Photo courtesy of Mark Vogan
Yes, you weren’t imagining it, it was cold for a late August morning throughout the UK and yes for some, you had to scrape frost off the car windscreen this morning.
It was all thanks to the departure of the latest low pressure system which crossed the UK bringing the usual wind and rain and the ushering in of much chillier air aloft from the north (see ECMWF chart below). This was the first real push of chilly air since spring with cold, backside northwest winds transporting the cold from Iceland south in the mid-levels of the atmosphere. I noticed in Stranraer yesterday morning when delivering, how chilly the wind felt. I felt like October rather than August as a stiff wind blew straight down Loch Ryan. The combination of cold, dry air aloft and clear skies and light winds produced by high pressure, this worked hand in hand at quickly releasing any daytime warmth back to space after sunset and the chillier air above was able to sink down to the surface and collect within sheltered valleys allowing temperatuers for some, to fall towards 0C. Widely, towns and cities fell to between 5-8C with outlying areas dipping to between 3-5C. The fact nights are dark for a lot longer now helps with a longer duration of overnight cooling. This all constituted to an unusually cold, record cold, late August night.
Here are some cold lows picked out by the Met Office which broke the all-time August record low for individual stations.
Braemar No 2, Aberdeenshire: -2.4 °C
Aviemore, Highlands: -1.8 °C
Redesdale Camp, Northumberland: -0.7 °C
Bainbridge, North Yorkshire: 0.5 °C
Benson, Oxfordshire: 2.1 °C
Bradford, West Yorkshire: 2.8 °C
Incidentally, the UK record for August remains intact. Set on August 21, 1973, Lagganlia in Inverness-shire fell to a winter-like -4.5C although the -2.4C recorded at Braemar was still impressive and the lowest August reading on record in this well known UK icebox..
Please not that despite this record cold, this early, this is not a sign of a cold winter ahead even though most of us wish it was.
As you can see from this ECMWF upper chart how a chilly lobe of air from the north flows down across Britain today following the departure of the last low. The cold at 850 can transfer to the surface when skies are clear, dry and winds are light. (Courtesy of ECMWF)
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