LAST year may have been little better than average in the self-proclaimed “sunniest place in the British Isles”, but Jersey still comfortably retained its title.
Figures for 2024 from Jersey Met and the bureau’s UK counterparts have shown that the Island had almost 330 more hours of sunshine – around 54 minutes per day – than the next sunniest place in the British Isles, Preston in Dorset.
Official Jersey Met data showed a total figure of 2,127.9 hours of sunshine was recorded at Maison St Louis in St Helier across the whole of last year.
This was almost 300 hours short of the Island’s all-time record, set in 2022, and just 1.2% above the average figure of 2,092.3 seen between 1991 and 2020.
Guernsey has ranked second on the “sunniest” scale several times in recent years, but this year’s Sarnian tally of 1,793.8 was almost 100 hours behind the 30-year average, and seven hours behind Preston, a small coastal village near Weymouth.
Other locations at the top end of the UK charts were Bournemouth, the Essex port of Shoeburyness, Manston in Kent, Slapton in Devon, the Suffolk village of Wattisham and Tenby in south-west Wales.
While Jersey’s 2024 figures for sunshine and rainfall were close to average, it was the Island’s seventh-hottest year on record, with an overall temperature of 12.94°C being above the 30-year average mark of 12.39°C.
The data showed an even bigger difference between the overnight minimum reading and the long-term average.
Paul Aked, Jersey Met’s head of meteorology, said: “The daily maximum temperatures for 2024 were, on average, 0.32°C higher than the long-term average. However, the night-time minimums were 0.81°C above the long-term average. It is in this detail that you can see the impacts that warmer nights are having, contributing to the overall annual temperature being the seventh-warmest on record.
“Along with temperature rise, for every degree our atmosphere warms, the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture. As a result, we should be prepared for the potential to see more extreme weather events as our temperature rises.”
Jersey’s weather boast stemmed from a slogan used in tourism marketing. Initially the strapline referred to the “warmest place” in the British Isles but this was changed after a spat between Jersey and the Scilly Isles in 2011, when the archipelago off the coast of Cornwall disputed the claim.
