Here’s a picture of Corsica, where we recently spent a lovely week. This is the town of Saint-Florent, once an important port at the foot of Cap Corse (the finger of land like an antenna in NE Corsica). It was bright sunshine where we were but you can see the clouds anchored to the mountains of Cap Corse. More about Corsica later but I need to write about this summer’s weather before the SF (whose baby this weather stuff is) has apoplexy.
Every month I post an update on how the weather has been in our corner of southwest France, based on the statistics we have kept since 1998. To see the other weather posts, please click on ‘Weather’ under the Topics tab in the right-hand sidebar.
As we’ve got to the end of a quarter, I’ll include some extra statistics about this summer. It got off to an appalling start, especially in northern France, with temperatures well below normal. It didn’t rain much here in July but it wasn’t the balmy weather you would normally expect. Happily, things improved greatly from there, to the point that this was one of the best summers we’ve had in 15 years down here.
Weather assessment for July-September
A quick reminder of our subjective weather assessment: we assign each day a plus if it’s fine, a minus if it’s bad and a zero if it’s indifferent or we can’t decide. In September, there were:
Pluses – 21
Zeros – 6
Minuses – 3
The graph shows the percentage of plus days each September for the past 15 years (the line is the trend). This was one of the better Septembers, although it was a bit cool towards the end. We even put on the central heating when we got back from Corsica, since it was only 13C here. There have been 4 better Septembers, 1 the same and 9 worse.
As for the summer, we had 71 pluses, 13 zeros and only 8 minuses. This means that we had indisputably good weather 77% of the time.
Rainfall
Our rainfall stats go back to August 2004. In September we had 27 mm, less than half the average of 56.9 mm, and it rained on 7 days (6.4 average).
It was a reasonably dry three months, too. July-September we had 139 mm (average 162.2mm), although it rained on 21 days, which is the average.
For the year to date, we’re at a total of 551 mm (603 mm average), a deficit of about 9%.
October has started well with warm sunshine, although it’s chilly at night and we have the woodburner on most nights.
A footnote
This week, we had the great pleasure of meeting Judith and Bill from near Boston, Mass. One of Judith’s ancestors emigrated from Parisot to Canada in the late 17th century and she was researching what little is known of his history. We met via my blog – one of those serendipitous things that happens with blogs – and the SF and I were able to show them around Parisot and environs on Tuesday.
I’m pleased to say the weather didn’t let us down and we could stroll around in the sunshine and admire the magnificent view from the ramparts of the former castle.
Interesting how blogging can bring people together. I’ve had the good fortune to meet a number of my readers and have made a lot of virtual friends from blogging. Long may it continue.
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Life on La Lune 
Wow, your photo took me back about 35 years when I hitchhiked around Corsica with a schoolfriend. Saint-Florent was one of our favourite places. The hitchhiking came to a halt when I caught German measles, and didn’t want to spread it. Didn’t feel too ill, so we hired a little car and carried on – sometimes we were in snowy mountains in the morning and swimming in the sea later the same day! Just a lovely holiday.
I am impressed, by the way, with your orderly weather monitoring!
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Saint-Florent is nice but my favourite is probably Corte in the centre. Less picturesque but very atmospheric and redolent of Corsican culture. We love Corsica and will surely go back.
The monitoring is the work of hubby (aka the SF – the Statistics Freak). I am just the simple reporter!
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