Updated: 2026-07-31
The coldest temperature in the historical record for the area around Birmingham stands at -11.5 °C. That reading was taken on 3 December 2010 at the Met Office station in Coton-in-the-Elms, Derbyshire – the nearest official measuring point to Birmingham, about 32.6 km away and at an altitude of 85 m.
Friday 3 December 2010 is the date that defines extreme cold for this part of England. The thermometer at Coton-in-the-Elms fell to -11.5 °C, the lowest minimum temperature ever recorded at this station since records began in 1991. The maximum that day reached only -1.1 °C, meaning the air never climbed above freezing – a full day locked in frost.
That December is remembered across the Midlands as the start of a severe winter that brought weeks of snow and ice. At Coton-in-the-Elms, it was not just one night: three of the five coldest days ever recorded at this station all fell within the same month.
One honest caveat before going further: Birmingham itself has no official weather station with a continuous daily record in this archive. The figures below describe what the closest monitoring site – Coton-in-the-Elms – actually measured. The city centre, with its urban heat island effect and lower altitude, will often run milder than this rural Derbyshire site; the surrounding hills and valleys may hold colder air on clear winter nights. So treat these numbers as the best available reference for the Birmingham area, not as a precise forecast of what happens in the Bull Ring on a frosty morning.
These are the five lowest minimum temperatures registered at Coton-in-the-Elms between 1991 and 2025. Note the dominance of December 2010 – three entries from that single month.
| Date | Min (°C) | Max (°C) |
|---|---|---|
| 2010-12-03 | -11.5 | -1.1 |
| 2010-12-20 | -11.2 | -3.7 |
| 2000-12-29 | -10.8 | 0.5 |
| 2010-12-07 | -10.5 | -2.6 |
| 2010-11-28 | -10.4 | -1.9 |
What stands out here is how deep the cold went in late 2010, and how recent these extremes are. Four of the five dates are from December 2010; the fifth is from late November 2010. The only other entry in the top five is 29 December 2000, when the minimum fell to -10.8 °C with a maximum of 0.5 °C.
Year by year, the coldest night varies enormously. The table below shows the lowest minimum temperature recorded in each calendar year from 1991 to 2025. It gives a clear sense of which winters delivered serious frost and which stayed comparatively mild.
The chart below displays the full series of annual coldest minimum temperatures. The table lists all years for reference.
| Year | Coldest Min (°C) |
|---|---|
| 1991 | -9.3 |
| 1992 | -7.1 |
| 1993 | -5.2 |
| 1994 | -5.8 |
| 1995 | -8.1 |
| 1996 | -6.6 |
| 1997 | -8.8 |
| 1998 | -5.0 |
| 1999 | -6.1 |
| 2000 | -10.8 |
| 2001 | -6.5 |
| 2002 | -9.2 |
| 2003 | -5.4 |
| 2004 | -6.0 |
| 2005 | -7.2 |
| 2006 | -8.6 |
| 2007 | -6.7 |
| 2008 | -5.2 |
| 2009 | -6.2 |
| 2010 | -11.5 |
| 2011 | -5.6 |
| 2012 | -7.8 |
| 2013 | -5.2 |
| 2014 | -3.4 |
| 2015 | -3.7 |
| 2016 | -5.0 |
| 2017 | -6.8 |
| 2018 | -7.2 |
| 2019 | -8.0 |
| 2020 | -3.7 |
| 2021 | -6.0 |
| 2022 | -7.3 |
| 2023 | -5.8 |
| 2024 | -7.7 |
| 2025 | -7.4 |
The standout year is 2010, with its annual minimum of -11.5 °C – a clear outlier against the rest of the series. The previous record holder was 2000, when the coldest night reached -10.8 °C. Since 2010, no year has come close: the coldest since then was -8.0 °C in 2019. The warmest winter nights in this series are found in 2014 and 2020, when the coldest temperatures of those years only dipped to -3.4 °C and -3.7 °C respectively.
To understand when extreme cold can strike, here is the full picture by month: the record minimum for each calendar month, alongside the long-term average minimum temperature for that month. The seasonal pattern is exactly what you would expect for inland Derbyshire – January, February and December are the core winter months, but the records show that hard frosts can arrive as early as November or linger into March.
| Month | Record Min (°C) | Average Min (°C) |
|---|---|---|
| 01 - January | -9.2 | 1.5 |
| 02 - February | -7.8 | 1.9 |
| 03 - March | -8.6 | 2.8 |
| 04 - April | -4.0 | 4.1 |
| 05 - May | -2.6 | 7.0 |
| 06 - June | -0.2 | 10.0 |
| 07 - July | 3.6 | 11.9 |
| 08 - August | 3.8 | 11.9 |
| 09 - September | 0.8 | 9.8 |
| 10 - October | -4.7 | 7.3 |
| 11 - November | -10.4 | 4.1 |
| 12 - December | -11.5 | 2.1 |
Note how the November record of -10.4 °C is deeper than anything recorded in January (-9.2 °C) or February (-7.8 °C). That November low came on 28 November 2010, just a few days before the all-time record was set in early December. This shows how exceptional that late-autumn-to-early-winter spell was – the cold arrived early and stayed intense.
Another detail worth noting: the average minimum temperatures for July and August are identical at 11.9 °C, and their record minima are also extremely close – 3.6 °C in July versus 3.8 °C in August. Even in the heart of summer, a rural site like this can occasionally brush against single-digit temperatures on clear nights.
For planning outdoor events, gardening, or simply knowing what to expect, the key message is that the coldest conditions on record for the Birmingham area cluster overwhelmingly in early winter. December 2010 produced both the absolute record of -11.5 °C and three of the five lowest readings ever recorded here. February, despite being the meteorological heart of winter, has never produced a cold snap as severe as what November delivered in 2010 – its record low is -7.8 °C, nearly four degrees milder than the December record.
The pattern of annual minima shows a clear break around 2010. From 1991 to 2009, the coldest nights ranged between -5.0 °C and -10.8 °C. Since 2010, the range has been noticeably tighter, with most years falling between -5.0 °C and -8.0 °C, and two notably mild years – 2014 at -3.4 °C and 2020 at -3.7 °C – that never saw a cold night below -3.4 °C.
These figures come from the complete daily series for the Coton-in-the-Elms station, which started on 1 March 1991 and runs through to the end of 2025. The -11.5 °C reading from 3 December 2010 remains the lowest minimum temperature ever recorded at this location – a benchmark that a decade and a half of subsequent winters have not yet threatened.
Source: Met Office, Coton-in-the-Elms station – daily records from 1991 to 2025.
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