The cold end to February

Monday night saw a widespread frost with overnight lows of -3.9c in Northumberland and Co. Down, -1.7c in Carmarthenshire and -4.6c in the Scottish Borders. Coastal areas and the SE of Britain weren’t as cold. More of the UK will see sub zeros temperatures in the coming nights.

By night, at this time of year, you would expect temperatures of +2 or +3C for Gt London and around the southern and western coasts.The hills and mountains of northern Britain show in blue with average temps of -2 to -5C and much of England, Wales and N.Ireland staying just above freezing. (data from Met Office)

The Netweather MR model shows temperatures on Wednesday night and early Thursday widely below zero

So more frost, ice where moisture remains although most days will be dry and a real winter nip in the air. It is February so we should expect the cold, but so far this winter there has been a lot of mild weather about, the flowers all got confused in January for a time. Not far away after Monday 29th February, the 1^st of March marks the beginning of meteorological Spring. That looks cold too.

Thickness charts below show the cold air is coming down from the north, starting with the NW flow of snow showers Tuesday onwards and perhaps seeing a more NE flow by the weekend.

Remember that the 528DAM line on the Thickness chart is rough rule of thumb for forecasting snow to fall from showers. So more of the UK will be under the 528 line by the weekend, although most areas stay dry, so don't get excited if you want to use your sledge and you're not in northern Scotland.

The coldest temperature ever recorded in the UK was in February 1895 on the 11^th (repeated 10^th Jan 1982) at -27.2C Braemar, NE Scotland. Bedfordshire saw -20.6C in 1947 during a very chilly Feb., Powys down to -20C in Feb 1954 and Co. Armagh fell to -15C also in the bitter Feb. of 1895. So we’re not looking at these kind of exceptional temperatures, as we don’t have a long cold bitter winter as a background. The earth still has some warmth in it from the milder winter and there isn’t the snow cover. But it will still be a change to have a chilly, settled often sunny spell of weather.

By day in February you could expect temperatures of 7 to 9C for much of England and Wales and N.Ireland, 4 to 7C for Scotland, 3 or 4C inland.(M.O.)

Gradually, the milder air disappears from the far south with daytime temperatures of only 5C and 2C for Scotland. You would expect the coldest temperatures to be earlier in the month and for the last bit of Feb to see some of the temperatures lifting, with the average being across the whole month. That is not the case for February 2016.