Met Office Forecasts 27C at Kinlochewe, North Scotland - In The Middle Of Winter!

They’ve also claimed that a provisional new UK maximum temperature record of 19.6C has been set at the same location. Which is news to me. I’m about 250 miles south of Kinlochewe, in the same southerly airflow and I can tell you it was very cold and blustery out walking the dogs today. I came back frozen. The BBC claims that the extraordinarily high temperature in Kinlochewe (which beat the previous UK January record by over 1C) was ‘partly’ due to the Foehn Effect, but also due to warm winds blowing all the way from the Sahara. Well they must have got warmer on their way to Scotland is all I can say!

A new UK record high temperature has been set in the Scottish Highlands, according to provisional figures from the Met Office.

It recorded a peak of 19.6C (67.3F) at Kinlochewe on Sunday, making it hotter than Rome and the Cote d'Azur.

If confirmed it would be the highest January temperature in the UK, breaking a record set in 2003 by more than a full degree celsius.

It would also be the highest winter temperature ever recorded in Scotland.

The temperature in Kinlochewe was significantly higher than the 18.3C (65F) recorded at Aboyne, Aberdeenshire, on 3 January 2003.

BBC Scotland forecaster and meteorologist Calum MacColl said the balmy weather was due in part to something known as the Foehn effect.

He explained: "The Foehn effect is where, within a stable atmospheric environment, air is forced to rise up and over the hills and mountains, before descending back towards the surface on the leeward or downwind side of the mountains.

"On the windward side on the mountains, the air is mild and moist, but will cool by around 0.6 degree Celsius per 100m as it rises up the hill side. However, as the air mass then reaches the tops of the hills, it then descends and in doing so will dry out and subsequently warm by 1 degree Celsius per 100m.

"This results in higher temperatures being recorded on the downwind side compared with the windward side on the mountains."

He said southerly winds were also drawing up a very mild air mass across Scotland, leading to unusually warm conditions.

But even if it did reach 19.6C in Kinlochewe (and we don’t discover that the thermometer was sited next to the air exchange unit of the local takeaway, or whatever), this still leaves the utterly absurd forecast of 27C to explain. How could the Met Office have forecast a maximum temperature in Kinlochewe, today, just hours in advance, which exceeded the UK January record by almost nine degrees Celsius and which actually exceeded the observed temperature by nearly 7.5C? It doesn’t make sense. What was the forecaster smoking?

Of course, the ‘climate crisis’ mob will no doubt have a field day with this news, even though this new ‘UK record’ is very highly localised and almost certainly due to the Foehn Effect, having nothing whatsoever to do with climate change.