Every time I went online in January, I would find a headline promising an extreme cold snap in the UK which never materialised. I’ve grown tired and cynical of these headlines and given that the latest met office data shows that January 2018 was completely unremarkable, I think I am justified in this attitude!The meteorological year starts in December which is why December appears as the 1st data point in the charts below. More information on the layout of the charts can be found in this post. Points lying between the upper and lower deciles are shown as open black circles, points lying between the decile and minimum/maximum are shown as solid black circles and any month with a new record is shown as solid black squares.
Every chart has an open circle for each of the 6 measures indicating that January was another unremarkable month. Given all the news headlines about mega cold snaps coming our way which never materialise, I can’t help but think the media have run out of stories to print. There may well have been regional variations but where I live in the South West, I never felt the weather was unusual in any way.