If you thought it was safe to put away your woolly hats and scarves when daffodils started appearing last month, this weekend proved you wrong.
Last night was very cold and led to winter wonderland scenes in some areas England this morning – with snow in Dorset and Wiltshire and freezing fog nearby London.
One of the most impressive sights from today’s cold weather is of a single red deer stag looking at the camera in Windsor Great Park this morning, with the grassy background covered in frost.
Nearby on the Long Walk to the famous castle, three joggers can be seen disappearing into a looming cloak of fog, with the silhouettes of bare tree branches on either side.
Further west, snow covered the ground in Dorset and Wiltshire.
There were Christmas card scenes at Stourhead, Palladian house and landscape garden run by the National Trust near Mere, Wiltshire.
Meanwhile the roofs of famous Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset, also had a dusting of snow.
This comes after a record-breaking rainy February that was also the warmest for both England and Wales.
Provisional Met Office data indicates the average temperature in England was 7.5°C, surpassing the previous record of 7.0°C set in 1990. Wales experienced an average mean temperature of 6.9°C for the month, slightly ahead of the 1998 record of 6.8°C.
The UK as a whole had its second warmest February, averaging 6.3°C, but did not exceed the 6.8°C from February 1998. The UK’s 10 warmest Februarys since 1884 now include 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2019.
Yellow warnings were issued from 6am until 10am yesterday Saturday morning for Gloucester, Worcester and parts of Wiltshire, in part because snow was expected where the M4 and M5 meet.
Temperatures in the west of the UK were just above freezing on Friday night and the Met Office said four to five centimetres of snow fell around Bristol.
Met Office forecaster Simon Partridge said: ‘We often do get some snow in March – it’s the old adage that it is more likely to snow in Easter than it is in Christmas, and there is a bit of truth to that.’
He said the morning’s snowfall shows ‘the unsettled weather is continuing’ after last month’s washout.
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