This morning was cold, frosty and foggy for some northern and eastern parts of the UK. The fog and even freezing fog in the central lowlands of Scotland certainly was in the forecast but not so for the southeast of England. Most of England and Wales were expected to be under a sheet of stratocumulus cloud which would have helped to stop the frost and fog from forming.
Enthusiasts will probably know about the difficulties involved in forecasting the extent and distribution of stratocumulus. Last night was a case in point. Large holes in the cloud sheet saw patches of freezing fog develop as temperatures dipped down to -3 or -4C in a few spots. By 10am, temperatures in Redhill, a notorious cold spot, were still as low as -2C with nearby fog, and at the same time in Edinburgh we saw -1C with freezing fog and visibility of just 250m.
Anyone looking for a little bit of winter sunshine in Turkey would have had quite a shock on Friday morning. Calm conditions prevailed here and in places such as Erzurum, a sizeable city in the mountains, we saw the temperature tumble to a low of -24.2C with dense, freezing fog. On average, you wouldn’t expect it to get any colder than about -7 or -8C so it really was extremely cold. Friday afternoon saw a maximum temperature of just -12C, on average daytime temps hover around 0C.
Overnight into this morning we saw the pattern repeating although it got even colder – temperatures bottomed out at -25.8C, freezing fog had formed by dawn and visibility was no better than 3 or 400 metres. By early afternoon today the freezing fog had thinned out but it was still grey, misty and cold with temperatures around -14.5C.
Anyone really looking for some winter sun probably wouldn’t have gone to Erzurum and if they did I suspect it was a short stay. The south coast is not looking too bad, a good deal of sunshine, a few light showers and temperatures around 15C.
