February brought an end to meteorological winter but March has started on a cold note.
It certainly has been a very cold start to March. Most news bulletins about the weather have started off stating that Wednesday was the coldest day of the year. However, in our case that isn’t true as that particular record is still held by 22 January 2023 when the temperature fell to -5.9°C or 21.4°F. The temperature on Wednesday fell to -3.4°C or 25.9°F. Since then in the early hours of Saturday morning, the temperature fell to -3.6°C or 25.5°F.
Looking back at my records since 2010 it’s not all that unusual for us to have a cold spell during March. I’ve listed the lowest temperatures in the table.
There had been the threat of snow showers or more prolonged periods of snow in the forecast from the beginning of the week. By Tuesday we were in an amber alert area of possible heavy snow during Thursday and early on Friday. We had snow showers for most of Thursday but the snow didn’t begin to settle until it began to get dark on Thursday evening. By Friday morning we had accumulated about 75mm or 3in of snow which is unusual for us.
There’s a short video here of our snowfall I took on Friday morning.
By Saturday, this March has started as one of the coldest I’ve recorded since 2010. There are only fractions of a degree between the three coldest starts to March by the 11th of the month. They are shown in the chart below.
The coldest start was in 2010 when the average temperature by this stage of the month was 3.0°C followed by 2018 and 2023 with an average of 3.2°C. However, looking at that purple line for 2018 there is no doubt that produced the coldest start to March I’ve recorded.
The forecast is for next week to be a little bit milder, well at least some days are forecast to be around average for the time of year. Our mildest day of the year is still 10 January when the temperature reached 13.3°C. Needless to say gardening of any sort has been on hold this week.
