Could we go all winter without snow?
NOTHING SO FAR, BUT POSSIBLY NEXT WEEK...
THIS winter could be Leicestershire’s first in living memory with no snow.
In his 61 years as Leicester Mercury weatherman, Dave Mutton has never known there to be a winter without any snowfall – though last winter was also a remarkable one for the lack of wintriness.
He said: “Last winter there were only three days of snow – which was the least I’d ever seen before.
“It snowed a little on January 28, 29 and 30 last year but it only settled for a few minutes and there was hardly any depth at all.
“This winter we’ve had none at all so far and January 2020 was the hottest since January 1921.”
However, he said he was reluctant to write the winter off quite yet.
He said: “We’ve got through December and January with no snow, but there’s a depression coming in that will bring heavy rain and strong winds this weekend and that could be followed by some cold weather early next week.”
In Leicestershire, the average temperature in December was 5.3C –1.3C above the usual temperature for the past 40 years.
In January the average was 6C, 2.3C above normal.
The February average for the first four days was 8.2C, 4.4C above the norm.
Dave said the climate was changing.
He said: “We obviously have ups and downs in history but what we’re doing to the atmosphere with all the stuff we’re pumping into it is not helping.
“When you look at the fires in Australia, the monsoons in the Philippines and the unusually dry weather in India, it does make you think.
REMEMBER THIS? Bradgate Park, 2018
“A lot of it is the jet stream moving and that’s being caused by humans.”
Met Office spokesman Grahame Madge confirmed that areas of the UK had seen no snow this winter and that temperatures were steadily rising.
He said: “It certainly has been relatively mild and there haven’t been many incidences of snowfall in the UK this winter and none in Leicestershire.
“There’s the potential for some next week – we’ve got colder air moving in – so I don’t want to say it’s not going to happen.
“We know UK winters have warmed by about a degree since the 1960s and that’s consistent with climate change, although the weather is still subject to large variations, so we have seen record low temperatures recorded at times – during the Beast from the East in 2018, for example.”
Despite the potential for snow next week, the BBC Weather website only expects temperatures to dip to 2C early next week, with no signs of snow. Its long-term forecast runs to February 18, with no snow on the horizon.
The Met Office, which only forecasts as far as Tuesday next week, expects temperatures to drop only as far as 3C by then.
A weather warning for this weekend’s storms has been issued by the Met Office for the whole of the UK.
As well as heavy rain, the wind is expected to reach up to 60mph in Leicestershire tomorrow.
■ Dave Mutton’s memories, Pages 34 & 35