Updated: 2026-07-31
The nearest official measuring point to Birmingham is the Met Office station at Coton-in-the-Elms, Derbyshire, sitting at 85 m altitude, about 32.6 km from the city centre. Using the station's daily records from 1991 to 2025, we can pin down when summer's first real heat arrives—and the shift is stark. The first day of the year to hit 25°C came on July 5 in 1991; by 2025, it arrived on April 30. That's summer's trigger arriving more than two months earlier across the series.
July 5, 1991
was the first date the station hit 25°C that year — the latest start to summer in the entire 1991–2025 record.
By contrast, April 30, 2025
was the first 25°C day of 2025 — the earliest summer onset ever recorded at this station.
The same pattern appears at the other end of the year. The first day with a maximum temperature below 0°C — the traditional sign of winter's grip — came on December 10, 1991 in the early record. In 2025, that first frost day arrived on January 11. Winter's onset has pushed deeper into the cold season, a mirror image of summer's early arrival. Between these markers, the warm season at Coton-in-the-Elms has stretched dramatically over three decades.
For this analysis, we use the Met Office daily maximum temperature (tmax). Summer's start is the first day in each calendar year when tmax reaches 25°C — a threshold that, in the UK Midlands, reliably marks the arrival of genuinely warm, summer-like weather. Winter's start is the first day when tmax falls below 0°C, meaning the day never rises above freezing. These are simple, physical definitions that don't rely on calendar dates or solstices; they tell you when the air itself says the season has changed.
The station at Coton-in-the-Elms has complete coverage from March 1, 1991 to December 31, 2025. The data shown below are the official daily records published by the Met Office through its MIDAS archive. Note that Birmingham's urban heat island and local topography can make the city's actual temperatures differ from this rural station, but this is the best available official reference point for the area.
The annual mean of the daily average temperature (tmed) at Coton-in-the-Elms tracks the warming trend clearly. The coldest year in the series was 2010 at 8.9°C, while the warmest years are 2022 and 2025, both at 11.2°C. The difference between those extremes is 2.3°C over a period of 35 years.
The chart shows the complete annual series. The table lists the most notable years; the full series comes from Met Office.
| Year | Annual Mean Temp (°C) |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 10.8 |
| 2010 | 8.9 |
| 2014 | 10.9 |
| 2022 | 11.2 |
| 2023 | 11.0 |
| 2024 | 10.9 |
| 2025 | 11.2 |
Looking at the extremes in the series helps show where we are headed. The five warmest years are all recent, with the top two — 2022 and 2025 — tied at 11.2°C. The coldest years are all in the 1990s and 2010s, with 2010 at 8.9°C the coldest of the entire 1991–2025 period.
| Rank | Year | Annual Mean Temp (°C) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (tie) | 2022 | 11.2 |
| 1 (tie) | 2025 | 11.2 |
| 3 | 2023 | 11.0 |
| 4 (tie) | 2014 | 10.9 |
| 4 (tie) | 2024 | 10.9 |
| Rank | Year | Annual Mean Temp (°C) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2010 | 8.9 |
| 2 | 1996 | 9.0 |
| 3 | 1993 | 9.1 |
| 4 (tie) | 1992 | 9.6 |
| 4 (tie) | 2012 | 9.6 |
For a resident of Birmingham, these numbers translate into a practical reality. If you plan outdoor events, gardening, or simply want to know when you can expect reliable warm weather, the old rule of "summer starts in July" no longer holds. At this station, the first 25°C day in 2025 came on April 30 — a date that, 34 years earlier, was still firmly in spring. The frost season, meanwhile, has contracted: winter's first below-freezing max day now arrives in January, not December.
It's important to remember that these are readings from Coton-in-the-Elms, not from a thermometer inside Birmingham itself. The city tends to run warmer than the surrounding countryside due to the urban heat island effect, which can raise overnight minimums and push daytime highs slightly higher in the urban core. Elevation differences and local exposure also play a role. But as a reference point for the wider Birmingham area, this station's records are the best long-term official dataset available, and they tell a clear story: the warm season is growing longer.
The 2022 and 2025 annual means of 11.2°C sit at the top of a 35-year series that started with 1991 at 10.6°C and dipped to 8.9°C in the cold year of 2010. The trajectory is not a straight line — there are cool years like 1996, 2010, and 2012 mixed in — but the overall direction is unmistakable, and the shift in season start dates reflects it. Summer's first arrival has moved from a July date to an April date, and the first frost of winter now appears in January.
| Event | Earliest in Series | Latest in Series |
|---|---|---|
| First day with max temp ≥ 25°C (start of summer) | April 30, 2025 | July 5, 1991 |
| First day with max temp < 0°C (start of winter) | January 11, 2025 | December 10, 1991 |
The data period runs from March 1, 1991 to December 31, 2025, giving 35 full years of observations. Whether you're a gardener timing your first plantings, an event planner choosing a date for an outdoor wedding, or a researcher tracking local climate change, the message from this station is consistent: plan for summer to arrive earlier, and for winter's first freeze to hold off longer, than it did in the early 1990s.
Source: Met Office MIDAS daily station records, Coton-in-the-Elms, Derbyshire, 1991–2025.
HistoClima Tools: discover the weather on the day you were born, your wedding day, or your birthday-week statistics.
AI-assisted content from official Met Office data, automatically verified. 🤖 IA-assisted content · Art. 50 EU AI Act
© 2026 HistoClima · data: Met Office (OGL v3.0) · not affiliated with Met Office · citation permitted with source.