January 4th, 1999

The new year at Ackworth began with some mild, wet weather and it is interesting to see what might have been expected by looking back at previous years.

1998 started with similar temperatures to the present ones but there were gales which brought down a mature beech tree in the grounds and a number of other trees locally. The three years before 1998, 1997 to 1995, all began with more frosty conditions and some snow showers during the first week of the year. In fact, in 1997 we woke up on New Year's Day to several inches of newly fallen, powdery snow. This produced a covering which lasted for about 10 days. 1994 had a mild start and in 1993 we began the year with frosts, followed by gales a few days later.

So, it seems that, here at Ackworth, a typical start to the year would be a week with some frost and snow showers and a reasonable chance of gales at some point. The chance of us having a 'white' new year appears to be small and has been around 1 in 7 recently.

There was one interesting wildlife sighting to start the year. On New Year's Day, the school caretaker reported seeing a fox on Back Lane during the morning. It was daylight when he saw the fox and he watched it go into an area known as  'Tibby's Lawn', which is just a little higher up the Lane than 'Lamb's Lawn' and the Battery.

Otherwise, the grounds are fairly quiet at the moment. In previous years, a number of fieldfares and redwings have been moving around at this time and their calls have been a familiar sound but, this year, fieldfare numbers have declined after the initial influx and I have not seen them in any significant numbers for a week or two. Redwings have been unusually hard to find this year and I have not seen any in the grounds for a while, although there are small numbers of them in other local areas.