The opening week or so of 2026 has already seen 30 per cent of frost hours recorded locally in an average year.

The temperature at the site in Wanstead has been -0.1C or lower for nearly 64 hours, already more than half of what was recorded here in the whole of 2020.

The mean for January is currently 1.1C, 4.1C below average. It’s also been a wet start with 28mm of rain, 53 per cent of the whole month average.

While there’s been colder starts to a year continuous data that allows this kind of analysis only stretches back to 2014 on this site.