Sunday, April 21, 2019
It's a cracking Easter weekend, weatherwise - very warm and sunny across the UK. But how unusual is that?
To help find out, here's a table summarising the weather over the last 50 Easter weekends.
The temperature shown is the highest temperature recorded anywhere in the UK across the four-day bank holiday weekend.
For example, in 1969 the highest temperature was 21°C at Gatwick Airport on Easter Monday. This temperature appears in the second column because Easter Day was Sunday 6th April.
| Highest Easter weekend temperature |
| | 23-31 Mar | 1-8 Apr | 9-16 Apr | 17-24 Apr | summary |
| 1969 | | 21°C | | | very sunny |
| 1970 | 13°C | | | | unsettled |
| 1971 | | | 18°C | | dry, fine |
| 1972 | | 19°C | | | mild, wet |
| 1973 | | | | 14°C | mixed, cool |
| 1974 | | | 18°C | | mostly fine |
| 1975 | 10°C | | | | cold, sunny |
| 1976 | | | | 21°C | mostly fine |
| 1977 | | | 12°C | | wintry, snow |
| 1978 | 15°C | | | | cold, windy |
| 1979 | | | 23°C | | warm, dry |
| 1980 | | 17°C | | | fair |
| 1981 | | | | 18°C | went downhill |
| 1982 | | | 14°C | | cold, bright |
| 1983 | | 11°C | | | wintry, snow |
| 1984 | | | | 26°C | very warm |
| 1985 | | 17°C | | | unsettled, dull |
| 1986 | 13°C | | | | showery, chilly |
| 1987 | | | | 24°C | went downhill |
| 1988 | | 17°C | | | indifferent |
| 1989 | 19°C | | | | improving |
| 1990 | | | 13°C | | unsettled |
| 1991 | 18°C | | | | went downhill |
| 1992 | | | | 20°C | warm, dry |
| 1993 | | | 16°C | | mixed |
| 1994 | | 13°C | | | wet, windy |
| 1995 | | | 19°C | | went downhill |
| 1996 | | 17°C | | | mixed |
| 1997 | 18°C | | | | improving |
| 1998 | | | 12°C | | wintry showers |
| 1999 | | 19°C | | | warm, dull |
| 2000 | | | | 18°C | wet |
| 2001 | | | 15°C | | cold wind |
| 2002 | 18°C | | | | went downhill |
| 2003 | | | | 25°C | went downhill |
| 2004 | | | 18°C | | average |
| 2005 | 18°C | | | | very dull |
| 2006 | | | 17°C | | mixed |
| 2007 | | 20°C | | | dry, sunny |
| 2008 | 11°C | | | | wintry |
| 2009 | | | 20°C | | mixed |
| 2010 | | 15°C | | | dull, cool |
| 2011 | | | | 28°C | very warm |
| 2012 | | 16°C | | | very dull |
| 2013 | 9°C | | | | very cold |
| 2014 | | | | 21°C | very sunny |
| 2015 | | 21°C | | | improving |
| 2016 | 15°C | | | | wet, windy |
| 2017 | | | 15°C | | mostly dry |
| 2018 | | 14°C | | | unsettled |
| 2019 | | | | 26°C | very warm |
The data comes from a splendidly geeky webpage, now defunct, but captured forever within the Wayback Machine archive. It has full summaries of weather across the Easter weekend between 1959-1989 here, and 1990-2014 here, which you should read if you're after considerably more detail.
It's important to note that the weather often changes dramatically across the Easter weekend, so the highest temperature on one day may not reflect the temperature on the others. For example in 1970 the maximum temperature of 13°C occured on Easter Monday in Suffolk, whereas the highest temperature on the Saturday in London was only 6°C.
Also a high temperature in one part of the country doesn't necessarily mean it was similarly warm everywhere. For example in 1979 the maximum temperature of 23°C occurred on Easter Sunday in London, but Manchester only reached 13°C on the same day.
Also temperature doesn't tell the whole story, so it could have been a mild Easter but also miserably wet. For example Easter Monday in 1973 was plagued by thunderstorms and hail, and London saw over an inch of rain across the Sunday and Monday combined.
That said, the following obvious conclusions jump out...
» Easter tends to be coldest when it's in March
» Easter tends to be warmest when it's in the second half of April
» The two coldest Easters were both in March
» The five warmest Easters were all in the second half of April
But...
» An early Easter is not always cold
» A late Easter is not always warm
» An early Easter (26th March 1989) can be warmer than a late Easter (23rd April 2000)
Also, before anyone gets over-excited...
» A random snapshot of over-specific data proves nothing about global warming
» The Church isn't going to change the date of Easter just because Britons would like better weather
As an aside, I like how the table shows that Easter never appears in the same column two years running. That's because the gap between consecutive Easters can only be 50, 51, 54 or 55 weeks, never 52 or 53.
The worst Easter of the last 50 years is undoubtedly 2013, when a cold east wind pegged temperatures down to 4-6°C in many places and Braemar recorded a record-breaking low of -12½°C on Easter Sunday. Other notably poor Easters include 1994, 2008 and 2012, while more recently in 2016 Easter Monday was blighted by Storm Katie.
The best Easters were probably 1969 (dry, fine and very sunny, except on the east coast), 1984 (fine, warm and sunny), 2007 (dry, sunny and mostly warm), and especially 2011 (whose top temperature of 28°C was the warmest since 1949). We won't top that at Easter 2019, but four days of wall-to-wall sunshine and temperatures in the mid-twenties might just be as good as Easter ever gets.
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