After waking to a surprise covering of snow on Tuesday, from a passing shower just before dawn, the thermometer struggled to climb to a maximum of 4.7C at 13.36 even though we enjoyed many hours of sunshine that lasted through to the afternoon. This high was 2.4C below my long-term average and outside it felt a couple of degrees cooler than indicated on a thermometer due to wind chill. It was a dry day and the UV light gave a value of 0.6 on the sensor.
The past night saw the thermometer slowly fall away to a low of -2.7C at 05.41 early Wednesday being a significant 4.0C below average.
Wednesday after first light revealed a sky with total cloud cover that had allowed the temperature to make an about turn, after the early clear skies, to rise a little to -2.2C by 08.00.
Two warm fronts are lurking over Brittany being associated with a new depression over Biscay. The centre of the low will move eastwards over France and during the daytime the fronts will ease northwards towards Southern England with possible precipitation alert in the day or evening. This low has meant the wind backing from the west yesterday to east today and then probably northeast later in the day so another very cold day ahead.
The soil temperature at a depth of 5cm read 0.7C at 08.00 due to the nighttime frost and still some lingering snow in the shade from the sunshine on Tuesday.
There are signs that the Jet Stream will move north of the UK on Saturday. This change in direction will begin to cut off the flow of cold air from the north, the UK then being on the slightly warmer, southern side, which will mean temperatures recovering to near normal for January from Sunday.
