From a meteorological perspective, January’s weather is interesting. We can see everything this month, ranging from thunderstorms, right through to warm, sunny days, the latter always reminding one of why living in the Mediterranean is so good. By Maltese standards, January is one of our coldest months, with average day-time temperatures of 15C, going up to 18C on a good day and average night time temperatures of 9C, going as low as 5C sometimes. By Northern European standards, this feels warm but tourists beware, it can feel much colder than the pure numbers suggest, because of strong winds coming directly off the sea and high humidity.
Still, having said that, we will see an average of 5.5 hours per day of sunshine and 95 mm of rain. Compare all this to Manchester in the UK, having an average daytime temperature of 6C, night time of 1C, 89 mm of rain and 1 hour of sunshine.
What is good about Maltese weather is that if storms come, they generally will not last more than a few hours, so one should never have to wait long for a break in the weather. The storms can also make for some spectacular views of the coast as the waves of a stormy sea crash against the rocky coast.
Weather watch is brought to us by our regular weatherman Tony Muscat who runs his own monitoring station, it-Temp, in Mellieha in Malta’s north.
Photo: Courtesy of Leslie Vella.