In many winters we have our fair share of fog and frost across the British Isles. Considering our very northerly latitude this is to be expected. However, other regions, perhaps surprisingly, much further south than our islands also encounter this sort of weather.

At the moment, much of Mexico is experiencing a nasty cold spell, with night-time temperatures as low as -12 Celsius (10F). It is rather unusual to be this cold, but blasts of air originating much further north over Canada sometimes do move down across the United States and into Mexico.

The fact that most of inland Mexico lies over 1000 metres (about 3,280 feet) above sea level does not help. The thinner air at this altitude loses its heat much more quickly once the sun goes down. With many homes having no heating the authorities are providing as many as 1250 shelters. Mexico's National Meteorological Service expects the cold weather to continue for the next few days. Indeed they forecast a widespread frost for Friday night, with a minimum temperature of -1 Celsius (30F) even in the capital, Mexico City. This may well turn out to be a record low for there in the month of December.

We perhaps don't normally associate fog with India but the north of the country has been enveloped in very poor visibility. This is actually fairly common across northern India on winter mornings. Travel is reported to have come to a virtual standstill in the national capital Delhi on Friday, with traffic moving at a snail's pace.

It was also quite cold, with Amritsar in the northern state of Punjab down to a chilly 5 Celsius (41 F), much the same as the overnight temperature in London.

Weather News from the last five days:
18/12/2003
17/12/2003
16/12/2003
15/12/2003
14/12/2003

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