April was cooler than average but brought very little rain

April brought warmer spring days to the Maltese Islands, as the average air temperature increased by 3.4°C over March.

However, at 15.8°C, last month’s average air temperature was still 0.6°C below the climate norm for April, while the mean sea surface temperature was 0.3°C lower than the expected 16.3°C.

The month’s maximum air temperature peaked at 24.6°C on April 25, while the lowest temperature was recorded on April 19 at 8.4°C.

Sunshine

Despite having accounted for April’s lowest temperature, the 19th day was also the month’s sunniest, during which 12.4 hours of sunshine were recorded. But no sunshine hours were clocked on April 15, 16 and 28, as a combination of dust in suspension and high levels of humidity gave rise to hazy weather.

While April’s mean cloud cover was perfectly in line with the norm of 3.6 oktas, the sunshine hours measured during the month failed to measure up to the monthly quota of 252.9 hours.

This can be partly explained by the presence of dust in suspension on several occasions, resulting from the advection of large amounts of dust and sand towards the central Mediterranean due to depressions over Northern Africa, which generally occur in...