Nick H

And had July come in at its previous year's level rather than 1deg C below average then the annual CET would have been 10.85C - the highest CET on record. Such is life...

Philip Eden revised it upwards this morning. See other threads for discussion re this matter.

I should have added in my original post in response to WiB that I deliberately use Manley, not Hadley, in declaring that this winter has so far not been below average. Remember that Hadley is to be compared against the 1961-90 mean, regardless of the relative merits of using 1971-00. Accordingly, December was half a degree above the 1961-90 mean. You can't appeal to Hadley on the grounds of alleged Met Office officialdom and then simultaneously use a 30 year mean which the MO does not recognise as yet, which you did in your original post. Indeed. In fact the last 4 months of the year were 0.3C above average cf 1971-00. Signs of runaway global warming if you ask me......lol

The first five (sic) weeks of this winter have not been below average. Manley was 5.1C for December, rounded from 5.06C: bang on average. The first three days of January have been half a degree above average, despite this "Big Freeze" which lasted all of one day and produced unheard-of-in-English-winters maxima of 2-3C!. God help us.... To be fair SF has apologised for that, and unfortunately WiB I suspect you saw it as well.

37C on the south coast, eh? Hmmmm...... The thermometer must be in your greenhouse. Highest temperature that day was 29.7C in Lincolnshire.

If a month turns out 0.2 "below average", I believe it is classified as an "average month".

Thanks mr D, but what about 1951-80 (or would it be referenced to 1941-70)?

Quite. Furthermore, if any winter month has tended to be closer to its long term mean than the others, it is December. The greatest mild anomalies in recent years have been Jan and Feb.

Again I haven't looked at the stats but I imagine end of Feb 05/beginning of Mar 05 would have been just as cold if not colder. Also, what about the first half of Jan 03. Perhaps Mr Data knows?

You could equally say it is very impressive that despite a cold spell lasting the best part of a fortnight (and yes, it was a cold spell - we are in winter after all!), the CET is as close to average as it is. Furthermore, and I'll admit I haven't compared the stats, this cold spell has been no more remarkable than the cold spell of December 2006 which occured at a similar point in the month. Actually the first week of Dec 81 was very mild, admittedly not quite as mild as the first week of this month. More fundamentally, it was never going to be an 81 since we just aren't going to see temperatures of -15C in southern England in December anymore. Sorry, but true, at least for now.

Presumably because the earlier years which drop out of the series every year are replaced by much warmer years.

I agree. Some people are living in fantasy land on these boards. I have thought about the anomaly graph provided by WiB above. No one has yet explained how data purportedly from the same source can show apparently different trends and I thought about this last night. Am I correct in assuming that the inference WiB draws from the apparent tailing off in his graph is similar to the fallacy a person makes when viewing inflation figures? In that, say, if the inflation rate falls from 4% to 3%, this does not mean we having falling prices (deflation), but we have prices that are still rising, but at a slower rate? The more I think of it that way, the more I believe the top 10 list rather than WiB's wretched and misleading graph. Perhaps someone better versed in science than either WiB or myself can explain.

Thank you. So how does that square with the fact that every year since 2000 has been warmer than 1999? Sincere question by the way. I am just a tax consultant, I am not a scientist, still least a statistician.

1998: 0.52C (above the 1961-1990 average) 2005: 0.48C 2003: 0.46C 2002: 0.46C 2004: 0.43C 2006: 0.42C 2007 (provisional): 0.41C 2001: 0.40C 1997: 0.36C 1995: 0.28C http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7142694.stm Sorry, but how is the fact that seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since the end of 2000 (including every year since and including 2001), indicative of a cooldown since 1999? 1999 isn't even on the list!

So, to keep things in perspective, this month is certain to be considerably warmer than 2001, highly likely to be warmer than 2005 and maybe on a par - or even slightly warmer - than 2003. Meaning there will have been as many Decembers colder than this one since 2000 than there have been warmer. Overall, a very average month in terms of rainfall (which will rise next week), sunshine totals (which will fall next week) and temperature (which will rise slightly in the next week). My hunch is for the coldest December since 2005 - a fact remarkable in its unremarkability.

Thank you, John. What a shambles. I suspect most people who listened to that Michael Buerk interview would have thought the same unfortunately.

If you go right to the end of this newscast, there's an extraordinary comment by Ian McCaskill on why the London Ambulance Service wasn't informed. "Because they didn't ask us to". Christ, Ian.

Hello SF and Andrew, In 1985 alone I recorded -10C on 10 separate occasions, this is at the foot of the Chiltern Hills 150m asl, just 26 miles NW of Charing X. Rickmansworth has similar topography to my location, is just a few miles down the road and gets even colder. Other occasions include 1979 (three times), 1981 (three times), 1982 (six times), January 1987 (maximum -8C on one day, minimum -10C) :lol: And as for -5C, well that was just so unremarkable back then. Another thing I'd say is that minima tend to be more reliable at amateur sites than maxima do.

Saughall is in East Ayrshire. Not sure where you got Cheshire from. EDIT -23C in the East Midlands in Jan 1987. I suspect there are many people on here who just don't realise that temps of -10C were quite common even in southern England only two decades ago. So hard to imagine -23C being recorded anywhere near the Midlands this winter. Quite sad, really, and shows how far we've come in such a short space. Suffolk Boy December 29 2005, -13.2C Ravensworth (N Yorks), where is this figure from? Don't think it's official. -12.8C at Aviemore that morning, and the RAF stations in N Yorks recorded -8C and -9C.

The weather has been very good in recent years on Bonfire Night, I'm thinking in particular of the Saturdays rather than the 5th. It's a long time since we had a wash out.

Superb stuff Roger.

OT: Jan 1979 Chiltern Hills 162m asl 24 air frosts lowest min -10.5C on New Year's Day. 10 air frosts < minus 5C. max temp 8C on the 8th. 3 ice days lowest day max -2.3C on New Year's Day. Feb 1979 5 successive ice days (<0C continuously) in mid-month. May 4 1979 Our Blessed Margaret....etc etc

No rain fell in London on 20 Jul 2007. But there was 4 inches at Brize Norton in Oxon.

Thanks OP.

Since 1659, Warmest 1994 (10.1C) Coldest 1915 (2.8C)