The daily weather log

May had five rain days (usually only three) but they came very late. The highest rainfall reading, 19.6 mm on the 23rd, ended a 35-day dry spell. Before the rain, the air had become extremely dry. The morning Dew Point on the 17th was -9.3° and the daily minimum temperature on the 15th -2.8°: both were 13-year record low values for May. The daily temperature range reached 24.9° on the 18th.
With the rain came cloudy, cold days. The 30th, with a maximum of only 11.1°, was the coldest May day in this record. It was nearly two degrees below the previous coldest: 12.9° on 29/5/00.

 Comparing May months

Mean temperatures were a little below average. There were 11 frosts, compared with the usual six.
After sunny April, May was back to the extreme cloudiness of the last three years. The air was not humid at all, however. The mean Dew Point was only slightly higher than in the droughty May of 2006.
The rainfall of 43.2 mm is on the 64th percentile for May, and just above the long-term May average (39.3 mm). May rainfalls have been low (or very low) for a number of years: this was the wettest May since 1998 (74 mm). Rainfall totals for groups of months (up to 360 months) continue to be near normal.

Data. Rainfall data is from Manilla Post Office, courtesy of Phil Pinch. Temperatures, including subsoil at 750 mm, and other data are from 3 Monash Street, Manilla.