UK weather: Brits freeze in coldest night of winter so far as -18C Arctic blast bites
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Brits were left chilled to the bone after a cold snap caused overnight temperatures to plummet to the lowest weather forecasters have seen this winter so far. The latest Arctic blast has left much of the UK covered in snow and ice, with pileups prompting mass cancellations at delays at major airports last week. Dozens of schools were closed across the country, more than 50 of which were in the Scottish Highlands, with other closures scattered across Aberdeenshire, Moray, Shetland and the Outer Hebrides amid weather warnings.
While some of the snow has let up in recent days, temperatures remain bitterly cold, in the low single figures and below in typically chilly areas. The Met Office has now confirmed that the mercury dipped to is lowest of the year so far in a sleepy Scottish hamlet, where lows teetered near -20C.
The agency recorded a vicious -18C ice blast in Altnaharra, in the Highlands, at around 10pm on Friday, marking the coldest January night in more than a decade. The national forecaster said the temperatures were the lowest since 2010, when the mercury dipped below -15C across the country, reaching even frostier lows of -22.3C in typically freezing Altnaharra.
The forecasters said that, while the mercury was not expected to fall much lower overnight, they could reach -19C. Village residents have already shouldered some of the coldest temperatures in the UK this year, with similar -14.5C lows recorded on Thursday night. The chill is several orders of magnitude colder than the rest of Scotland, where the mercury averages out at around 0.3C in early January.
