Since the early hours of Sunday I’ve been tracking official sites around London to see how Wanstead fairs in terms of retaining cold temperatures and snow.

The results, comparing hourly obs over 62 hours, show that Wanstead was a degree cooler than St James’s Park, half a degree cooler than Heathrow and marginally cooler than Northholt. Only Kenley, with its whopping 170m of altitude, was cooler.

While half a degree doesn’t sound much it can make all the difference, as we saw at the weekend when some areas recorded inches of snow while others barely a centimetre.

Though the snow has pretty much vanished now it was evident yesterday that the area was far more wintry neighbouring Forest Gate, Leyton and Stratford which had pretty much lost all their cover.

A report on the snow event can be found here.

* For anyone who has a fascination for the weather and whether their back garden in the Counties Estate is colder than their mate’s in the Warren Estate I notice that weather stations are now even cheaper and you don’t need to connect to the net via a dedicated PC. A unit from Ventus (the W830) allows you to connect to the amateur weather network Wunderground. The internet dealer Weatherspares has them on offer. (NB. I am not on commission but would be happy to offer anyone advice who wants to buy and set one up.)