There should be some real egg on faces today in the media over yesterdays silly reporting of Thursday night being 'the coldest of 2017'.

The hype and hysteria generated by such tosh should have shamed those who initially created the story and then 'sold' it to the media. It certainly wasn't sat-on by the UK Met Office and no doubt it fitted with there 'public outreach remit of which they seem to be pushing at every opportunity at the present time.

I guess at a time of austerity and the threat of their funding being cut, it's what you would expect them to do.

But there's been no hype today about how last night WASN'T the coldest of 2017. In fact the Guardian reports it was 'one of the coldest nights of 2017'. Is that like being slightly pregnant? Surely it was either The coldest or not?

In fact, the temperature of -12.3C recorded in the well known cold spot in the Scottish Highlands, Loch Glascarnoch was not the coldest of the year.

More remarkably that accolade remains with RAF Shawbury on the low lying Shropshire Plain during the night of 11th December. Snow was on the ground and the long, clear night allowed the thermometer to fall to -13.0C (see map below).

Interestingly, Shawbury is a stones throw from the Harper Adams Agricultural College where an overnight temperature of -26.1C was record on the morning of 10th January 1982.