2025: Maidenhead records sunniest year since the 1950s

As the fog and cold creeps in, weather data analysed by expert Roger Brugge shows that 2025 was the sunniest year in Maidenhead for more than 70 years.

With a total of 1,914 hours of sun, it was the sunniest year since at least 1953.

That is a good eight hours more than in 2003 – which has been shunted to the second sunniest year since ‘53.

Weather has been warmer in recent years, with 2022 being the warmest year on record in the region.

By comparison, 2025 was warm overall, only ‘slightly cooler’ than the notable 2022, says Dr Brugge, a former meteorologist at the University of Reading.

In the cold months, 2025 was light on snow.

A consistent measure in UK weather is how many days more than 50 per cent of the visible ground surface is covered by lying snow at 9am.

There were zero days when this happened in 2025, for the second consecutive year.

This is significant because hitting zero is unusual – most years see at least a few days of the ground being half-covered by snow.

There were also fewer hail events and relatively few foggy mornings.

Meanwhile, it was a dry year, with the lowest annual total of rain for 15 years, since 2010. There were fewer wet days and fewer hours of rain than recent years.

The wettest day saw only 21mm of rain, which Dr Brugge says makes it ‘the driest wettest day’ since 1990.

Dramatic wet weather was in short supply too.

Thunder occurred on only seven days across the year – the least since 2015, when there were only four days of thunder and lightning.

Last January was a ‘cool and rather wet month’, said Dr Brugge.

It was the coolest January since 2017 but had only 10 air frosts.

Air frosts are recorded when the air temperature falls below 0°C overnight at about 1.25m above the ground.

Rain and snow-wise, 2025 had the wettest January since 2021, and there were four days with snow, mostly light falls – the highest number since 2019, when there were five snowfalls.

Weather types varied a lot; there were times of very high pressure (1041.5 mb), which usually brings settled conditions such as light winds, dry weather, fog or cold nights.

But there were also periods of very low pressure (972 mb), often seen during storms, strong winds and heavy rain.

March stands out strongly as a notable month in 2025 – it was the driest March locally since 1961, and was the sunniest March on records since 1953, with seven hours more sunshine than in 2009.

By contrast, frosts were more frequent than normal, thanks to the clear skies.

Notable weather continued from April through to June, with the sunniest April since 1953 (the warmest since 2001); the joint-warmest May since 1992 at Boyn Hill, and half the typical May rainfall; and joint-warmest June on record, with two heatwaves.

August brought the driest August locally since 2003, with only about 40 per cent of normal August rainfall; and October was the ‘dullest’ since 1982, with dry but sunless days.

The end of the year, December, was the sunniest December for 11 years with no sleet or snow.