After a few cool days at the beginning of the month, the rest of December was very unsettled, with milder, but often wet and windy conditions.

Stats published by the Met Office at Ronaldsway reveal the mean 24-hour temperature was 8.4°C which is more than a whole degree above the 91-2020 average, and the sixth warmest on record.

With often strong winds, there was only one night with an air frost, so overnight minimums were significantly above average with a mean of 6.6°C.

The coldest day was the 1st, with a peak of only 5.7°C and a minimum of -0.2°C.

Met technician Gary Salisbury said: ‘Cold air over the warmer sea helped a very active trough produce some spectacular thunderstorms off the east coast of the island on the 2nd, indeed a waterspout was observed off Douglas.

‘We were lucky to miss that, as there was significant snow in Cumbria from that event.

‘We did have some problems with black ice though, on the 3rd.’

With 148.5mm of rain collected in the gauge, the month was much wetter than the 95mm average. The wettest day was the 27th with 28.9mm measured at Ronaldsway during named storm ‘Gerrit’.

There were a number of flooding issues, especially in the north.

The mean wind speed over the month was 17.4 knots – more than two knots higher than average, and the 8th highest on record. The strongest winds were on the 9th during named storm ‘Elin’ when gusts of 56 knots (64mph) were recorded at Ronaldsway. There were five days with gales – mostly over the Christmas period.

Sunshine came to only 29.5 hours, just over half the average.

The sunniest day was the 19th with 4.9 hours.