"Trevor Harley" wrote in message
news:2010010909044916807-taharley@dundeeacuk...
The temperature rose to the giddy heights of +0.4 just after midnight,
bringing to and end 80 hours of continuous frost - by far the longest such
stretch I've recorded here, although I see from my records there must have
been a longer period in Leamington at the end of January 1995.

Given the averageness of my station, there must be many longer stretches
of frost recorded elsewhere. Anyone beat 80 hours?

Looking in the wider context, this must be far from extraordinary.
Presumably there were spells in 1929, 1947, 1954, 1963, 1986, 1987, and
1995 that produced longer periods of continuous frost. From my own pages I
note that Widdybank Fell in County Durham stayed beneath freezing all of
February 1986, and recorded 32 frost days. This seems excessive to me, and
I'm not sure it's right.

I'm not sure what the longest stretch in "lowland Britain" is, but must
have been in one of those months.

Trevor
http://www.personal.dundee.ac.uk/~taharley/


Currently at 77 hours of continuous sub zero temp's in Wishaw (the longest
of this winter so far) .I thought it mind end earlier this afternoon but the
mercury only reached -0.2ºC.
Perhaps more interestingly, thus far in January the temperature has only
been above zero for 5 hours and 25 minutes here;
5 hours on the 2nd
5 minutes on the 5th
20 minutes on the 6th.

There's been many frosts exceeding 80 hours here, even in the more recent
past, the last three being;
86 hours 18th - 22nd December, 2007.
126.5 hours 25th - 31st December, 2000
136 hours 24th - 31st December, 1995.

The longest I can find locally was 7 days (160hours +) Jan 5th - Jan12th
1982.

Alex.
Wishaw, Central Lowlands.