October weather records: Temperatures nearly hit 30C in 2011

October is a notoriously wet and windy month, but just how extreme has it ever been?

So far, the start of October is looking rather split in terms of the weather, with more unsettled conditions likely in the north and west, whilst high pressure attempts to keep things drier in the south and east.

Temperature wise it looks to be a bit of a see-saw between above average and below average temperatures. The start of the month was fairly warm, with temperatures reaching 20C over the weekend.

20.2C was recorded at Merryfield, Somerset on Saturday October 1st, but how does that compare to the warmest day ever recorded in October? Let's take a look at the extremes across the board.

Whilst the Great Storm of 1987 was a notoriously bad storm, it wasn't responsible for producing the highest wind gusts ever recorded in the UK, though it was close with gusts of 115mph at Shoreham.

So whilst October is notoriously stormy, there have been some impressive temperature records in there too. Keep an eye out for the latest weather forecasts for the rest of the month, to find out if we could be seeing any extremes.