Frost in July

Update Thurs 9th. Overnight temperatures did dip to around 1C for a few spots in Scotland and the lowest minimum was at Katesbirdge in Co. Down with +0.3C. The July record for N.Ireland is -1.1C for Co.Tyrone in 1971

As Tuesday's low pressure moves eastwards over Scandinavia, the UK will be subjected to a cool NW wind with flow coming right down from the Arctic. It will feel cool on Wednesday, especially for N.Britain but Wednesday night and early Thursday will be chilly. Air temperatures for rural parts of Scotland, Cumbria and inland N.Ireland could dip to 3C even one or two spots down to zero. So a ground frost is possible. Its mid July, it's just wrong.

WIth the sun rising before 5am and setting around 10pm, the nights are still really quite short in N.Britain. Not much time away from the quick warming sunshine.  M.O. Climate data (1981-2014) shows an average minimum temperature for N.Scotland still at 9.4C with 0.0 days of frost as an average and only 0.1 in August. That said, temperatures did still dip below zero in mid June for Scotland and early June for N.Ireland and N.England.  The record lowest daily minimum for July in the UK was -2.5C for Powys 9 July 1986 and Inverness-shire 15 July 1977.

I was getting a bit worried for the Scottish strawberries, really getting going now with other crops.  However, Peter Thomson from Thomas Thomson soft fruit growers in Perthshire reassured me:

 "Fruit, in general, is most sensitive to frost during and just after blossom. We did have quite a lot of damage to the cherries in April, but they should be OK now. As the fruit grows, it is less sensitive. At this time of year, the frost is of short duration, and so it helps that the fruits are larger and take longer to react to the fall in temperature.”

So the strawberries should be okay and the UK will be back to a prevailing SW wind to end the week and a bit of warmth for all of us.