I've recorded -10 C this morning after yesterday's minimum of -9 C and yesterday's maximum of -3 C. Quite something!
I should add again that Blackford is in a frost hollow and doesn't receive sunshine in December and we still have snow on the ground

I'm a bit disappointed that we haven't quite been able to get to minus double figures at any of the major weather systems here in Edinburgh and that is due to a number of periods during the night when the temperature went back up slightly (there's always something which spoils that here) otherwise I believe that minus double figures could have been achieved quite comfortably here.

Nevertheless, we weren't all that far away from achieving that at Edinburgh Airport where the temperature dropped to -9°C with the temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank dropping to -8.6°C (we're not all that far above that just now, so there is still an outside chance of that figure being beaten with this morning's 09z SYNOP/BUFR data which we can now safely say, will officially confirm yesterday's status as an official ice day since there is virtually no chance of the temperature at 9am this morning getting even close to yesterday's daytime maximum of -1.7°C with the forecasts predicting another ice day today as well).

Meanwhile at Swanston in the south of Edinburgh, the lowest overnight temperature which I could see from the Met Office WOW site was -6°C, and this just goes to show us the difference which being in a frost hollow such as where you are, actually makes as that is your local station.

Looking at all of this from the perspective of just the overnight minimum temperatures, I would say that this is all just in line with what we would typically expect from the coldest night of any winter. In a way, that is fairly impressive because although it is winter, we are still in the pre-Christmas period and wouldn't normally be expecting our coldest weather of the winter to come until after that (usually in January/February).

Nevertheless, there is nothing all that spectacular overall about last night here in Edinburgh, and we have done better than that, even during recent winters (that indeed happened just a couple of years ago). Nevertheless, all of the frost on its own is making everything looking white and spectacular, and it's just a shame that we had that spell of easterly muck which turned all of our falling snow back to rain which then washed away all of our lying snow.

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-11dc here overnight and still only -7dc   coldest in a loooong time. 

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Minimum at my station was -9.6C which is well above all the prone locations nearby which were typically -14 to -17 last night. It's now snowing steadily as that band moves down from the north with a temperature of -6!

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Had an ice day yesterday (how is an ice day defined btw, is it the entire 24 hour period or just 6am-6pm?) with a maxiumun temperature of -0.2C at around 1am and a daytime max of -0.5C.

Average 1 or 2 of these a year. Its a start anyway.


Edit current temp is 0.0C. So don't think its gonna be 2 in a row!
 

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Had an ice day yesterday (how is an ice day defined btw, is it the entire 24 hour period or just 6am-6pm?) with a maxiumun temperature of -0.2C at around 1am and a daytime max of -0.5C.

Average 1 or 2 of these a year. Its a start anyway.


Edit current temp is 0.0C. So don't think its gonna be 2 in a row!
 

According to the Met Office, an ice day is a day when the daily maximum temperature is below freezing at the location in question.

Each day in that definition is a 24 hour period which is the period from 09:00 UTC at the start of the day in question, to 09:00 UTC on the following morning.

Ice days are of course, most likely to occur during the winter months and so at this time of the year, that above 24 hour period is the same as 9am GMT on the morning of the day for which that ice day is recorded from, to 9am GMT on the following morning.

I would imagine that something would be seriously wrong with our climate if we ever got any ice days during the summer but if that was possible, the time period being taken to define each day would then become 10am BST on the day for which that is being observed to 10am BST on the following morning since we are always an hour ahead of both GMT and UTC during the summer months.

For any day to be an ice day, all of the periodic (which is hourly for official SYNOP/BUFR stations) temperature readings have to be below freezing and the maximum temperatures which come through with the raw SYNOP/BUFR data also have to be below freezing, especially that data which comes through at 21:00 UTC and 09:00 UTC as the actual daily maximum temperature is always the higher of those two values.

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Just about managed an ice day here. -0.2c the high. No thaw today .

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Ice day in Evesham with daytime max of -0.3c

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Looks like a Max of -5 C in Glasgow today and -3 C in Edinburgh. That's 2 consecutive ice days for both cities (assuming it stays below zero until 0900 tomorrow)

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Have now been well below zero since 1300 on the 11th December, and no sign we will get above that this week! Managed a max of -4.8C today going back down rapidly passing -8C already , ( for info bbc app, max today -1C , min tonight -4C🤣) 

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Not been above -6c here today with freezing fog………never got much above -5c here yesterday as well 

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The highest recorded temperature which I have for Edinburgh Gogarbank for today is -2.6°C but on this occasion, that doesn't give a fully accurate picture of what today's highest temperature actually was there.

For some reason, neither the 18z SYNOP data nor the 18z BUFR data contains any data for the maximum temperature, so I have had to go by the highest hourly temperature reading from after 09:00 UTC (being careful of course, not to include that 09z reading itself as that is technically, part of the previous day's data) and three of those readings are still missing.

Those missing readings are for 12z, 13z and 14z and it is possible (and very likely as well) that one of those reading might be the one which contains today's actual highest hourly temperature reading for today.

My suspicion is therefore, that today's actual maximum temperature at Edinburgh Gogarbank is probably a bit higher than -2.6°C, though not by all that much. This means that either the temperature was similar today than what it was during yesterday, or that today was actually slightly colder than yesterday (which was also an ice day).

Either way, today will probably go down as an official ice day but without me being able to know what today's maximum temperature actually is, I have no way of being able to officially confirm that. For that reason, it is very frustrating and very annoying when this type of data goes missing at the most crucial times such as this one.😡

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Third ice day on the trot in this region. What a difference it makes having a spell like this in December rather than Feb or March. 

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Third ice day on the trot in this region. What a difference it makes having a spell like this in December rather than Feb or March. 

Yes it's turned out colder then I thought it would. Been a very good cold spell and still 3 days to go could end up not far from a week of below 0 thats impressive for lowland Southern UK. -3.2C atm. 

-7c here in Nantwich, quite remarkable with no snow cover. From 37c in the Summer to some of the lowest temps is remarkable.

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-8dc here so far… 

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-9 C here overnight for 3rd night running. Still -11 C in Glasgow.

The thickness of hoar frost after 3 days is incredible and coupled with frozen slush and snow for nearly a week has given us quite a severe spell!

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In Coulsdon the temperature has been above freezing for 20 minutes total since Saturday. Pretty exceptional spell for here in temperature terms

Yes very slow to warm up here today.

-8C at 09:20am at Manchester Airport, similar at Rostherne.

A very impressive cold spell this. 
 

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Noon temperature at Stansted Airport -5c. 🥶🥶🥶

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Meanwhile, our run of ice days at Edinburgh Gogarbank has now been brought to an end as the temperature there has now gone up to +0.4°C as at 1pm GMT (13:00 UTC) this afternoon.

That is still cold though and this is only the first time since Sunday (which is three days ago as I write) that the temperature has risen to above freezing here in Edinburgh.

The rest of this week is still forecast to be cold, but it's not expected to be as cold as what it has been and so, we are probably unlikely to see any more ice days during this spell now.
 

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