UK Climate Rankings
Local authority areas ranked by the fewest prolonged cold spells between January 2023 and December 2025.
This list ranks 20 UK local authority areas by the fewest prolonged cold spells recorded between January 2023 and December 2025. We define a cold spell as three or more consecutive nights with minimum temperature at or below 5°C. The threshold matters: at or below 5°C is the point at which heating systems work hardest in poorly insulated homes, frost damage risks become real for pipework and external surfaces, and excess winter mortality risk rises in older and vulnerable populations.
The figures come from the Open-Meteo daily archive, which combines ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis with regional observation networks at roughly 11km resolution. Each council is queried at the centroid of its area, and cold-spell episodes are counted over the three-year window. A three-year window smooths year-to-year variability while remaining recent enough to reflect current conditions. The Met Office's 1991-2020 station normals are the authoritative long-run reference and broadly track the same regional pattern.
The mildest UK winters sit along the south and south-west coasts and on the smaller offshore islands warmed by the North Atlantic Drift. The Isles of Scilly, the Cornish and Devon coastlines, the Pembrokeshire coast, the southern Welsh coast, the south of the Isle of Wight, and the milder pockets of the south coast of England all benefit from sea temperatures that stay relatively warm into the winter. Inland and northern areas, especially upland Scotland and the Pennines, record many more cold spells in any given year.
Cold spells drive winter excess mortality, with the highest impact on people over 65 and on those with respiratory and cardiovascular conditions. They also drive higher heating costs, frost-related insurance claims, and risks to outdoor infrastructure. The UK Health Security Agency publishes Cold Weather Plan guidance keyed to similar temperature thresholds. From a property perspective, milder winter zones see lower average heating costs and reduced frost-damage exposure, though they also tend to be the same areas with higher coastal flood and erosion risk - the trade-off is real.
A council-level ranking is a regional signal. Microclimates within a council area can differ markedly - a sheltered south-facing valley will record fewer cold nights than an exposed ridge a mile away in the same council. For an address-specific picture, the Met Office's local climate records and the LocalRisk postcode page are the appropriate references.
For this ranking, a cold spell is three or more consecutive nights with minimum temperature at or below 5°C. The threshold is the point at which heating systems work hardest, frost damage risks become real, and the UK Health Security Agency's Cold Weather Plan triggers public-health guidance. Lower thresholds (such as nights at or below 0°C) capture fewer events; higher thresholds (10°C) capture too many to be meaningful.
Open-Meteo's daily archive, which combines ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis with regional observation networks at approximately 11km resolution. Cold-spell counts are derived from daily minimum temperature for each council centroid over the January 2023 to December 2025 window. The Met Office's 1991-2020 station normals are the long-run reference; the patterns are broadly consistent.
The North Atlantic Drift carries warm Caribbean water northwards along the western coasts of the British Isles. Air temperatures over and immediately downwind of that warmer sea stay higher into the winter, especially in coastal locations. The Isles of Scilly, the Cornish and Devon coastlines, and the Pembrokeshire coast see some of the mildest winter temperatures in the UK; inland southern England is mild but not exceptionally so.
Not necessarily. Mild-winter areas in the south-west are some of the same areas with the highest coastal-flood and coastal-erosion exposure. Mild-winter areas in the south-east tend to be drier and face higher summer drought and heatwave risk. For an address-specific picture combining heat, cold, flood, erosion, subsidence, and air-quality data, use the LocalRisk postcode page.
UKCP18 climate projections indicate UK winters are likely to become milder and wetter on average over the coming decades. The 50th-percentile central estimate under a high-emissions RCP8.5 scenario shows fewer cold spells, fewer frost days, and higher winter rainfall across most of the UK by 2040-2060. These are probabilistic projections - the full range is wide, and outcomes would be lower under lower emissions scenarios. The ranking shown here reflects recent observed weather and is the right current baseline.