Average daytime temperatures in Reading range from about 13 ºC during the first ten days of April to 15 ºC at the end of the month. Night minimum temperatures slowly rise from about 4.5 ºC at the start of the month to about 6.5 ºC at the end of the month. The average temperature for the month is 9.7 ºC. The highest April temperature on record at London Road during 1908-1967 was 26.2 ºC on 16 April 1949 (the second of three days which reached 23 ºC). At the slightly cooler Whiteknights site a temperature of 26.7 ºC was reached on 19 April 2018. The lowest air temperature recorded in April is -4.2 ºC on 2 April 1922 while -3.4 ºC on 7 April 2013 was the fifth air frost within the first week of that month. Ground frosts can occur on any night in April, and on occasions can be sharp. The lowest grass minimum temperature recorded during the month was -12.5 ºC on 9 April 2003 (following -12.3 ºC on the 8th). April 1917 (average temperature 6.3 ºC) was the coldest April on record while 2011 (13.0 ºC) was the warmest. April is air frost-free in about two years in nine. However, in 1968 there were nine mornings with air frost, with 12 such mornings in 1917.
The monthly mean rainfall for April in Reading amounts to 49 mm, with over half of that amount falling on a single day in some years. Only a small amount of this falls as snow. The wettest April was in 2000 (133 mm) while in 1912 only 0.8 mm fell (in 2007 0.9 mm fell). The two wettest days in April in the period 1908-2014 were 30.6 mm on 29 April 1991 (which fell in about 19.5 hours) and 37.3 mm on 25 April 1908.
The duration of bright sunshine in April averages out at about 170 hours with typically 2 or 3 days being sunless. In 2020 the sunshine total was 250 h, with just 77 h being observed in 1966. On average there are 1.8 days in April that record 12 hours or more of sunshine.
During 1968-2020 there were 23 April months without any snowfall. Many falls of sleet or snow tend to be slight in April and snowfall in April is tending to become less prevalent. In the Aprils of 1970 and 1975 there were seven days with snowfall, nine days having snowfall in April 1917. Nowadays lying snow (covering more than half the ground) rarely occurs on more than one morning in April; since 1968 lying snow has only been reported in 1989 and 2008 - 6 cm depth on 6 April 2008 and 1 cm depth on 5 April 1989. Thunder is heard on average on one day each year in April while fog at 0900 GMT is seen on average on about two mornings in each ten years. The greatest wind gust on record during April is one of 52 knots (27 m/s) on 1 April 1994.
All averages refer to the period 1991-2020 unless otherwise stated.
Statistics last updated 1 August 2022.