At dawn on Monday we had our coldest temperature of autumn. It was the first time the temperature had fallen below 0°C or 32°F since the beginning of May this year.

It was a beautiful sunny start to the day with a clear blue sky. The water in the birdbath had frozen overnight.

I just added some fresh water onto the top of the ice as I didn’t think it warranted topping up with warm water.

For the record the temperature fell down to -0.3°C or 31.5°F.

I did have a quick check on the thermometer in the greenhouse which had a low temperature of -0.2°C not much different to outside.

However, the forecast for Saturday looks particularly bad with the possibility of some heavy snow.

• Forecast from tameteo.com

In my opinion, the weather models are notoriously bad at forecasting snow. Green indicates snow and yellow heavy snow and we’re almost under the yellow area. However, Saturday is a long way off as far as forecasting goes so there’s plenty of time for them to come up with something better.