Dear Diary
Believe it, or believe it not diary, the recent cold spell that has just come to an end was the joint sixth longest cold spell since 1772 in Central England. The Gannt chart lists all cold spells that lasted at least 10 days, with daily mean anomalies of -4.9°C or lower. The table on the left lists all cold spells ranked using the dense ranking method. That’s based on anomalies calculated against the 1878-2021 LTALTA Long Term Average. This is usually defined as a 30 year period by the WMO.. It’s no wonder the Daily Mail was getting hot under the collar about the Met OfficeUKMO The Meteorological Office is the United Kingdom's national weather service. It is an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s response to it and I think it’s longevity caught many people out. Cold spells of that length are not that common, it might not have been as severe as some in the past, but it lasted ten days from the 8th to the 17th of December.