YOUR Top 10 worst temps of 2012

[Yorkshire Kris]

No Stephens temps are fine for most Frost hardy plants and certainly most commonly grown palms. Not bad at all Stephen.

[outatime1978]

I dont have 10 recorded,but the two coldest nights so far end of jan got a -6.4C and a -6.1c for a few hours during the night on the 6th of feb,other than that its been floating between -0.3c and -3c.Had -0.3 last night.

[Nigel]

No Stephens temps are fine for most Frost hardy plants and certainly most commonly grown palms. Not bad at all Stephen.

Kris even yours shouldnt be a problem if the cold is over now.

[Yorkshire Kris]

No Stephens temps are fine for most Frost hardy plants and certainly most commonly grown palms. Not bad at all Stephen.

Kris even yours shouldn't be a problem if the cold is over now.

Yes mine are not majorly low "just" -7.0 but there have been a lot of sub zero nights. This is the first year I have recorded temps everyday. I'm guessing its usually like this.

[stephenprudence]

Just one more night (tonight) of potentially hard frosts (or maybe two for the southeast corner), then it's back to something much better.

Tonight there could be -7 to -10C in some part where snow is lying. Here it could get down to -3C to -4C but that's not too bad.

Nigel, I had suspected -10C on a few days because they seemed to similar to last year.. but it seems it was the snow that was catalyst for last year record breaking temperature, maybe also the amount of cold nights, and some ice days that had gone before it.

This year I have avoided ice days every day of the winter, which is normal.. the closest I came was in December actually... yesterdays high was 2.2C in the end, which was alittle surprising.

[GoggleboxUK]

-5.1
-4.8
-3.0
-2.8
-2.7
-2.5
-2.3
-2.3
-1.6
-1.0

I thought it had been -10 at your place every night the last week. Its actually been not so bad at all.

Stephen tends to post very bleak predicitions ofwhat he expects the temperatures will drop to, in the last week he's predicted -8 and a couple of -7s, but these often turn out to be far less damaging temperatures.

I think the term is 'cold ramping'

[Nigel]

Stephen tends to post very bleak predicitions ofwhat he expects the temperatures will drop to, in the last week he's predicted -8 and a couple of -7s, but these often turn out to be far less damaging temperatures.

I think the term is 'cold ramping'

I think its more a case of old head with too much rubbish inside who has seen it all before vs young super bright head full of knowledge trying to analyse all the data.
Stephen I know very well has a knowledge of weather which dwarfs mine , but I have looked at those silly charts for so long I have seen it all before, I am no expert but a 9 day pressure panel tells all you need to know . If you have an established weather pattern then it can only get as cold as it did before under similar circumstances.
The last 3 years was a new weather pattern with new territory and I think that needs to be set aside for when that weather pattern re-emerges, its an error to assume those temps can re-occur with an old established weather pattern.

Even in Holland, these temps are not mostly new records , they have been reached before for that type of weather event,and if a record was breached I would guess not by much.

I like Stephens input , I hope he keeps it up, his input is very valuable and gives much more dimension than mine.

[GoggleboxUK]

Don't get me wrong Nigel, I also value Stephen's input greatly. He's been almost singlehandedly responsible for opening my eyes to how much we need to look at the weather in order to garden as we do more successfully.

I just think he has an element of being a 'glass half empty' kind of forecaster sometimes, noting down that -10 could happen and neglecting to observe that -2 could equally also happen.

[Nigel]

noting down that -10 could happen and neglecting to observe that -2 could equally also happen.

yeah but in fairness... how many times do the BBC say -2 and its -10, better to be worst case scenario and put everybody on alert. When you have slack high pressure and cold air in mid winter its very hard to get it right because its all about where the cloud cover is with those radiational freezes.

[Conifers]

Yeah, almost every day for the last couple of weeks, our local weather (radio newcastle) has been forecasting nightly frosts down to -4 to -8, but about 2/3 of the nights, no frost at all, and the frosty nights, not below -3.

[GoggleboxUK]

I'm not sure I want a worst case scenario every single day though, I'd give up on exotics if there wasn't some optimism there.

I'm fortunate to be one of the lucky few this year who have constantly had better temperatures than predicted by the BBC.

I've bubblewrappedwrapped pots and fleeced palms on 3 seperate occassions this year and, in reality, it has all been a complete waste of time as the worst I've seen has been an hour at -5c.

If only weather forecasting was something that could be calculated like a maths equation, one answer with no variance and 100% accuracy. Never gonna happen though.

[stephenprudence]

Talking behind my back pfft

Well if you must know I guess my half empty glass approach is a worst case scenario. Not meaning to be negative.. just if I say -2C and it's -10C, well I'd be flamed!

For example if you want a forecast from experience.. Goggle, you will only get around 0 to -1C tonight. Here with the cloud clearing around dawn time, around -2 to -3C ish, nothing especially problematic.

Further southeast however assuming cloud levels do remain clear then -7C to -10C seems likely over snow fields.. this might seem negative but I'd say this was realistic... negatively I could say someone might see a -15C over a snowfield, well it might happen but it's not very likely.

Note Benson airbase has seen snow falling and settling overnight, so the lowest temperature is odds on to be there.

ps a cold ramper is someone who loves snow and cold..

[eddie]

Well, according to the official weatherstation I moved to zone 7a this winter at -16C
And we had a - 14C
a -12 C
a few -7C nights, including last night

Coming two nights will be a bit colder, maybe -10 or lower again
Clear and sunny now at - 4C

Lowest I've recorded (untill this winter) since i started with my weatherstation was last year's -6.8C at one very cold clear night. It can't get much worse I believe, since we nearly broke the all-time low record in Holland.

I'm so hoping for record breaking heatwaves whole summer long

[Nigel]

Lowest I've recorded (untill this winter) since i started with my weatherstation was last year's -6.8C at one very cold clear night. It can't get much worse I believe, since we nearly broke the all-time low record in Holland.

I'm so hoping for record breaking heatwaves whole summer long

I think it was about as bad as it could be for Holland, so close to all time records is probably right.
If this weather was repeated in July/August it would for sure be close to record all time high heatwave.

[GoggleboxUK]

Talking behind my back pfft

That's nothing, you should see what is written about you on the toilet wall!



Yes, I appreciate that being optimistic in weather forecasting puts you right in the firing line, fair point.

What I appreciate most about your posts though are the detailed reasons and information as to why the weather is like it is. You don't get that on TV to the same depth and the BBC weather site is just numbers to glance at really.