Ben Lowry: Chilly night in Co Down is a reminder that August is the month in which autumn draws near
This week Katesbridge in Co Down was the coldest place in the UK.
It recorded the lowest minimum temperature overnight on Tuesday into Wednesday morning, at 3.9 Celsius. The minimum temp is the coldest point in a 24-hour period.
That temperature is not that far above freezing, and is not the sort of climate in which you would want to camp outside, yet people across Northern Ireland will have been doing just that given that we are still very much in the summer.
Last weekend I was in London and, in the run-up to the hottest day of the year (Monday reached 34.8C or 95 Fahrenheit, one of only 11 years since the 1960s in which the UK has reached that level of heat), it was so warm that at night-time in southern England the temperature barely fell below 20 Celsius.
The chilly temperature recorded in Katesbridge in the middle of this week was another reminder that autumn is near. Last month I wrote about how much I enjoy being in Northern Ireland in July, one reason being that you don’t need to turn on the heat. At 3.9C you do.
I have never been a fan of August. I associate the latter half of the month with unreliable and often autumnal weather in NI. I also associate August with the melancholy of encroaching, and unwelcome, darkness.
In only a few weeks we will be at the equinox, after which there will be more night than day.