End of winter countdown: Two days until spring!

Winter has flown by pretty quietly, and somehow spring is already in sight.

Meteorological winter ends on February 28th and meteorological spring begins on March 1st. Of course astronomical winter still goes on a little longer, until March 20th, but we're focusing on the positives here.

Winter as a whole has been largely above-average in terms of temperatures, with the exception of our December cold spell. Because of this short but sharp blast, December was below-average overall, though January and February have very much made up for that.

December's weather was largely blocked, meaning low pressure system's were kept at bay while cold air stagnated. We saw a prolonged cold and snowy spell across southern England in particular, though it feels like a distant memory now.

The rest of January and February stayed on the settled side too. In fact, parts of southern England have been drier throughout the month of February, than they were all summer.

It was predominantly mild too, with temperatures regularly reaching into the double figures, even 16C or 17C at times, which is unseasonably warm for February.

Of course the end of winter was made interesting by the occurrence of the Sudden Stratospheric Warming event, but we're still awaiting the potential impacts from that, due to its lag effect. For now, we're just glad its coming into springtime.