Updated: 2026-07-31
The coldest day on record at the nearest Met Office station to Manchester is -12.3 °C, registered on 12 January 1987 at Holme Moss (West Yorkshire), 520 m above sea level.
That morning, the maximum temperature at Holme Moss only reached -9.8 °C, meaning the entire day stayed below freezing even at its warmest.
The point of measurement closest to Manchester is the Met Office station at Holme Moss, in the county of West Yorkshire, situated at 520 m altitude and about 26.1 km from the city centre. These are its historical records from the Met Office MIDAS archive.
A note of caution: this is a hilltop site, exposed and significantly higher than Manchester city centre itself. The climate of Manchester can differ from what this station registers, due to differences in altitude, shelter, and proximity to urban heat. The figures below are the best reference available for extreme cold near Manchester, but they are not a measurement taken in the city itself.
The five coldest days recorded at Holme Moss between the start of records in 1977 and the final entry in 1995 are all concentrated in two very cold winters: January 1985 and January 1987. The extreme event of 12 January 1987 stands clearly above the rest.
| Date | Minimum (°C) | Maximum (°C) |
|---|---|---|
| 1987-01-12 | -12.3 | -9.8 |
| 1987-01-11 | -11.9 | -6.2 |
| 1985-01-17 | -10.2 | -3.7 |
| 1985-01-18 | -10.2 | -2.2 |
| 1987-01-13 | -10.0 | -7.2 |
The coldest reading of the entire series, -12.3 °C, has never been beaten. That record has now stood for more than three decades, since the winter of 1987.
The table below shows, for each month of the year, the coldest temperature ever registered at Holme Moss during the 1977–1995 period, together with the average minimum temperature for that month.
| Month | Coldest recorded (°C) | Average minimum (°C) |
|---|---|---|
| January | -12.3 | -1.0 |
| February | -9.6 | -0.8 |
| March | -6.4 | 0.2 |
| April | -4.7 | 1.7 |
| May | -1.1 | 4.5 |
| June | 0.6 | 7.3 |
| July | 5.2 | 9.7 |
| August | 4.0 | 9.2 |
| September | 1.3 | 7.2 |
| October | -2.9 | 4.8 |
| November | -5.7 | 1.7 |
| December | -8.0 | 0.6 |
The coldest temperatures cluster exactly where you would expect: January is the month that has produced the all-time record, with a minimum average of -1.0 °C. February follows closely, both in its record minimum of -9.6 °C and its average minimum of -0.8 °C. It is striking that even in July, the warmest month, the record minimum at this exposed site has fallen to 5.2 °C, and in June to 0.6 °C.
This table summarises the coldest temperature reached in each calendar year from 1984 to 1995. It shows how exceptional the winter of 1987 was: no other year in the series comes close to its -12.3 °C.
| Year | Coldest temperature (°C) |
|---|---|
| 1984 | -6.4 |
| 1985 | -10.2 |
| 1986 | -5.6 |
| 1987 | -12.3 |
| 1988 | -5.3 |
| 1989 | -4.5 |
| 1990 | -5.9 |
| 1991 | -8.5 |
| 1992 | -6.9 |
| 1993 | -6.4 |
| 1994 | -8.4 |
| 1995 | -5.6 |
The winter of 1987 stands out for a second consecutive extreme cold night on 11 January, when the minimum fell to -11.9 °C, only 0.4 °C above the all-time record. The 1985 winter also produced two consecutive very cold days on 17 and 18 January, both reaching -10.2 °C. These episodes are remarkably rare: only four nights in the entire 1977–1995 period fell below -10.0 °C.
In daily terms, the coldest temperatures to be expected at Holme Moss in any given winter, based on the average minimum of -1.0 °C in January, are far from the -12.3 °C record. The gap between average conditions and the extreme record is a measure of how exceptional that January morning in 1987 really was.
Source: Met Office (MIDAS archive), Holme Moss station, West Yorkshire. Period: 1977–1995.
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