“The River Lea is now firmly frozen, and the Thames so much encumbered with ice that navigation is scarcely practible.”

Saturday (January 12) represents the 199th anniversary of this event noted by Luke Howard in “The Climate of London” – a pioneering book on the study of urban climate, which contained continuous daily observations on temperature, rainfall and wind direction. Temperatures the following week of the severe winter of 1813/14 at his laboratory in Plaistow, just a few miles from here, are hard to imagine by today’s standards in the capital – the average maximum being -2.2C, with night temperatures falling to an average -7.8C.

There has been much talk of severe weather arriving from this weekend onwards, with some chatrooms on the web ramping up rumours of a repeat of the severe winter of 1947. Whilst it is going to turn cold, with the possibility of snow increasing from early Sunday onwards, it is far too early to make predictions of a repeat of the famous ’47 winter which did not really get going until well into the second half of January. Indeed, records from Camden Square show that this week in 1947 would be remarkably mild – with a mean maximum of 10C while nights were a mild average of 5C.

So what has the next seven days got in store? With confidence in weather forecasting models at an unprecedentedly low level it is hard to pin down exact values on temperatures and weather much beyond Sunday. At the time of writing we can expect maximums to gradually creep downwards through the period – giving an average of 2C by the week’s end. Minimums are forecast to average -1C – so plenty of frost around. It currently looks like any precipitation on Saturday will start as rain before turning wintry. There is the chance this will turn to snow by Sunday morning to give a covering. Far more snow looks likely from Monday onwards. As said there is much uncertainty so keep a very close eye on output from the Met Office if you are planning on travelling.

The past week has seen much dull, cloudy and quiet weather, influenced by high pressure on the near continent. I often find this to be the worst possible winter weather as nothing much seems to happen. A bonus it did bring, however, was a break at last from all the rain.

Mean temp: 9.1C; Mean min 7.8C, Mean max 10.5C,

lowest min 5.9C(5th), highest max 11.7C (3rd), total rain 2.7mm