The Polar airmass meant another very cold day on Wednesday. The thermometer struggled to get to -1.7C by 13.00, shortly after which the temperature usually begins to drop again in our current conditions and did. However, just after 14.00 I noticed that after falling for almost an hour the thermometer began to rise again to reach the giddy heights of -0.6C, which was 8.7C below the long-term average. Even so, that made it the coldest day since 1st February 2018 when the temperature did not get above -2.0C.
With clear skies overnight and no cloud blanket to provide a duvet to minimise loss of warmth up into the atmosphere, the thermometer sank to -6.3C at 02.09 on Thursday and stayed there as at 08.00 on Thursday the thermometer still read -6.2C.
Thursday dawned with a totally clear sky with the promise of weak winter sunshine later in the morning. The humidity of 92% was the lowest this month and the lowest since 11th November.
Not surprisingly, the intense cold has penetrated the ground so that at 08.00 on Thursday morning the ground temperature at a depth of 5cm was -3.1C. This was the lowest ground temperature at that time since 21st January 2017 (-3.3C)
Update at 09.00: temperature dropped to -6.9C.