Spring weather in dreary April marked by rain and limited sunlight

Spring weather was far from the norm in April. The fourth month of the year was cold, wet and gloomy. The average temperature came to 8.8 degrees, while 9.9 degrees is normal for this time of the year. The total number of hours of sunshine were also considerably lower. It did rain, and heavily too, records collected by Weeronline showed.

April is normally the driest month of the year, with a national average of 41 millimeters of precipitation. However, this year, April has become the third excessively wet month, after January and March, with about 80 millimeters of rainfall on average. Most regions experienced 70 to 100 millimeters, with the wettest conditions in parts of Gelderland and the Zaanstreek region. It was driest in the north of Groningen and in parts of Limburg, receiving around 55 millimeters of rainfall.

For the third consecutive year, the temperatures in April were lower than on average. The average temperature in the previous year was 9.3 degrees, while in 2021, it was only 6.7 degrees. In De Bilt, Utrecht, it froze on five nights this month, compared to four normally.

Despite a few locally warm days towards the end of April, a warm day has not yet been officially recorded. That is where the temperature tops 20 degrees in De Bilt, considered the meteorological average for the country. This is the first time since 1997 that not a single warm day was recorded before May, with the highest temperature at the main station reaching 17.2 degrees.

In addition to being cold and wet, April saw fewer sunshine hours than usual. The sun shone for an average of 185 hours over the month, compared to 196 hours normally. For the first time since 2018, the sunshine hours dropped below 200. Coastal areas experienced the most sunshine with around 200 hours, while the southeast of the country was the gloomiest, with Eindhoven and Maastricht receiving only 170 to 175 sunshine hours.