A weekend of wild weather meant huge snowfalls and a fall in temperature to a low of minus 13.5C in Dalwhinnie in the Scottish Highlands on Saturday night, the coldest night of winter so far. Heavy snow falls in Scotland also led to widespread disruption, but the Highlands at least enjoyed outstanding skiing conditions, although there were huge traffic jams to the ski resorts in Nevis Range and Glencoe.
Much of the south of England woke up to an unexpected snowfall on Sunday morning, although a lot of the snow turned to rain later on. Snow falling in the south caught
the Met Office on the hop and it followed another embarrassing forecast on Wednesday, when it failed to name the storm that brought widespread chaos due to winds being stronger than predicted.
On Sunday torrential rain in the West Country set off flooding and landslides, which were especially bad in Combe Martin and other parts of north Devon. In marked contrast to the north, though, mild air flowing up from the southwest brought a high of 13.3C at Exeter on Sunday.
How to make sense of this month’s weather? Despite the lurches in temperature, January has so far been surprisingly mild in the southern part of the UK. It has also been wetter than the average, which must be good news for the water deficit that had built up in the southeast and East Anglia.
Last week’s weather could have been far worse; Oymyakon in Siberia recorded minus 62C and last month Moscow had its darkest December on record with six minutes of sunshine a day, rather than the average of one hour. Gloom has been cast across much of Europe as depressions sweeping off the Atlantic have shrouded skies in heavy cloud. Rouen in Normandy had 2.5 hours of sunshine during the first half of January compared with a full-month norm of 58.6 hours. This is now becoming one of the darkest winters on record in France and Belgium.