Happy new year to everyone.
This Met Office chart above is a great way to view how the temperatures varied each month through 2018. It shows the cold anomalies in February and March, in association with the "Beast from the East,the very warm early summer and also the very mild December."
Looking further afield, most places had a warmer than average year, notably so in parts of Turkey. However, parts of Iberia and Morocco were slightly colder than normal as you can see in the Prescient Weather graphic on our summary page.
The big question everyone is asking is, will the remainder of the winter stay on the mild side, or do we expect some cold snaps?
Looking ahead to January and February, it does indeed look like the weather patterns will change to bring waves of below and well below average temperatures across most of Europe. However, this change will take several weeks to materialise.
So for early January, we begin with some air frosts and chilly days; variable cloud cover will mean some locations do well for sunshine whereas other places remain overcast. This quiet weather is typical when we have high pressure (anticyclone) over the country, and at the moment it's sitting across Wales.
An Atlantic low pressure system is due to cross northern Scotland during Monday and Tuesday 7-8 January, bringing some gales and unsettled weather, then it looks like the high pressure will return again with near average temperatures and fairly benign weather.
We are expecting the weather to turn gradually colder for the second part of the month and there is a risk of some very cold spells of weather to arrive. There is a moderate risk of waves of well below average temperatures reaching us later in January and this much colder weather could last into February as well. It is during this time that we're likely to have the coldest and most wintry weather of the season with sharp frosts, very cold days and some heavy snowfalls too. So keep your winter clothes ready and prepare for some drastic changes.
We'll be back in a few weeks time to see how the weather patterns are progressing and issue the latest thoughts for February.
For more weather information you can follow ourmeteorologist, Simon Cardy on twitter weather_king.