scenes continued from the 5th to the 17th, with just 3 frost-free nights, and minimal drizzle. Which allowed some wonderful outside work in the dry, hedge laying and winter-damaged tree tidying.

However, the cold weather which saw temperatures remaining below freezing for many days, limited the emergence of new blooms around the garden to the many snowdrops which had already emerged by early January. We had a light flurry of small hail towards the end of this cold snap.

Inevitably the cold weather didn’t continue, and we then enjoyed a greyer, wetter and often windier end of the month. With named Storms Isha and Jocelyn hit within a few days of each other, on the 21st and 23rd of the month.

Fortunately, apart from more heavy rain, the garden escaped significant damage.

By the end of the month, we still had 4 colonies of honey bees active, in the rare weather windows, with two of them already taking in pollen. Always a good sign.

We’d also seen a bumblebee foraging in the last week of the month, and even visiting the snowdrop flowers – a first for me.

Add in a sighting of a barn owl just after dusk, behind the back door, as well as filming a heron catching frogs in our upper pond, on January 27th, and it was an action-packed month.

In the end, we enjoyed 11 dry days, 10 frosts, 227.9 mm of rain, and a PV reading of 87.79 KWH. All in all a fairly average January weather-wise for us. Confirmed by the official Met Office statistics and maps.