Updated: 2026-07-30
At the Met Office’s Holme-moss station in northwest England, the number of frost days – days when the minimum temperature drops below 0°C – has varied sharply from year to year. In the twelve years with complete records (1984–1995), the busiest frost season was 1985, with 103 frost days. That means that for nearly a third of the year, the thermometer at Holme-moss failed to climb above freezing at its lowest point.
The highest frost count recorded at Holme-moss is 103 frost days in 1985. The lowest is 55 frost days in 1995 – a difference of 48 days, nearly seven weeks of extra freezing nights between the two extremes.
To put that in perspective: 103 frost days is roughly one frost every 3.5 days. In the mildest year, 1995, there were only 55 frost days – less than one every 6.6 days. The series shows a milding trend in the early 1990s, with 1990 (57 days) and 1995 (55 days) the two least frosty years, before a rebound in 1991 (85 days) and 1992 (86 days).
Holme-moss lies on the Cheshire Plain, not far from the Peak District. Its inland location, away from the moderating influence of the Irish Sea, allows temperatures to fall more readily on clear, still nights. The station’s record of frost days from 1984 to 1995 (data is available from 1977 to 1995, with annual frost counts beginning in 1984) reflects this: even in the warmest years, every season brought at least 55 mornings with a frost.
The table below lists every year with a complete frost-day record. The year 1995 stands out as an outlier – not only for its low count of 55 days, but because it recorded the only negative mean minimum temperature of the series (see the next section).
| Year | Frost days |
|---|---|
| 1984 | 93 |
| 1985 | 103 |
| 1986 | 72 |
| 1987 | 91 |
| 1988 | 70 |
| 1989 | 64 |
| 1990 | 57 |
| 1991 | 85 |
| 1992 | 86 |
| 1993 | 80 |
| 1994 | 78 |
| 1995 | 55 |
Frost days are counted from daily minimum temperatures, so the annual average minimum temperature gives a good sense of what drove the yearly totals. The five coldest years (lowest mean minimum) at Holme-moss were:
The five warmest years (highest mean minimum) by contrast were:
The most striking year is 1995: although it had the coldest mean minimum (–0.4 °C) of the entire series, it also recorded the fewest frost days (55). This apparent contradiction is explained by the distribution of temperatures: 1995 had a few intensely cold spells but many milder nights, keeping the frost count low despite a cold average. In contrast, 1985 combined a cold mean (3.2 °C) with a broad, persistent frostiness, producing the maximum of 103 frost days.
Over the twelve complete years, the frost-day count ranged from 55 (1995) to 103 (1985). That spread of 48 days is a reminder of how variable winter weather can be in inland Cheshire. Even the second-least frosty year, 1990, had 57 frost days – just two more than 1995.
The Met Office’s MIDAS dataset records daily minimum temperatures at Holme-moss station (station ID 00506) from 1977-01-02 to 1995-06-01. Frost-day counts are available for complete calendar years from 1984 onward; 1995 is also complete, covering January through June (the station ceased reporting shortly after). The counts shown here are drawn directly from official, quality-controlled Met Office observations.
Source: Met Office MIDAS (Integrated Data Archive System) – Official UK weather station data. Station: Holme-moss (Cheshire). Period: 1984–1995. Data under Open Government Licence v3.0.
AI-assisted content from official Met Office data, automatically verified. 🤖 IA-assisted content · Art. 50 EU AI Act
HistoClima Tools: discover the weather on the day you were born, your wedding day, or your birthday-week statistics.
© 2026 HistoClima · data: Met Office (OGL v3.0) · not affiliated with Met Office · citation permitted with source.