So far the lowest temperature ever recorded in the UK is in Scotland. This is -27.2 degrees Celsius, and this exact temperature has been reached just three times since records began. The first time was in Braemar in Aberdeenshire in Northern Scotland in 1895, on 11 February. In exactly the same place the exact same temperature was recorded almost 100 years later, on 10 January 1982. Then, again in the north of Scotland, this time in the Highlands in Altnaharra, once again a temperature of -27.2 was reached on 30 December 1995.
England has only once come close to beating this record, with a low of a minimum daily temperature of -26.1 in Newport (in Shropshire in the West Midlands) again in the very cold winter of 1982, on the same day that Braemar reached its record low again (11 February); while the lowest figure for Wales is -23.3 in 1940, and Northern Ireland has stayed quite mild with a record of -18.7.
Scotland generally has lower temperatures than the rest of the UK, though if you look at maximum daily temperatures in summer, Northern Ireland is actually lower than Scotland, with England much the highest (the highest known temperature for England was 38.5 on 10 August 2003, with Scotland reaching just under 33 and Northern Ireland just under 30). It also tends to get longer winters and heavier snowfall.
If you look at the list of the Top 10 lowest temperatures ever recorded in the UK, you will see that 8 out of the 10 lowest are in Scotland, with two in the English Midlands (this is a slightly different way of recording from the maximum or minimum daily temperatures; however, the -27.2 record for Braemar is the same. Perhaps surprisingly, there are no record-breaking records for the North of England, even for the areas near the Scottish border – it’s further north that the Scottish temperatures tend to fall so low. Generally both Wales and Northern Ireland have relatively mild climates, though the mountain areas of Wales especially can be very snowy.
Although some of the temperatures mentioned here are very dramatic, as it happens none of them took place during the UK’s most severe winters. It’s long periods of cold that makes a winter memorable, rather than occasionally very cold days. Two examples of very cold winters, even though no temperature records were broken, are in 1947 and 1963. In 1947 it snowed in different places (not everywhere all the time, of course) for almost two month, and in some places the snowdrifts were 7 meters deep. People got stuck in their houses and had to be dug out, food supplies were cut off and there were a number of deaths from the conditions. The average minimum temperature over the country, however, was -2.7 which of course is a lot higher than the record low.
The winter of 1963 was even worse, and years later people were still talking about it. This was the worst winter since 1740, and was unusual in starting as early as December (in most of the UK the really cold weather doesn’t usually start till after Christmas). Heavy snowfall started around Christmas, ending in a huge snowstorm just before New Year that left 6m drifts in many places. Snow continued to fall often until March, with the winter sun not strong enough to melt it so that it seemed to stay for ever. Rivers froze, and in places even sea water developed freezing patches.
Recent reports suggest that the winter of 2013 could also be one of the coldest for a long time, but hopefully not as bad as 1963.