The Met Office has issued weather highlights for September, as well as a round-up of summer on the islands.
It said that summer days in Malta and Gozo were brightened by an average of 305.5 hours each month.
The summer’s highest temperature of 35.7°C was reached in July, and the lowest of 18.1°C was recorded in September, the Met Office said.
363.6 hours of sunshine made July the brightest summer month, while September only recorded 223.5 sunshine hours making it the dullest.
September was also duller than the climate norm, falling 30.6 sunshine hours short of the quota for this time of year. The Met Office also noted a heavier-than-usual mean cloud cover of 3.3 oktas can partly explain this shortage.
There wasn’t much rain in September either, in fact a mere 4.1 mm of precipitation, against the norm of 58.1 mm.
However, last month was still wetter than September 1943, which holds the record for the driest September with no rain whatsoever measured.
August was the summer’s wettest month with around 76% of precipitation for the whole season, which was 70 mm.
Thunder was heard on 10 days during summer and MIA said that according to the meteorological records, two of these thunder occurrences were observed in June, three were observed in September, and five were observed in August.
Despite the rain and the thunder, August was the calmest summer month, with the wind speed averaging at 6.9 knots. On the other hand, the windiest month was June, with wind speed blowing up to an average of 9.4 knots.
Photograph by Alain Salvary