December began with the weather continuing the autumnal theme, where both September and November were the wettest for these months, since I recorded such data on this website. (October was pretty wet as well!). Yet this followed on from the very dry and sunniest ever summer of 2025. It’s looking extremely unlikely that we’ll have a dry December, as I sit down to create this new page at the beginning of the month, and I wonder what we can expect from the upcoming winter?

Yet already we’ve had some moody cloudscapes:

Around the garden, with the earliest bulbs only just appearing:

Berries, stem colour, and evergreen plants still lift the spirits, even on the gloomiest, wet days.

We’d registered over 200 mm rainfall in the first 10 days of the month, including Irish Met Office named Storm Bram on the 11th.

Yet no frosts, and mild enough with a few bright interludes to lift the spirits, along with helping several snowdrops begin to emerge by the 12th, as well as a rogue early Crocus in the long croquet bed. Might this be a Gelli seedling? It seems far to early to be a C. ‘Cream Beauty’, or C. Snowbunting’.

There have been a few good sightings of woodcock, and this year the starlings seem to be flying Northwest  towards King’s Cross – I must try to track them back to their other roost.

Very sadly, our star ewe lamb, ‘Lalique’ died from unknown causes (possibly acorn poisoning in this mast year), and by early December it looked as though the vigorous honey bee colony in the ‘hay shed’ hive, which had looked the most active of all 6 colonies in early November, had failed.

Daphne bholua flowers were opening by December 10th, and Cyclamen coum were just beginning to start to bloom – let’s hope they do better this year, after a slightly disappointing 2024/2025 season. We even had our first Helleborus x hybridus flowers open by the 12th.

It was a huge relief when eventually, by December 19th, the weather turned around, and we had a few drier days and a little more sunshine, even if temperatures fell a little.

This high pressure system gave us 4 glorious days of sunny weather from Christmas Eve through to the 27th, with clear skies, starry nights, and even the frosts were very mild. I can’t remember such a wonderful Christmas for weather like it, in all our time here.

The strong winds on the 24th, which meant we woke to no landline service was a minor inconvenience, in these days(for now) of functioning mobile phone reception.

The only other drama was fortunately spotting our other TV star ewe, ‘Jetfire’, cast on her back at dawn in our lower filed. I raced down in night things to right her, before the circling corvid, and disturbed, lurking fox, closed in for a kill.

Once righted, she was back to her normal relaxed self in no time.

Once again we had a good display of snowdrops ‘out’ for Christmas, along with a smattering of early daffodils, in front of the house.

The month ended with more cold grey days, before New Year’s Eve dawned clear, cold and bright, with a minus 7 temperature at dawn. Perfect conditions to allow a wonderful ice spike to form in the shallowest bird bath. A lovely way to finish the year.

Rainfall for the month was a heavy 341.4mm, which created some significant stream erosion, coming mainly from a few intense days of rain. There were still 10 dry days, and 4 frosts to minus 7 degrees C – an eventful December. The PV reading for the month of 40.74 KWH was typically low, but the figure for the whole year, 3,663 KWH, was the highest since the system was installed in 2010 – a remarkable result, given the output efficiency gradually declines with age, and a reflection of how sunny the summer was.

However despite the summer and dry spring months, the annual rainfall was still a very high 2039.30 mm. 716.36 mm fell in the first 6 months, and a shopping 1323.03 mm from July to December. No wonder the fields were so soggy by the end of the year!.

 

What mini-dramas will 2026 hold for us in the Welsh hills, as the days draw out once more?

Here are my weather records for this month, with maximum and minimum figures highlighted:

2014: 183.5mm, 6 dry days, No PV or frost records

2015: 534.5mm (our wettest monthly recorded), no dry days, no frosts, PV – 22.3 KWH

2016: 124.2mm 10 dry days, frosts not recorded 46.79 PV – KWH

2017: 222.5mm (some heavy snow) 3 dry days, no frost records, PV – 40.79 KWH

2018: 238.6 mm, 3 dry days, 1 frost record, PV – 31.85KWH

2019: 226.6mm, (light snow flurries)  8 dry days, 2 frost records PV – 51.46 KWH

2020: 346 mm (some snow) 2 dry days 2 frosts PV – 40.24 KWH

2021: 219mm, 7 dry days, 1 frost PV – 39.7 KWH

2022: 240.7mm, 12 dry days. Many hard frosts to minus 10 – No snow PV – 41.94 KWH

2023: 309.7 mm,  2 dry days 2 frosts no snow PV – 36.6 KWH

2024: 230.51 mm 5 dry days, no frosts, no snow PV –   Unavailable due to 5 day power outage from storm).

2025: 341.4mm, 10 dry days, 4 frosts to minus 7, PV – 40.74 KWH