Britain facing one of the coldest winters in 100 years
Baku, December 22 (AZERTAC). Britain is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16 degrees Celsius, forecasters have warned. They predicted no let up in the freezing snap until at least mid-January, with snow, ice and severe frosts dominating. And the likelihood is that the second half of the month will be even colder. Weather patterns were more like those in the late 1970s, experts said, while Met Office figures released on Monday are expected to show that the country is experiencing the coldest winter for up to 25 years.
On New Year`s Day 10 extreme weather warnings were in place, with heavy snow expected in northern England and Scotland. Despite New Year celebrations passing off mostly unaffected by the weather, drivers in parts of the country were warned not to travel unless absolutely necessary.
Considerable amounts of “showery snow” are expected over Scotland and eastern England over the coming days, whilst the rest of the United Kingdom would remains dry but very cold.
The temperatures in the Scottish highlands could dip to minus 16 degrees while even southern areas of England could see lows of minus 7. The cold weather comes despite the Met Office`s long range forecast, published, in October, of a mild winter. That followed its earlier inaccurate prediction of a “barbecue summer”, which then saw heavy rainfall and the wettest July for almost 100 years. Matt Dobson, forecaster for MeteoGroup, the Press Association`s weather division, said last month had been the coldest December for 13 years. “It has been the coldest December on average since 1996,” he said. “The second half of the month was very cold indeed but the first half was relatively mild. If it had been colder in the first few weeks we would have seen more records broken.”
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